Evidently: John Cooper Clarke, BBC Four, review It emerged in BBC Four's Evidently: John Cooper Clarke that, back in the day, the only way of contacting him was to ring his mum - he'd never got around to getting his own line set up. This footage-filled programme veered too close to comfort towards hagiography - some dissent over his poetic skills would have added some very welcome, very Cooper Clarkesque grit to the oyster. But this air of adoration was nevertheless perhaps a fair reflection of the affection with which he has been widely regarded - especially by comics of a certain generation - ever since he blazed a trail back in the Seventies with his pioneering brand of anti-establishment, everyman verse. Steve Coogan, Stewart Lee and innumerable other luminaries popped up to pay their tributes to this indomitable fusion of Bob Dylan and Johnny Rotten, invariably homing in on the very British "spirit of dissent, rather than spirit of compliance" that he so perfectly distilled. But, unsurprisingly, it was Cooper Clarke himself who was the star of the show: at once droll, world-weary, proud and passionate, looking now like Ronnie Wood after a century in hell, his words at the mic as fast and un-dodgeable as hailstones.