HORSETROUSERS - suitable for ages 15+
Horsetrousers is Rich's second book of unique, uplifting comedy poems, and features a 78 laugh-packed pages, crammed with poems including Cut Price Plastic Surgery, Dracula's Ethical Pig Farm, Trouserhorse & The Satin Flares Of Destiny, and Beware The Voodoo Sex Tortoise.
There's also a new batch of limericks, and the first two instalments of Rich’s acronymically-titled flash fiction series Shadows Hang In The Ether.
The book also contains 17 fabulous full-colour illustrations from the marvellous Minty B.
A percentage from this book will be donated to the ME Association www.meassociation.org.uk
“Funny.” – Hovis Presley, describing Rich’s comedy to Badly Drawn Boy’s sister (long story).
“From the genera of testudines to forcing rhubarb, vinegar-filled spacesuits to true jazz cats, Rich Davenport’s Horsetrousers are filled with wit, wisdom and wellbeing. What more would you ever want?” - Paul Neads, Flapjack Press
“Rich Davenport is a brilliant comedian. Genuinely bringing something different to the table and always a big hit with audiences”. - Lee Martin, Director, Gag Reflex Comedy Agency
“Rich Davenport is a terrific performer whose enthusiasm and innate likability shine through. He also has a pleasingly madcap eye on the world and a gift for taking apparently innocuous words…and making them extremely funny.” – Toby Hadoke, Comedian, host with the most at XS Malarkey, Manchester
“I invited Rich to perform at Renewal as I had heard him share his work at an event and couldn't stop laughing!”- Nabeela Ahmed, Renewal, Bradford
"Rich Davenport has played a number of great gigs for me over the years. He brings so many skills and styles into each performance: jokes, puns, comedy poetry and musical mayhem.” -Agraman, Buzz Comedy
Rich Davenport is a comedy poet, stand-up comedian and musician (punk/ska, metal) from Bolton, in the UK. No, he’s never heard of him either. Inspired by Spike Milligan, Ogden Nash, Billy Connolly, John Cooper-Clarke, Robin Williams, Benjamin Zephanaiah, Victoria Wood, Lenny Henry, and by his friend and fellow Boltonian, the late Hovis Presley, Rich has gigged all over the UK, spreading mirth and making loud noises with bands.
HORSETROUSERS Book
"Blimey.
What do you expect from a collection titled ‘Horsetrousers’? Well, if you’re a follower and friend of northern poet Rich Davenport – you get exactly what you expect.
Clever word play [check] exotic characters [check] absurd situations [check] surreal circumstances [check]
It’s all there in all it’s gory, bodily functioned, warped glory.
Some of the rhymes and internal rhymes are so cleverly done you have to read them twice to fully appreciate the way they twist into the narrative.
The set-up of these poems are so expertly constructed that, at times, even if you see the punchline coming you are still overjoyed that he ‘actually said THAT’ [gasp].
Some of the tales are just outright absurdities, others hide a downbeat understanding of real life camouflaged within their anti-heroes and anti-heroines.
The put-upon and the posh caricatured and laid bare in line after line of chortle and guffaws.
A comedic poet at the top of his form.
What else would you expect from Rich Davenport?
Blimey"
IAN WHITELEY, POET & MUSICIAN (BARD COMPANY), HOST OF WRITE OUT LOUD WIGAN
“From the genera of testudines to forcing rhubarb, vinegar-filled spacesuits to true jazz cats, Rich Davenport’s Horsetrousers are filled with wit, wisdom and wellbeing. What more would you ever want?”
PAUL NEADS, FLAPJACK PRESS
"One of the very few positives I can pull from living through the Corona virus pandemic is that I discovered Zoom as a way maintain contact with the real world, especially during lockdown when, if you weren’t involved in Boris’s permanently partying Downing Street, you were utterly isolated.
"Via Zoom, during 2020 and 2021, I discovered a world of performance poetry in which I met a host of extraordinary characters I’d failed to find in the pre-Covid world.
"Foremost among these amazing people was Rich Davenport who taught me how to hang onto the sanity of laughter despite spiralling daily deaths. This extraordinary man is a full-force fount of furious funniness. His wild word-world is at once both down-to-earth and utterly surreal. He blends John Betjeman with Stanley Holloway, Geoffrey Chaucer with Joyce Grenfell, William Shakespeare with Max Miller. The man is a marvellous medley of all of these and more. He’s rude, crude and an utter joy.
"Don't just read this bloody brilliant book, seek him out on YouTube, go to his gigs, worship in the universal front room of his spellbinding voice. There are precious few unpretentious geniuses in this world. They’re the people who slice clean through pomposity and precoiusness. Let’s cherish them. They’re Lenny Bruce, Dave Allen, John Cooper Clarke, Tom Lehrer and - luckily for you - the person whose book you’re now holding. He’s the amazing Rich Davenport. Devour this book as if it was the last great meal of your life… which is precisely what it may prove to be."
NICK TOCZEK - POET, AUTHOR.
"I knew there would be belly laughs when the first email I received from Rich was headed 'I've never heard of me either!', and he's never let me down. I do recommend a dip into Horsetrousers, his second book. It puts this crazy world into proper perspective."
TONY BRITTON, FUNDRAISING & PR MANAGER, THE M.E. ASSOCIATION