An ode to William McGonagall

Ahead of McGonagall’s Chronicles arriving at Dundee Rep on March 31, multi-award winning writer/performer Gary McNair talks about his recently discovered ‘love’ for the notorious poet

He is the 19th Century poet and tragedian of Dundee whose audiences threw rotten fish at him and who has been widely hailed as the writer of the worst poetry in the English language.

But was William Topaz McGonagall genuinely bad or did he consciously adopt a style that enhanced his notorious reputation that lives on to this day?

“It’s one of those things we’ll never quite get to the bottom of,” laughs writer and director Gary McNair who is bringing his show McGonagall’s Chronicles (Which Will Be Remembered For a Very Long Time) to Dundee Rep.

“If he knew he was bad, he played his cards very close to his chest. Some folk report that they saw him coming off the stage with a wry smile.

“There are also a few clues. There’s a few of his early poems which just weren’t very good – he gets worse and worse – but he re-writes his earlier poems in a more McGonagall style which are funnier and worse. Either he perfected a style and had to re-write those things, or he wanted to live in the canon of generally accepted bad good work!”

Glasgow-based Gary, 32, from Erskine, is no stranger to Dundee Rep.

The Royal Conservatoire of Scotlandtrained drama school graduate was there in 2016 with Donald Robertson Is Not A Standup Comedian.

Performed by McNair and Brian O’Sullivan, McGonagall’s Chronicles is directed by former Dundee Rep associate director Joe Douglas (Cheviot, Death of a Salesman, The BFG) with music by Frightened Rabbit guitarist Simon Liddell.

McNair’s stories of the trials and

triumphs of growing up in working class Scotland have toured the world to huge critical acclaim.

But he admits it’s only a couple of years since he first became aware of McGonagall – revealing that the poem that makes him “guffaw” most is The Famous Tay Whale.

“When I was doing Donald Robertson is Not a Stand Up Comedian a couple of years ago, it was all about this wee guy who was wanting to be funny but who was absolutely awful at it,” he says.

“We took a lot of joy at how bad he was at telling jokes. But he was getting bullied and whatnot. It was funny but a shame. It sort of looked at our culture of Schadenfreude and humour as a bullying tool.

“So I was in the middle of making that show when I met up with a pal in Glasgow and I was telling him about my favourite bad comedians, because I do love seeing terrible comedians. It’s a strange vice that I have!

“And my pal said ‘you must know about William McGonagall?’ I said ‘who’s McGonagall’? And he read me a few poems and I was instantly in love with the guy!

“I went straight out and phoned my brother who has lived in Dundee for 15 years now. I said ‘do you know William McGonagall?’ He said ‘McGonagall? He’s the poet laureate of the Tay!’

“My brother then sent me McGonagall’s self-penned book – his questionable autobiography – and I never turned back from there!”

Gary initially wrote a six-minute “warm up” biography on McGonagall which has now been developed into the full McGonagall’s Chronicles. He describes it as “cradle to grave stuff” and says McGonagall deserves “love and respect” for “carving his own path”.

“I suppose you’ve got to have a wee bit of confidence as a writer to do this,” he adds. “That has been the challenge. I’ve had great fun with it. But the question is, ‘is my writing good enough that I can make it bad enough?’ You see a lot of attempts at McGonagall online and they don’t feel like McGonagall. They just feel like a bad poem!”

If he knew he was bad, he played his cards very close to his chest

Gary McNair has written McGonagall’s Chronicles.