It takes a while to get to the bottom of the John Cooper Clarke story. According to him, when punk went out of fashion, he did too. What he doesn’t mention however, until much later in the interview, is his well-documented 20-year spiral into drug addiction, which decimated both his career and productivity.

Finally clean, John is clearly delighted to be back and in demand. Not only that but his creative juices are flowing and his new work is as prolific as his old. “It’s one thing to be out of it for two weeks, but 20 years is exotic; if you haven’t flitted away, people think you must have something... Keeps them guessing anyway,” John chuckles.

Funny, engaging, thoughtful, fun, superstitious, reflective, John Cooper Clarke is a pleasure to speak to. But the wilderness years are still difficult to talk about. Maybe he’s ashamed of squandering his talent, or spending everything he made. Either way, he’s loving every second of his new tour.

Because, having been adopted by the likes of uber-contemporary Arctic Monkeys and Plan B, John is achingly trendy again. And with his poems on the current GCSE syllabus, he has finally become part of the establishment.

“Arctic Monkeys put my poem on their album which went global and gave me a new generation of fans. And then Plan B got in touch and we did a gig in Whitechapel. It’s amazing when you’ve gone from being someone that no one gives a monkey’s about.”

It also speaks volumes that the country’s hippest bands want to collude with John. The 62 year-old Mancunian is as comfortable on stage with today’s rappers as he was with The Clash.

“I was doing this before the whole punk thing started,” John explains, “which is why punk didn’t do me any favours. Back then it was more like cabaret which was a flourishing culture, so I fitted into punk because I was quite extreme at the same time.”

John then became a victim of his own success, punk swallowing him whole. “Proper punk, like The Pistols and The Clash, only lasted three to four years until conspicuous consumption put paid to that and it was all New Romantics and synthesisers. When the 1980s came, no one wanted to know; I wasn’t required,” he says sadly.

“It was difficult for me that era,” John says. “Most people were influenced by fluctuating trends, so I did gigs but it didn’t go further than that. I was treading water all through the ’80s and it wasn’t going anywhere.”

He was also taking heroin, something which became all-consuming. “It was my downfall for decades,” he agrees. “Things got bad and I had no money to fund my habit so sold myself cheap.” His manager Alan verifies this, saying John went from a £3,000-a-night ticket to a few-hundred-pound name.

“I went to inappropriate venues and that was my story for 20 years,” John summarises. It was also an artistic black spot: “Only in the Victorian era when you could go to a shop and buy drugs, did they help creatively. Today you spend all your time and money getting hold of drugs, having the money to pay for them and finding people to sell them to you. It’s a whole chain of events which ain’t condusive to the reflective side of the mind or poetry. It’s one or the other in my experience.”

So was it all a blur? “Oh no, I remember everything about it and it means I never take it [talent] for granted, not when I’ve seen how quickly it can evaporate. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy writing something you don’t like. The heartbreak of trying very hard and not coming up with anything conspires to failure, so the whole failure scenario is on internal dial. It was horrible. I couldn’t do it anymore.”

After several failed attempts to get clean, John “stopped all that s***, and now I’ve got a family and a new life, touch wood. Because whatever it is that enables me to write poetry is still there, thank God. And I’m doing it to a whole new audience – that’s what I’m most happy about.”

So what of his work, has it changed? “I’m not clamouring for laughs and my poetry has a groove. But totally different? No. You can only go so far before it’s not poetry any more. But I live off intuition and have a heavy superstition of over-analysis,” he chuckles.

His shows, which are pointedly now all held in art centres, are a big success. “It isn’t affected by issues, it’s more amorphous and nebulous than that, but people also shout out what they want and ask for their favourites, and I’m only too happy to oblige. So while I’m on the road, I write ideas down wherever I am; on the back of fag packets, beer mats and menus, the old fashioned way because I can’t let those ideas escape.”

No more angry young man then? “I didn’t ever see myself as angry – you don’t need to be if you have words. I’m more of a p***ed off old dude these days instead.”