IT WASN’T until he heard Richard Burton reading Under Milk Wood that Roger McGough realised the poem’s quality, he recounted during his Playhouse show.

A fitting comment given that reading the Mersey Poet’s own work, as rewarding as that is, is nothing compared to hearing him perform it.

Relaxed, with just a touch of quirkiness – a pink spotted handkerchief in his smart jacket and white trainers with his pinstriped trousers – he recited a mixture of earlier poems and a selection from his new collection, An Awkward Age.

He opened the sell-out performance with a piece written especially for the occasion – which stopped abruptly after two lines, setting the gently teasing nature of his recital.

A series of poems written as addresses to objects followed – To Airplanes (“You have never let me down yet”), To Meccano (“Like me, you were born in Liverpool”), To Contact Lenses (“you would slide over the cornea, and disappear from the screen like a lost email, unread and irretrievable”).

Next, a series redressing the gender balance of poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife collection – Mr Blyton resenting a delinquent Famous Five for monopolising his wife’s attention, and Mr Nightingale suffering from a cold while his other half is “in the Crimea swanning round with a lamp”.

Then Dylan the Eavesdrop, read with a Welsh accent, as Thomas borrows verbatim conversation in his local pub to create Under Milk Wood.

Some poets have a taste for words, others a talent for humour and some a knack for finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. McGough has all three.

LAURA DAVIS