My first teachers, Miss O’Brien and Miss Crook, were delightful and kind to everybody, and I was good at things such as art and writing. Everything changed when I went to secondary school. Then, being good at art was not conceived as something worthwhile. You either took art or you took Latin, and it seemed that the less able people took art.

We learned English by the look-say system from pictures around the classroom wall and I retained a visual sense of words which I think stems from that. I see letters and words in colour. For instance, R is always red and H brown. We learned our tables by rote and recited poetry, and I entered art competitions.

Then I went to St Mary’s College, where John Birt and Laurie Taylor were my contemporaries. Laurie Taylor gave me my first kiss, when I was the Princess of Cleves in the school play and he played the prince. It was a boys’ grammar school and we were taught by the Christian Brothers, most of whom were very fierce. The strap was a popular method of teaching. French and Latin verbs were literally beaten into me. But it wasn’t a bad school; they took working-class Catholic boys, gave them an education and got them to university.

My father worked on the docks and it was very important to my mother that my sister and I went to grammar school. She sent me to elocution lessons to try to lose my Liverpool accent. I didn’t, but I garbled more clearly.

There was one woman teacher there - Miss Allen, who taught drama and elocution - and, encouraged by her and my mother, I took part in competitions at Waterloo music and literary festival. I enjoyed appearing in school productions and reciting poetry, though I had no interest in reading poetry or writing it then. I failed English literature at O-level. I enjoyed English language and was good at that but was too busy messing about to read books.

I went to Hull University at 17, going on 15, to read French and geography. I chose Hull because a chap from the same church went there (Kevin McNamara, who became an MP) and also because I liked the scarf. I was put in the hall of residence where Philip Larkin was the sub-warden, though I never spoke to him.

When I was about 18, I started enjoying French literature and French poetry, and began writing poetry. I sent Larkin some of my poems and he wrote back a very nice, encouraging letter suggesting I publish in the university magazine. I kept it fairly quiet because poetry wasn’t for blokes in those days. I realised that poetry was my vocation, but also that it wasn’t an option as a career.

I took a PGCE and went back to Liverpool where my first job as a teacher was at St Kevin’s comprehensive school in Kirkby. The set textbook was Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of Verse which I’d had at school and not enjoyed, so I started telling the kids the poems I was writing and they enjoyed them because they were about grannies and football. I realised there was a market, that I was a poet.

Now I wish I had talked to Philip Larkin - but I wouldn’t have known what to say.

The poet Roger McGough was talking to Pamela Coleman

The story so far

1937 Born in Liverpool

1947 Attends St Mary’s College, Crosby

1954 Studies French and geography at Hull University

1958 Gains certificate of education

1962 Forms Scaffold pop group with Mike McGear, Paul McCartney’s brother

1967 Publishes first poetry books, Watchwords, Summer with Monika and The Mersey Sound

1969 Scaffold has a hit record with Lily the Pink

1981 Publishes You Tell Me (Puffin, with Michael Rosen), first of nine poetry collections for children

1999 BT’s poet in residence

2001 Edits 100 Best Poems (Viking) chosen by children

March 2002 Publication of Everyday Eclipses and Good Enough to Eat