I wanna be the leader
 I wanna be the leader
 Can I be the leader?
 Can I? I can?
 Promise? Promise?
 Yippee I'm the leader
 I'm the leader

 OK what shall we do?

This skirts perilously close to my “why is this even a poem?” line, but for all that, I enjoyed it. McGough has a fine feel for the rhythms and patterns of colloquial speech, which makes his poetry a delight to read. Also, he has perfectly captured a common behaviour pattern in a few well-chosen lines - the image made me laugh, and I can imagine several of my famous cartoonists doing a great job illustrating the verse.

This is the sort of poem that, while not precisely epigrammatic, I nonetheless find myself quoting when events or discussions take a predictable turn. If nothing else, poems like this provide an entertaining way of recognising and commenting (even if only to myself) upon life’s little, commonplace absurdities.

— Martin