Clive James death: Acclaimed author, TV host and poet dies aged 80

The writer and broadcaster was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2010

Poet, critic and broadcaster Clive James has died aged 80, his agent has announced.

The Australian writer, who had lived and worked in the UK since 1961, died at his home in Cambridge on Sunday 24 November. A private funeral attended by family and close friends took place in the chapel at Pembroke College in Cambridge today (27 November).

Born Vivian James in 1939, he studied at the University of Sydney before moving to London, later attending Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he mixed with notable figures such as Germaine Greer, and served as president of the university’s drama society, Footlights.

In 1972, he became the TV critic for The Observer, where he claimed to be unpopular because he kept laughing out loud at his own jokes while writing.

Known for his pithy one-liners, he once suggested Arnold Schwarzenegger resembled “a condom full of walnuts” and that motor racing commentator Murray Walker sounded “like a man whose trousers are on fire”. He described Dame Barbara Cartland’s eyes as being “like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff”.

That signature wry commentary became popular on shows such as ITV’s Clive James on Television, in which he introduced offbeat TV clips from around the world. He was also The Daily Telegraph‘s TV critic for its Saturday Review section between 2011 and 2014.

By 2012, he had published more than 30 books and several collections of poetry. That same year, he was awarded a CBE for services to literature and the media, along with a string of other prizes. He spent the summer of 2019 writing and editing an autobiographical anthology titled The Fire of Joy, which will be published in 2020.

James’s death comes nearly a decade after he was first diagnosed with leukaemia, and seven years after he told BBC Radio 4 that the disease had “beaten him” and he was “near the end”.

In 2015, he admitted to feeling “embarrassment” at still being alive thanks to experimental drug treatment. He wrote a weekly column for The Guardian until June 2017, titled “Reports of My Death...”.

A statement from United 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.”

Among those to pay tribute include singer Alison Moyet, who described him as a “bright, beaming boy”, and presenter Gaby Roslin, who said James had been “incredibly kind”.

Reverend Richard Coles called him “the best telly critic that there ever was”, while Margarita Pracatan, the Cuban singer whom James helped to make a household name, remembered his “intelligence ... talent and beautiful way of living”.

Actor and theatre director Samuel West said: “We were lucky to have him for so long after his diagnosis. We were lucky to have him at all. RIP Clive James.”

Don Paterson, poetry editor and James’s publisher at Picador, said: “Any encounter [with him], either in print or in person, left you desperate to go and open a book, watch a film or a TV show, or hunt down a recording.”

He added: “With Clive’s passing, we lose the wisest and funniest of writers, a loyal and kind friend, and the most finely stocked mind we will ever have the fortune to encounter.”