"Sunshine" on a cloudy day

If the 250 people sheltering from the drizzle in a tent in Edinburgh's Charlotte Square Gardens on Tuesday believed what they'd read in The Scotsman, they were expecting to hear a renowned Liverpool poet read the work of another: Paul McCartney.

But when 69-year-old Londoner Adrian Mitchell mounted the Book Festival stage he said he had no intention of reading from "Blackbird Singing", the collection of Macca's lyrics and poetry he has just edited.

Paul McCartney doesn't read my poetry

"He doesn't read my poetry, so why should I read his?" Mitchell asked reasonably, before correcting himself:

"Well actually he does - but not in public."

While the concept of pop legends reading publicly from their favourite literature is intriguing (though not unprecedented - think of Ringo Starr and the Rev Charles Awdry), I was relieved that Mitchell was there to perform his own exuberant and multi-faceted verse - and not to recite "Mull of Kintyre".

The Liverpool connection was quickly quashed too - Mitchell secured his Edinburgh audience's sympathy adroitly, explaining that while he was a Londoner, his Dad was from Fife. Scotland's national newspaper had perhaps confused him with the late Adrian Henri.

In fact it is surprising that Mitchell doesn't enjoy as high a public profile as Henri did - his optimistic, funny poetry is utterly accessible, and popular in the best sense of the word.

Adrian Mitchell has earned his bus pass, but he has the energy and mischief of a teenager. From "Age 65 Bus Pass":

...and from my northwest
London base
I can ride a bus
to any place

wearing my crown
of silver hair
and having to pay
no fucking fare

He is clean-shaven and youthful with a shock of grey hair. His voice is gentle, but he projects like an actor, as he paces around the stage raising a fist, or gesturing with his whole body. Some of his poems are rapped, some half-shouted. Others are read quite conversationally.

He quickly proved that the fierce political convictions that made him famous in the sixties are still intact, reading "That Feeling" from All Shook Up, his most recent collection.

That Feeling

When you sit
On a chair
And the chair's
Not there
That's the feeling I mean -
That's the Blair.

Next was "We Bomb Tonight", an unflinchingly emotive evocation of Iraqi suffering caused by our "stupid and cowardly bombing". Later he read "Compassion Fatigue", with its famous refrain "Tell me lies about Vietnam".

"They ask me to take part in documentaries about the sixties, and I say 'Piss off'. They should be making documentaries about the 2000s," Mitchell said.

"I have learned that political protest works. During the Vietnam War we made it impossible for the British government to send troops out there. And CND achieved so much - before it there was almost total ignorance about the dangers of nuclear power."

Mitchell once observed "Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people". His inclusive poetry ignores nobody - and is as impossible to ignore, or to dislike, as an over-excited Doberman puppy.

"Adrian 'Sunshine' Mitchell - that's what they call me" he joked, seeming half-embarrassed by his own optimism. Sure enough, as we filed back out into Charlotte Square Gardens we saw the clouds really had lifted.