One of the front-runners to replace Andrew Motion as Poet Laureate is so exasperated with the fuss surrounding the job that she has called for it to be abolished.

Wendy Cope is both critically acclaimed and widely loved by the public, but has ruled herself out of contention several times in the past.

This time, however, writing in the new issue of The Royal Society of Literature Review, she went much farther.“There is no requirement on the part of the Palace or Whitehall that the Laureate write anything at all. The Press and the public expect it and the only way to get rid of that expectation is to abolish the post,” she said.

Cope, 63, said that there may be a role “for a Poetry Advocate . . . but I believe that the best way for a poet to serve the art is to remain free to get on with writing the poems that he or she wants to write”.

Non-laureates were free to write about events of national significance, Cope said, but they did not have to compose to order, which no poet was able to do well.

Motion is stepping down after ten years in the post, during which he said it had damaged his work. The favourites to succeed him are Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage, who were both considered last time around.

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