Everyone knows (or should know) that Martin Newell is The Greatest Living Englishman (which was also the title of his first solo album). But as another superstar, JC himself once said: "A prophet has no honour in his own country", and such, for many long years, was the fate of Martin Newell. Although "big in Japan", as the saying goes, for decades he was forced to make ends meet by taking casual jobs washing dishes in restaurants and working as a gardener, hence the verse in John Cooper Clarke's poem Martin Newell: He'll gladly tangle with the weeds And meet all your herbaceous needs And then he's got a gig in Leeds Who's that then? Martin Newell Newell's best known as the front man and songwriter for The Cleaners From Venus. A fiendishly clever wordsmith, he's also a successful poet and the author of two volumes of autobiography. But although he's certainly innovative and eccentric, you could never accuse him of being avant garde: "I think pictures should be of something and pop songs should have tunes".