Top image: Jock Scot performing at Zig Zag party at the Music Machine (1981)

Jock Scot was a poet and performer of near mythic status who worked with the likes of The Clash, Ian Dury and The Blockheads and Blondie, and who sadly died in April of this year from cancer aged 63.

Despite a slim but critically acclaimed body of published work and recordings, Jock became a true cult figure on both the music and spoken word scenes in London, his infectious personality and turbulent life story attracting friends such as Shane Macgowan, Pete Doherty, John Cooper Clarke and many others. From his written poetry collection, Where is My Heroine? – an autobiographical work, distressingly and hilariously documenting his years as an addict – to his record The Caledonian Blues, recorded with Gareth Sager of the Pop Group, Scot’s quick-fire wit and candid delivery left it’s mark and inspired many (including Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh: “Jock Scot is, along with Iggy Pop and Paddy Stanton, one of my all-time heroes. A Musselburgh superstar.”)

Having filmed Jock and his friends extensively for the last two years of his life, the artist and filmmaker Robert Rubbish is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to help finish a documentary that tells Jock’s story. We caught up with him to find out more.

“With his feral good looks and unerring dress sense, Jock Scot brought a glamorous edge to whatever high-profile occasion he deigned to attend.” – John Cooper Clarke

Robert Greer: When did you first meet Jock Scot, and what was your relationship with him?
Robert Rubbish: I met him in about 2005 at The Colony Rooms, which was an old members club in Soho. I was there with Michael Wojas who ran it, who was very excited to introduce me to this guy sat in the corner smoking a tobacco pipe about a foot long. He was very unusual and I was intrigued by him, he was this old man who wasn’t acting like one, and he had this big pile of books to give to Michael. He was very funny and full of stories, and we would hang out a lot and get drunk after that. I saw him do a performance with John Cooper Clarke which he basically did lying on the floor, and around that time he was handing out the album that he did with Gareth Sager. On that album is an amazing DVD made in his flat of him drinking and talking, and after that I began wanting to document his life in some way, he was just so good on film.

RG: Talk me through how the film came about.
RR: The idea wasn’t to do a film at first, I was actually trying to get him to write his memoirs. We met up, and I got him to do a performance at the Postcard show in about 2012 with The Fat White Family (who Rubbish used to manage). Jock wouldn’t write anything, he was much more of an orator, so I started doing some interviews with him after that, and then we decided we should do something longer, so I had an idea to do something for a year. It was originally going to be called ‘A Year With Jock Scot’, with performances, interviews, all kinds of things, but it ended up going on a lot longer.

We started filming about two weeks before he got diagnosed with terminal cancer, at which point he wanted to carry on. The strange thing was, from that time on he received so much appreciation and respect, and he did so many things up until the point of his death.

RG: What’re your personal highlights from the film?
RR: There were highs and lows… but we got so much great footage with people like John Cooper Clarke, British Sea Power, as well as interviews with the likes of Shane Macgowan, Salena Godden, Pete Doherty, Johnny Green, and Humphrey Ocean, who we got some lovely footage of in his studio as he was painting a portrait of Jock, and they were talking about Jock’s life together. We also got some beautiful of stuff with Jock reading poems in his own studio.

We spoke to so many interesting people with different takes, but the recurring theme that a lot of them mentioned was that Jock’s life, in many ways, was his art. The poet Murray Lochlan Young articulated it very well as the spark to his personality being the really exciting thing about Jock’s performances, you never knew what was going to happen.

“He was very funny and full of stories, and we would hang out a lot and get drunk after that. I saw him do a performance with John Cooper Clarke which he basically did lying on the floor.”

See Robert Rubbish’s Jock Scot Services to Rock N Roll Kickstarter page here.