Michael McCartney said that when we first met I spoke so fast that he could never understand what I was saying, but assumed that because I wore glasses and had been to university it was interesting. By the time he got used to my voice and could understand what I was saying, he realised that it wasn’t. I have always spoken too quickly: a garbled rush that ends in a swallowed apologetic mumble. I do find it a constant and pleasant surprise to be employed to present radio programmes and to do voice-overs for TV commercials. Don’t they know I gumble and marble? But over the years, and with practice I have learned how to r-e-a-d a-l-o-u-d more slowly, taking my time and breathing properly, but in conversation, when that part of the brain that signals speech receives the impulse to form sounds in the mouth, somehow the words and images all become jumbled up like flotsam on a wave that crashes down on to the beach. The more nervous I am (like in the company of strangers) the higher the wave, the jumblier the flotsam.
Writing, of course, is one way of cleaning up the beach, but even my writing style is staccato. In the words of William Carlos Williams, talking about his poems, ‘I found I could not use the long line because of my nervous nature.’ And I must confess to being more of a ‘red wheelbarrow in the rain’ sort of poet than a ‘Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine/there fell thy shadow, Cynara!’ kind of one. There is obviously a fault line running through me caused by a lack of confidence, an apologetic sort of ‘Get-it-over-with-quickly, because what you’re saying isn’t original or that interesting, and if you don’t hurry up somebody else will butt in.’ Even now, at dinner parties I can begin a story and within seconds watch the listeners’ eyes glaze over as vowels elide, consonants collide and metaphors trip over themselves in a hurry to get away.
It is probably true to say that I have heard the word ‘Pardon?’ more than most people. When I was young it would be ‘Speak up’ and ‘Stop mumbling’ when having to answer a question in class, and the fact that a black leather strap would be close at hand certainly didn’t help. And even though the atmosphere was more liberal by the time I reached the sixth form, I refused to be involved in the debating society for fear of standing up and saying ‘This House believes …’ to be interrupted by cries of ‘Pardon?’ ‘Speak up!’ ‘Stop mumbling!’
When I was at Hull and studying for the post-graduate certificate in Education, we had lessons in how to project in front of a class: ‘Head up high, enunciate slowly and clearly.’ And we all stood up and did just that. Except me.
‘Mr McGough, the children will not understand a word you’re saying. Slow down for goodness sake, or otherwise teach PE. Failing that, become a mime artist.’
Because I gabbled as a child in a Scouse accent, my mother paid for me to have elocution lessons at school, where I learned how to gabble nicer. Sylvia Allen was the teacher and, because she was also in charge of verse-speaking and drama, I was inexorably drawn to both. With three other boys from school I took part in the Waterloo and Crosby Verse-Speaking Festival at the town hall in July 1949. Of the large group of children waiting behind the scenes, I would appear to have been the most nervous, but once on stage I surprised myself by how concentrated and cool I became. Eyes fixed on the back wall above the adjudicators and the audience, I gave ‘Jabberwocky’ my all. Applause. My first poetry performance.
In those days I wasn’t able to command the ludicrously high fees that my agent now charges for my public readings, but I was given a certificate by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama acknowledging that I had passed the Elementary (Grade One) Examination in Speech and Drama. Obviously I would have preferred a gold badge or a medal that I could have worn round my neck when travelling to school, but nevertheless I was immodestly proud of that certificate, and because it says in very small print at the bottom This certificate must not be used as a teaching qualification I have never, ever, tried to use it as a teaching qualification, which, you’ll agree, says a lot about the man.