ADeC - Arts Development in East Cambridgeshire

A regular sell-out at The Edinburgh Festival, John Hegley is widely known as one of the country's most innovative comic poets with several best-selling volumes of poetry to his name.  A regular guest on Radio 4 - Loose Ends. 

'Typically brilliant songs and stories about a Gallic small-town hero with a dog called Chirac'
The Guardian


Tales about a Frenchman with some unusual [but clean] habits, which include burying his dog’s kennel and his own luggage pieces. The stories appear alongside other new works, which include an address to aliens on the subject of transport a poem about a non-talking parrot and some animal impersonations with the aid of a handkerchief. Suitable for most people over seven. The audience are invited to sing along. But not to dance. Much. Hegley is known as a poet and singer with a common and comedic touch, hence the quotation from The Observer, 'Awesomely mundane' 

‘John Hegley is a joy, technically deft and delightfully silly’ The Daily Telegraph 

John Hegley was born in Newington Green and moved to Luton at an early age. After leaving school he worked as a bus conductor and social security clerk, until he went to Bradford University, eking out his grant by working as a nurse in a local mental hospital. He has worked with two children’s theatre groups and began his highly successful career at the notoriously tough Comedy Store in 1980. His first notable exposure was the John Peel sessions with Popticians, featuring songs about spectacles and the misery of human existence. After publishing ‘Glad to Wear Glasses’ in 1990 another six titles followed filled with verse, prose, drawings drama and photographs of potatoes. In 2000, John received an honorary Arts Doctorate from Luton University and had his most notable live engagement in a women’s prison in Medellin, Columbia.