Clive James dies in England at age 80
Tributes are flowing for legendary Australian writer and broadcaster Clive James who has died in England at the age of 80.
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For a man who told journalists writing his obituary that “shorter is better”, Clive James didn’t practice what he preached.
The clever, witty, gregarious author and television presenter wrote five volumes of his own biography, with the first edition published almost 40 years before his death.
Tributes flowed for James overnight after it was revealed he lost his decade-long battle with leukaemia, kidney failure and lung disease.
He kept apologising in interviews over the years for being alive after announcing his illness in 2011, saying he was sure that this one would be his last.
A friend of Princess Diana, he became a legendary figure in British and Australian media for his reviews in British newspaper The Observer and his regular programs on the BBC and the ABC.
He was still writing up until a month ago and was planning to do interviews for a new book when News Corp Australia reached out to him in September.
He died on Sunday and had a private funeral at Pembroke College, Cambridge on Wednesday.
A statement on behalf of his family, released by his agents, said: “Clive died almost 10 years after his first terminal diagnosis, and one month after he laid down his pen for the last time.
“He endured his ever-multiplying illnesses with patience and good humour, knowing until the last moment that he had experienced more than his fair share of this ‘great, good world’.”
He was grateful to the staff at Addenbrooke’s Hospital for their care and kindness, which unexpectedly allowed him so much extra time. His family would like to thank the nurses of the Arthur Rank Hospice at Home team for their help in his last days, which allowed him to die peacefully and at home, surrounded by his family and his books.”
James was born in Kogarah, Sydney, during the first year of World War II.
His father Albert James was captured in the fall of Singapore in 1942 and managed to survive the prison camp.
However, his flight home, organised by the well-meaning American army who wanted to spare the POWs the pain of ship travel home, crashed, killing him 10 days after the end of war.
James wrote of that moment in his first autobiography Unreliable Memoirs when his mother heard the news.
“Up until that day, all the grief and worry that I had ever seen my mother give way to had been tempered for my ears. But now she could not help herself,” he wrote. “At the age of five I was seeing the full force of human despair. I think I was marked for life.”
Many years later James visited his grave in Hong Kong and wept. His poem My Father Before Me ends: “Back at the gate, I turn to face the hill,/Your headstone lost among the rest./I have no time to waste, much less to kill./My life is yours; my curse to be so blessed.”
James struggled at primary school despite his intelligence and went on to study psychology - erratically - at Sydney University, edited the student newspaper Honi Soit, directed the Union Revue and joined the boozy, libertarian Push. For a year after graduation, he worked on the features pages of the Sydney Morning Herald.
In 1961, James joined the exodus of bright young Australians to England. The next three years, if his memoirs are to be believed, mainly involved drinking, lusting and borrowing money, interspersed with brief and disastrous jobs.
But he also wrote: “Nothing I have said is factual except the bits that sound like fiction.”
He then went to Cambridge to read English literature and, after graduating, started a PhD on Shelley.
It was never completed. James spent too much time on extra-curricular activities, particularly the Cambridge Footlights and the Cambridge Review, for which he wrote film reviews and upset the pseuds by taking Hollywood as seriously as arty continental films. He also taught himself languages.
At the end of his Cambridge period, James married Prue Shaw, an Australian scholar of Italian literature and language. They had two daughters, Claerwen and Lucinda.
He also became a contemporary of Germaine Greer, the prominent Australian feminist and knocked about with actor and comedian Barry Humphries as part of a wave of Australians who took on London in the swinging sixties.
James’ versatility extended to music. In the 1970s he wrote the lyrics for six Pete Atkin albums which retain a cult following. The partnership was resumed years later with three more albums and a two-man song show which was a hit at the 2001 Edinburgh Fringe and toured Britain and Australia.
He had a very minor film career, playing a horizontal drunk in The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and a slightly bigger part in the sequel.
His main breaks came in the 1980s, shortly after his first autobiography was published, as he moved into television.
An academic, he was hired by Britain’s ITV in 1982 to host a clips show which spent a lot of time making fun of strange Japanese quiz shows.
It was a long way from the awkward Sydney boy who was christened Vivian.
He was allowed to change his name because of the popularity of Vivienne Leigh, who played Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind, which was released during the year of his birth, turned it into a girl’s name, he claimed.
James dominated television in the 1980s in Britain and his shows were also picked up in Australia.
