Roger McGough becomes new Poetry Society president (UK)

Roger McGough, the one-time pop star with the Liverpool band The Scaffold – famed for its 1968 Christmas No1 Lily the Pink – has been drafted in as the new president of the beleaguered Poetry Society. The society said McGough, dubbed the "patron saint of poetry" by Carol Ann Duffy, would provide "a serious depth of experience, vitality and irrepressible wit"