London | Clive James , who has died aged 80, was an old-fashioned man of letters - a critic, essayist, poet and novelist - who thanks to his wit and affability became an improbable star of television.

He first made his name in the 1970s as television critic of The Observer, with a much imitated column that combined a self-consciously literary style with spectacular personal rudeness. He described Arnold Schwarzenegger as resembling "a large brown condom filled with walnuts", Frank Sinatra's hair transplant as looking like "a gorilla's armpit", and the tennis player Andrea Jaeger, who was then aged 15 and wore braces on her teeth, as having "a smile like a car crash".

The Telegraph London