Operating on the principle that if you set out to be bad, you must aspire to be the worst, Walter McCorrisken's literary career was an outstanding success.

The self-styled World's Worst Poet plumbed new depths with his output of truly excruciating verse, but brought a smile to many a face along the way.

According to his own CV, McCorrisken had always dabbled in poetry writing but had tried a variety of occupations, from shipyard worker to gravedigger, and, even, pig attendant, before he began to take his art seriously.

The bard of Renfrew was working at nearby Glasgow Airport, shunting planes for British Airways, in the mid 1970s when his big break happened. The Herald Diary at the time short of an item or two decided to organise a bad poetry competition.

Murray Ritchie, recently retired Scottish political editor but Diary editor at the time, explained: ''The contest ran for a month, won the biggest correspondence in my experience and attracted more than 1000 of the vilest poems from all over Scotland. But the worst of them all came from McCorrisken - all 259 of them. In truth it never was a real contest, McCorrisken was so hopeless he won by a country mile.''

McCorrisken duly claimed the title of Scotland's Worst Poet and became an instant celebrity with offerings such as:

A three-legged dog rode

westward wan day

Doon tae the jile at

Moosejaw

''Sheriff'' he said on an

unsteady leg

''Sheriff Ah've come for

ma paw''

Although he tried hard to hide it, McCorrisken was a

writer of no small talent and published articles, poems and folksongs. In the latter category he won a BBC song contest with an effort on the sensitive subject of The Closet on the Stair.

His reputation was secured by appearances on the Parkinson show and Barrymore,

and, as his fame or more properly notriety spread, he laid

justifiable claim to be not just Scotland's but the world's

worst poet.

Such was his fame that Billy Connolly once sought him out to ask for an autograph.

McCorrisken gathered some of his best/worst efforts into early anthologies but it

was not until the publication of A Wee Dribble of Dross in the early 1990s that he made any impact on the bestseller lists, selling thousands

of copies.

MCorrisken was never

going to become rich writing poetry but he was a popular speaker and a regular guest at the annual Lobey Dosser birthday parties celebrtating the famous cartoon creation of Bud Neil.

In 1994 he ventured into prose writing with a hilarious expose of his father's early life as an apprentice taxidermist in Tadpoles in Tenements: Trials of a Taxidermist.

But it will be for his tortured verse that McCorrisken will be remembered, so the last word should go to him:

Dear Sir,

Never bite your fingernails,

It makes your fingers lumpy,

Never bit your fingernails,

Yours sincerely,

Stumpy.

Walter McCorrisken, semi-skilled poet; born May 28, 1926, died January 29, 2004.