Adrian Mitchell

Adrian Mitchell (24 October 1932 – 20 December 2008) was an English poet and dramatist.

• Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.
  • Poems (1964), Preface.

• I was run over by the truth one day.
  Ever since the accident I've walked this way
  • "To Whom It May Concern", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991)
  • Written in 1965, after hearing British troops might be sent to the Vietnam War.

• You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,
  You take the human being and you twist it all about
  So scrub my skin with women
  Chain my tongue with whisky
  Stuff my nose with garlic
  Coat my eyes with butter
  Fill my ears with silver
  Stick my legs in plaster
  Tell me lies about Vietnam.
  • "To Whom It May Concern", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).

• Lovers lie around in it
  Broken glass is found in it
  Grass
  I like that stuff
  • "Stufferation", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).
  • Other stanzas follow this pattern. Roger McGough wrote a version with the refrain "I like that stuff".

• Here are some happy English soldiers.
  They are going to make the Irish happy.
  • "A Tourist Guide to England", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).

• May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
  — I didn't lay down my life in World War II
  so that you could borrow my wheelbarrow
  • "Ten Ways to Avoid Lending Your Wheelbarrow to Anybody", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).

• Now God killed John Lennon and he let Barry Manilow survive,
  But the good Lord blessed little Adrian Mitchell with the fastest cock alive.
  • "Adrian Mitchell's Famous Weak Bladder Blues", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).

• I would have walked on the water
  But I wasn't fully insured.
  And the BMA sent a writ my way
  With the very first leper I cured.
  • "The Liberal Christ Gives a Press Conference", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).

• When I am sad and weary
  When I think all hope has gone
  When I walk along High Holborn
  I think of you with nothing on
  • "Celia Celia", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).

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Adrian Mitchell

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