He became a household name, and struck a chord with people because despite being exceptionally bright and well educated, he was able to make disgusting jokes with a straight face.
James labelled Arnold Schwarzenegger a “brown condom full of walnuts”.
He said of Princess Diana: “She wasn’t just beautiful. She was like the sun coming up: coming up giggling. She was giggling as if she had just remembered something funny.”
And he also said: “A life without fame can be a good life, but fame without a life is no life at all.”
James had his own program, which continued, under various titles which always included his name, for about 20 years.
He presented travel shows, Formula One shows (motorsport and tango dancing were two of his enthusiasms), a Paris fashion show and an eight-episode documentary, Fame in the 20th Century (1993), which was broadcast by the BBC in Britain and the ABC in Australia.
It was also in the 1980s that he turned to the novel. His first, Brilliant Creatures, was a best-seller that’s been compared with Wodehouse and Waugh; and his fourth, The Silver Castle, is claimed to be the first novel about Bollywood. His collections of essays kept coming.
In an interview with the BBC in 2015, when spruiking his book Sentenced to Life, he joked that his ghost was giving the interview because he was already dead.
“Mistakes are the only things we learn from, nobody learns anything from success,” he said. “I wish I had been wiser earlier.”
Some of his last poems were about his granddaughter, as he lamented he should have been a better family man.
“I’m particularly pleased about the poems about my granddaughter, she’s at the centre of all our lives, she’s a ball of energy, dancing and singing,” he said.
And in one of his final interviews he gave, perhaps, the secrets to his success. “I don’t like jokes just for their own sake, I like jokes that convey a truth,” he said.
TRIBUTES FLOW IN
Piers Morgan, presenter of Good Morning Britain tweeted: “RIP Clive James, 80. A brilliantly funny man.”
RIP Clive James, 80.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) November 27, 2019
A brilliantly funny man. pic.twitter.com/hbuaQATLEU
Stephen Fry, comedian and presenter, said on Twitter: “Clive James and Jonathan Miller – two heroes of mine growing up. Each so wildly and profusely gifted in so many directions.”
Very sorry to think they’re not in this world any more. How very sad.”
Clive James and Jonathan Miller – two heroes of mine growing up. Each so wildly and profusely gifted in so many directions. Very sorry to think they're not in this world any more. And I just heard that Gary Rhodes has been snatched from us too. How very sad.
— Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) November 27, 2019
George Brandis, Australia’s High Commissioner to the UK, also paid tribute. “He was unquestionably the greatest Australian poet of his time; as well as being a witty and incisive critic and a hugely gifted man of letters,” he said. “He combined a true scholar’s erudition with a good natured scepticism that was very Australian.”
Cuban singer Margarita Pracatan, who regularly appeared on James’ TV show, also paid tribute to the star in an emotional tweet.
Saying goodbye is so shocking. Makes you quiet rewinding the memories. So many. Years and years of that intelligence and the talent and beautiful way of living, always to do excellence. Thank you, #CliveJames from the bottom of my heart. You live forever with us. #CliveJamesRIP pic.twitter.com/Pz56nwt61x
— Margarita Pracatan (@PracatanBaby) November 27, 2019
"I recommend imminent death for any writer. It concentrates the mind wonderfully." Clive James, who kept writing throughout the 10 years since his first terminal diagnosis, talking to @wmarybeard last year for Front Row Late. Full programme on @BBCTwo at 7.30pm tonight. pic.twitter.com/CLas7A2lCT
— BBC Arts (@bbcarts) November 27, 2019
Australian broadcaster Clive James has died at the age of 80 after a decade-long battle with cancer.
— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) November 27, 2019
More on this story: https://t.co/mdDoEnuWAV pic.twitter.com/JBOxzIR5lf
How sad to hear of the passing of Clive James. One of the funniest men to grace British TV.
— JJ (@ECFCJJ) November 27, 2019
Who can forget Margarita Pracatan.#RIPCliveJames pic.twitter.com/yNMARFvS5q
Savage news this morning. To lose one friend is bad but to lose two reeks of carelessness. The beloved hilarious genius Jonathan Miller who dramatically changed my life three times, and dear Clive James my pal at Cambridge. Its a fucking rainy day in LA appropriate for tears.
— Eric Idle (@EricIdle) November 27, 2019
Originally published as Clive James dies in England at age 80