Fellow Mancunian John Cooper Clarke crossed paths with Frank Sidebottom on many occasions. The jocular contemporaries toured and worked on sundry projects together. Here he reminisces on the man behind the mask, Chris Sievey, and the underrated brilliance of his power pop outfit The Freshies...

"I was actually working with Chris when he got the (cancer) diagnosis, it was very sad, I always liked Chris. I loved The Freshies, I thought they were really great.
They really prefigured the genre of power pop; while everyone else was wearing ripped shirts they were creating the mold for that teenybop end of punk. I remember Chris was very taken with the work of Paul McCartney, he liked The Beatles but specifically Macca. You can hear that in The Freshies' early records.
I couldn’t understand why he had abandoned that, he was such a great writer of catchy pop songs. I thought it was only a matter of time before he had a smash hit. I always thought he was a bit hasty forsaking the world of power pop.
But I was a huge fan of Frank, I liked him a lot, he had such a great sense of humour. I first met him as Frank one night in south Manchester, it wasn’t long before he became a ‘face’ (laughs) on the local scene. My favourite memory is of him fighting on the stage of the Brixton Opera with the late Charlie Chuck.
We worked together many times and it was always a pleasure. I'm featured in the Being Frank documentary by Steve Sullivan but I'll definitely go to see the feature film."

Check out John and Frank on Channel 4' s Kazuko's Karaoke Klub in the 80s. 

John Cooper Clarke plays The Mac Belfast (May 15); Vicar Street, Dublin (17); The Hawkswell Theatre, Sligo (18); Dolan’s Warehouse, Limerick (20) and The Pavillion, Cork (21).