Roger McGough is a popular contemporary British poet who spent time as a pop singer during the 1960s with a band known as the Scaffold. He and the group went to the top of the charts with the singles "Thank U Very Much" and "Lily the Pink." By 1967 his work was included in The Mersey Sound, a volume of modern poetry that was published by Penguin and also included works by Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, who along with McGough were collectively called the Liverpool Poets. The Mersey Sound sold more than 500,000 copies. McGough's poems appear on the recordings Grimms, Fresh Liver, and the Argo release British Modern Poets, which was issued in 1974. His published books include Summer With Monika, The Way Things Are, Sporting Relations, Defying Gravity, You at the Back, Blazing Fruit, The Spotted Unicorn, Watchwords, and After the Merrymaking. In 1997 he received an OBE award, and the following year he was the recipient of the Cholmondeley Award for Poetry. The Liverpool native resides in Twickenham. He is a University of Hull graduate, and the University of Loughborough dubbed him a Fellow of Poetry in 1973. He began to write at the age of 18 but did not share his new creations with his parents, preferring to keep the poems private. His mother was pleased when he became published, but unfortunately McGough's father did not live to see his son's accomplishments. ~ Linda Seida, Rovi