Clive James reflects on a life drawing to an end

CLIVE James knows he will never return to Australia, although our greatest living expatriate dreams of dipping a fishing line in Sydney Harbour.

Clive James

BY his own admission, Clive James will never again return to Australia. Our greatest living expatriate dreams of dipping a fishing line in Sydney Harbour, he tells ABC doyen Kerry O'Brien, but accepts it is now a dream that will remain unfulfilled.

"I'm alive and quite well and I didn't expect to be," James says of his condition. "But the truth is I've got almost everything wrong. I won't see Australia again and it weighs on me. I'm very sad about that."

His leukaemia might be in remission for now, but emphysema has James by the throat after a lifelong love of smoking and, as he tells O'Brien in a remarkable interview for the ABC, his immune system must be replaced every three weeks. And yet, with a sparkle in his eye, the kid from Kogarah is very much still with us.

The one-hour interview, Clive James, The Kid From Kogarah, will be required viewing for anyone with an interest in our culture and the life of someone who has made such a contribution to it. And without being mawkish, it will stand as one of the final interviews with a man whose life has been based on such great self-reflection.

"This may be the last substantial interview he does," O'Brien says, slightly uncomfortable discussing this reality. "Certainly as a reflective conversation looking back over the whole course of his life and in such a reflective state of mind.

"He knows the score more than anyone. He is very conscious his life is coming to an end and let's hope he hangs on for some time yet. He will become increasingly restricted but let's hope his mind continues to function as it does now."

O'Brien's task is a solemn one, then, even for this most recognised of Australian broadcast journalists. There is an obvious warmth between the two men and despite the emotional pain of some of the material, the result is a touching and at times very funny hour of television.

The Clive James story is well known to most of us - it is almost 50 years since he packed his few possessions and headed for England with 10 quid in his pocket.

Cambridge University, Pembroke College and the Footlights Club beckoned, to be followed by Fleet Street and a successful career as a TV critic, presenter and writer. Most Australians are familiar with his autobiographical books that began with Unreliable Memoirs in 1980; fewer know of James as the highly respected poet, lyricist and literary critic.

"This is such an outstanding Australian mind - with everything he has touched he has rewritten the rules," says O'Brien.

"I hope this switches people on to him more than they have. I hope it switches more people on to reading the core material of his life as there is plenty there and it is all quality. For me the book I appreciate the most is Cultural Amnesia, his insights into the 100 individuals, mostly of the 20th century, who have caught his eye. It's a think book, a book he says is designed to start arguments. And it is a terrific book."

O'Brien admits he had plenty of material for a longer interview due to James's honesty and openness and doesn't rule out a longer version for release in the future.

"Clive says himself at his core he is a writer. He has spent his life reflecting on the whole broad landscape, but particularly his own life. He was enormously generous.

"I wanted him to understand what I was after. I wanted it to be a reflective journey back through his life. He is at the stage where he knows the journey is coming to an end in the relatively near future."

Among the topics the pair discuss is the writer's relationship with his mother, who raised him on her own when his father was killed in a plane crash returning from a Japanese prisoner of war camp at the end of World War II.

James tells of crying "authentic tears" later in life when visiting his father's grave in Hong Kong, a particularly poignant moment in the interview.

They discuss his marriage to academic Prue Shaw and the current separation between the two which James hopes to reconcile.

O'Brien told Media he chose not to directly raise the incident that sparked the separation - a story on Nine's A Current Affair last year revealing an alleged affair with Leanne Edelsten.

"It was one of the most despicable things in Australian television I have seen done under the name of journalism," O'Brien says. "It was a shameful and appalling moment - nothing I can think of would approach it for awfulness. His marriage has struck trouble but they are talking again. I think he would like the marriage to get back together, that is his hope. But he is also realistic about that."

Asked what James's legacy will be, O'Brien says the writer "hopes people will be reading his poetry in the future and reciting it at important moments in their lives".

Clive James, The Kid from Kogarah, screens on the ABC on September 3.