Computer users have shared the 40-year-old poem with people around the world.Getty Images/Wavebreak Media
The Sunday Post first discovered the poem “The Cranky Old Man” – more than 40 years ago.
It’s the Facebook phenomenon seen by millions around the world.
But today we reveal the remarkable true story behind “The Cranky Old Man” poem — and the role The Sunday Post played in bringing the touching rhyme to the world.
Many readers will be familiar with the verse after it swept the internet in recent weeks.
The latest version claims to have originated in Australia. But the truth is it was written by a nurse in a Scots geriatric hospital and shot to prominence after being printed in The Post more than 40 years ago.
The deeply moving poem is a plea by an elderly patient to a nurse.
It urges the carer to see beyond the frail and confused old person before them and to consider the life they’ve lived, full of hopes and dreams, triumphs and tragedies.
The version of its origin doing the global rounds on online social networking sites claims the poem was left behind by an old man who died in a nursing home in a rural Australian town.
The story goes that the elderly gent passed away leaving nothing of value. While clearing possessions from his locker, staff came across the work on a scrap of paper.
They were so impressed they had copies made, and thus the poem gradually came to the world’s attention. It’s a nice story — but completely false.
Listen to Look Closer, recited by The Sunday Post's content editor Dawn Donaghey.
The original poem was called Look Closer and was about a crabbit old woman — obviously for an international audience the guid Scots word “crabbit” had to go. It was written by a Montrose nurse, Phyllis McCormack, in 1966.
The work was brought to the attention of the Post in 1973, when a copy was found in the possession of an old woman who died in a geriatric hospital.
The poem caused a sensat
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