ROGER McGough entranced a sell-out crowd at the Swan Theatre, Worcester on Sunday night with a mixture of charm, wit and profound observation.

It was difficult to believe he had been reading poems on stage for an hour and a half when he left to rapturous applause from an audience he had kept in the palm of his hand throughout.

As well as reading his poems, he often gave fascinating insights into their origins, without ever being self-indulgent or boring. His mention of "drowning in a sea of upturned faces" at the beginning proved to be just an example of his beguiling modesty, as he drew different emotions from everyone at will, wonderfully funny, immensely poignant and heartbreakingly sad almost in successive breaths.

Here was poetry as it should be - deeply profound, still easily accessible, always ringing true but never taking itself too seriously. How refreshing to hear a poet who doesn't need to use esoteric linguistic devices or references to give his works value, just powerful concepts and emotion woven into cunning rhymes and understated verbal trickery.

Instead of using his eye for observations and skill at communicating them to set himself above other people, he has the honesty, courage and integrity to use them at a level everyone can relate to.

Humour and rapidity sometimes made it hard to catch all the layers of meaning, but he didn't care, seeming devoid of snobbery, inverted or otherwise.

If you didn't get to see this hugely enjoyable show, go and see him wherever he is now, or make sure you catch him the next time he returns to these parts. At the very least he should be Poet Laureate - in an ideal world, he would be Prime Minister.

Jon di Paolo