Emma Brockes interviews Roger McGough for The Guardian November 14th 2005
Roger McGough likes to think he is the model for what his fellow poet, Wendy Cope, calls a Tump: a Typically Useless Male Poet. He can’t drive. He is indecisive – or rather, he is accused of being indecisive and denies it (“If I decide to be indecisive, that’s my decision”). He broods. He is impractical. When he sits down to write, he thinks, gloomily: “Just what the world needs, another book of poetry.” With fondness he supports Cope’s conclusion: “Bloody useless.”