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Intellectuals in Hull today gathered angrily in wine bars after it emerged that a statue to be erected in memory of Philip Larkin is to be jovial and upbeat and will in no way  feel like a stroll around a deserted fun fair in the pissing down rain.
Award-winning sculptor Guy Smiley intends to bring Larkin’s fun-loving side to life through the use of animatronics, despite the former Poet Laureate’s most notable verse stirring up more misery than Radiohead playing their greatest hits on a drizzly day at Auschwitz.
He said: “I’ll use the same mould as the tap-dancing Bernie Clifton I designed for Minehead seafront, though I can’t recreate Larkin’s smile because the revered Man of Letters smiled very little, only if somebody missed the bus or slid three feet in an unexpected dog shit.”
“Ideally I wanted voice recognition to detect the words “loaf-haired secretary” and trigger a raising of the right fist to indicate crumpet, but sadly funding ran out.”
“If you insert 10p, however, he’ll perform “I Like Life … Life Likes Me” from the musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol.”
But Larkin biographer Ian Motion warned against the jollification of the classics, claiming that good poetry should make the reader want to slide into a warm Radox-scented bath with a teaspoon, some Absinthe and a rusty Mach 3.
“It’s an emotion typical to all English poets, including Pam Ayres. I for one stab my wrists repeatedly whenever I hear her classic: “I Wish I’d Looked After Me Teeth”.
He added: “But hopefully the statue might lay to rest some of the myths surrounding Hull’s finest literary artisan. Except the one about fear of sex being due to an absent penis, which I can personally corroborate from the time I watched him decant a bulging piss-bag into a duck pond during a lengthy bicycle tour around the cemeteries of Chichester.”
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