Clive James

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Capetonian

Clive James

#1 Post by Capetonian » Thu Nov 28, 2019 8:29 am

Clive James, brilliant and prolific writer and broadcaster, deserves his own thread.

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... ames+books

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-13437293

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/ ... elevision/

Clive James wrote an excellent book of short travel and aviation related stories, I think it was called 'arrivals and departures.'

FLYING VISITS consists of twenty travel pieces – or “postcards” – that Clive James wrote for “The Observer” between 1976 and 1984. That was relatively early in his career as a cultural critic, and the Clive James of FLYING VISISTS was not yet the Clive James who wrote “Cultural Amnesia” (one of the best books I have ever read). But a more serious drawback to FLYING VISITS is that it is badly dated. Among the pieces are reviews of “La Clemenza di Tito” and “Das Rosenkavalier” at the Salzburg Festival of 1979 and reports on Margaret Thatcher’s trip to China in 1982 and Queen Elizabeth’s to California in 1983. At this remove, they possess infinitesimal intrinsic interest. Most of the pieces are journalistic snapshots of notable world cities for the readers back home in the United Kingdom, and as such they deal primarily with matters of contemporary flavor and interest (as opposed to matters, say, of history and long-standing culture). Hence, they too do not age particularly well. The “postcards” on New York, Paris, and Washington, D.C. (three of James’s destinations I have visited in the last decade) report on cities that have changed significantly in the last third of a century, as presumably too have most of the subject cities to which I have never been, such as Sydney, Moscow, Munich, and Jerusalem.


OFSO wrote :
Read Clive James "Brilliant Creatures". Every page is a feast for the intellect. Had two copies as both fell apart after being read and re-read.

This classic quote from him is probably the best obituary he could have :

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Re: Clive James

#2 Post by Ibbie » Thu Nov 28, 2019 8:36 am

The recent interview with Clive that BBC2 broadcast last night, as a tribute, was most excellent.

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Re: Clive James

#3 Post by Capetonian » Thu Nov 28, 2019 8:47 am

Bugger, missed it. I fell asleep in front of the fawning sycophantic hardfaced backstabbing lowlife who go on The Apprentice to lick Alan Sugar's backside and get some cash from him. It's one of those loathsome programmes that catches me like a rabbit in car headlights.

I shall to look for repeats of Clive James' broadcasts, I'm sure there will be a few.

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Re: Clive James

#4 Post by DBx » Thu Nov 28, 2019 10:08 am

Must have been about 30 years ago now BBC R4 had a series of broadcasts of him reading from his autobiography 'Unreliable Memoirs'. I was listening to one episode in the car and had to pull in for a few minutes as I was literally crying with laughter at some of his exploits as a lad.

Never had to do that before or since.

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Re: Clive James

#5 Post by Fliegenmong » Thu Nov 28, 2019 10:10 am

I read unreliable memoirs when living in England....laughed uncontrollably in the staff romm at LGW!
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go... Oscar Wilde

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Re: Clive James

#6 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Thu Nov 28, 2019 12:06 pm

Back in the early 2000's I was sitting enjoying a cold bottle of white wine at the Blue Print Cafe near Shad Thames and who should walk up with a very attractive young lady, who turned out to be a relative of his, but Mr James himself to ask me about the provenance of the wine and what I thought of it. I told him, without letting on that I recognized him. He thanked me, moved off and sat down nearby and purchased the very same wine. He tasted it , smiled and raised his glass to me. I never saw him again. Sadly I have never read any of his books but smile when I think of Margarita Pracatan...

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Re: Clive James

#7 Post by llondel » Fri Nov 29, 2019 3:56 am

I've not seen anything to back it up, but this is probably the sort of place where such enlightenment might be had.

James was supposedly banned from flying QANTAS after quietly emptying a tub of coleslaw into a sick bag when no one was looking, then making loud vomit-like noises into said bag to attract attention, then producing a fork and eating the contents of the bag.

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Re: Clive James

#8 Post by johngreen » Fri Nov 29, 2019 12:13 pm

James was supposedly banned from flying QANTAS after quietly emptying a tub of coleslaw into a sick bag when no one was looking, then making loud vomit-like noises into said bag to attract attention, then producing a fork and eating the contents of the bag.

I think you will find that this performance was one of the star turns of another brilliant Australian, Barry Humphries!! And it was supposedly Minestrone soup, not coleslaw...

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Re: Clive James

#9 Post by Capetonian » Fri Nov 29, 2019 12:38 pm

It's an old story and has been associated with various people. A schoolfriend and I used to make very authentic vomiting noises into puke bags on cross Channel ferries. We never tried spooning anything out though for the simple reason that there was nothing in there except air. We did found that there would be a few empty seats around us after some of our better performances.

I would think that sounds more like Barry Humphries than Clive James.

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Re: Clive James

#10 Post by Capetonian » Sun Dec 01, 2019 12:21 pm

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One for Slasher and RiS

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