Les Barker
| Les Barker | |
|---|---|
Barker at the 2010 Ely Folk Festival
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| Born |
30 January 1947 Manchester, England |
| Occupation | Poet and performer |
| Nationality | English |
| Genre | Parody |
| Website | |
| www |
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Les Barker (born 30 January 1947) is an English poet. He is best known for his comedic poetry and parodies of popular songs, but he has also produced some very serious thought-provoking written work.
Originally from Manchester he trained in accountancy before his talent for the written word was discovered. Initially he toured around folk music venues as a solo performer, and later with The Mrs Ackroyd Band (named after his mongrel dog Mrs Ackroyd.) Les is not a singer and the Mrs Ackroyd Band with classically trained vocalists Hilary Spencer and Alison Younger, with keyboard player Chris Harvey have enabled Les's parodies to be performed live to enthusiastic response.
As well as touring Britain he has also performed in Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, the United States of America and Canada.
He has published 77 books to date and has released (either as a solo performer or with his band) 20 albums. His books typically feature a mixture of monologues and comic songs, with a few serious songs. The monologues tip the hat to Marriott Edgar, who wrote many of the monologues performed by Stanley Holloway. Like Edgar, Barker has created several recurring characters and themes, including Jason and the Arguments, Cosmo the Fairly Accurate Knife Thrower, Captain Indecisive, The Far off Land of Dyslexia and Spot of the Antarctic. All of these have become trademarks of Barker's work. Both his funny and more serious songs have become standards for other singers such as Waterson–Carthy and June Tabor.
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