Five things you might not know about… John Hegley

As part of comedy group The Popticians, he recorded two sessions for John Peel in 1984. Being a spectacle-wearer has been one of Hegley's long-term points of reference. Do not get him started on contact lenses.
He went off to France to revisit the place in Nice where his dad René sat and painted a picture. For a Radio 4 show, he vowed to go there and create his own version of the image.
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.
In 2000, Hegley received an honorary Arts Doctorate from Luton University and had his most notable live engagement in a women's prison in Columbia.
Including that all-crucial thinking time, he takes an average of 90 minutes to write a poem.