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Clive James RIP

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  • 27-11-2019 5:23pm
    #1
    Loafing Oaf
    Registered Users Posts: 16,032 ✭✭✭✭


    https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-50578512

    Been 'terminally ill' for nearly ten years, which must be some sort of record.

    Wouldn't describe myself as a huge fan, but I did derive some enjoyment from his tv and columns.

    Edit: Apologies for the typo in the title, can a mod correct?


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    #2
    B.A._Baracus
    Registered Users Posts: 11,173 ✭✭✭✭B.A._Baracus


    I liked watching his documentaries years ago. Was well too young to fully appreciate them but enjoyed them none the less.

    Rip dude. Between him and Gary Rhodes it's not a good day for classic tv personalities/stars of the 90s.


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    #3
    Thelonious Monk
    Registered Users Posts: 13,785 ✭✭✭✭Thelonious Monk


    I liked him, seemed like such a nice bloke. I can't believe he was only 80, I thought he was 80 about 20 years ago.


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    #4
    Wanderer78
    Registered Users Posts: 28,809 ✭✭✭✭Wanderer78


    Rip, always loved his presentation on the screen


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    #5
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    Jonathan Miller also

    possibly not as widely known, but a towering intellect and achiever in several fields from comedy through to opera production as well as writing.


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    #6
    blastman
    Registered Users Posts: 5,449 ✭✭✭blastman


    Miller was a member of Beyond The Fringe with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and had a degree in medicine, very talented man.


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    #7
    everlast75
    Registered Users Posts: 19,013 ✭✭✭✭everlast75


    A very clever and funny bloke. Came across as very genuine. Always enjoyed his witty repartee and presentation style.

    RIP.


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    #8
    blastman
    Registered Users Posts: 5,449 ✭✭✭blastman


    Leçons De Ténèbres

    By Clive James

    But are they lessons, all these things I learn
    Through being so far gone in my decline?
    The wages of experience I earn
    Would service well a younger life than mine.
    I should have been more kind. It is my fate
    To find this out, but find it out too late.

    The mirror holds the ruins of my face
    Roughly together, thus reminding me
    I should have played it straight in every case,
    Not just when forced to. Far too casually
    I broke faith when it suited me, and here
    I am alone, and now the end is near.

    All of my life I put my labour first.
    I made my mark, but left no time between
    The things achieved, so, at my heedless worst,
    With no life, there was nothing I could mean.
    But now I have slowed down. I breathe the air
    As if there were not much more of it there

    And write these poems, which are funeral songs
    That have been taught to me by vanished time:
    Not only to enumerate my wrongs
    But to pay homage to the late sublime
    That comes with seeing how the years have brought
    A fitting end, if not the one I sought.

    -- First published in The New Yorker magazine, May 27, 2013


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    #9
    OldRio
    Registered Users Posts: 5,919 ✭✭✭OldRio


    Lovely poem above.
    I read a number of books by Clive James but 'Unreliable Memories' is simply wonderful. Very very funny.
    A great intellect with warmth and compassion.
    RIP


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    #10
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    Deleted User wrote: »
    Jonathan Miller also

    possibly not as widely known, but a towering intellect and achiever in several fields from comedy through to opera production as well as writing.

    Two renaissance giants depart for the grand stage. Thank goodness we still have the Kardashians to fill the cultural void.


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    #11
    Zubeneschamali
    Registered Users Posts: 16,686 ✭✭✭✭Zubeneschamali


    'The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered'
    The book of my enemy has been remaindered
    And I am pleased.
    In vast quantities it has been remaindered
    Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
    And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
    My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
    In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
    Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
    One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
    Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
    Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book --
    For behold, here is that book
    Among these ranks and banks of duds,
    These ponderous and seeminly irreducible cairns
    Of complete stiffs.

    https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/bookofmyenemy.html


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    #12
    Loafing Oaf
    Registered Users Posts: 16,032 ✭✭✭✭Loafing Oaf


    blastman wrote: »
    Leçons De Ténèbres

    By Clive James

    But are they lessons, all these things I learn
    Through being so far gone in my decline?
    The wages of experience I earn
    Would service well a younger life than mine.
    I should have been more kind. It is my fate
    To find this out, but find it out too late.

    The mirror holds the ruins of my face
    Roughly together, thus reminding me
    I should have played it straight in every case,
    Not just when forced to. Far too casually
    I broke faith when it suited me, and here
    I am alone, and now the end is near.

    All of my life I put my labour first.
    I made my mark, but left no time between
    The things achieved, so, at my heedless worst,
    With no life, there was nothing I could mean.
    But now I have slowed down. I breathe the air
    As if there were not much more of it there

    And write these poems, which are funeral songs
    That have been taught to me by vanished time:
    Not only to enumerate my wrongs
    But to pay homage to the late sublime
    That comes with seeing how the years have brought
    A fitting end, if not the one I sought.

    -- First published in The New Yorker magazine, May 27, 2013
    To illustrate the other side of his talent, the line of Clive's I best remember is from one of his tv shows:
    "Since I left it Sydney it's quadrupled in size...and I guess I have too.":)


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    #13
    Gynoid
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,524 ✭✭✭Gynoid


    Awwww I just heard :(

    Loved his book Cultural Amnesia and still dip into it now and then. Bit of a polymath, was Clive.


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    #14
    bonzodog2
    Registered Users Posts: 6,210 ✭✭✭bonzodog2


    RIP Clive
    I have several vinyl LPs of Pete Atkin singing words by CJ from about 40 years ago
    Heres one
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Butt2hVdyzg

    I gave my dad 2 books by CJ

    A master of words.


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    #15
    Loafing Oaf
    Registered Users Posts: 16,032 ✭✭✭✭Loafing Oaf


    Somebody on another forum reminded me of those New Year's Eve roundups he used to do. They were brilliant, great anecdote for the saccharine slush everywhere else on telly that night.:D


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    #16
    r93kaey5p2izun
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,962 ✭✭✭r93kaey5p2izun


    Oh I just loved his deadpan delivery style and his dry wit. I loved Postcards, particularly the Buenos Aires one with his tango lessons and also Havana.


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    #17
    odyssey06
    Registered Users Posts: 27,967 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    Bittersweet, these are his Desert Island Discs from BBC radio.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00949tr

    Edit... download the podcast version as player seems to be overloaded.

    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



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    #18
    Tony EH
    Registered Users Posts: 18,924 ✭✭✭✭Tony EH


    Thelonious Monk wrote: »
    I can't believe he was only 80

    Holy crap really? He seemed 80 in the 80's.


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    #19
    maudgonner
    Registered Users Posts: 5,455 ✭✭✭maudgonner


    Loafing Oaf wrote: »
    Somebody on another forum reminded me of those New Year's Eve roundups he used to do. They were brilliant, great anecdote for the saccharine slush everywhere else on telly that night.:D


    I'd completely forgotten those, they were great. There's a bunch of them on Youtube, so that's what I'll be watching tonight :)


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    #20
    0lddog
    Registered Users Posts: 3,292 ✭✭✭0lddog


    Quinton Tasteless Locker wrote: »
    Oh I just loved his deadpan delivery style and his dry wit. I loved Postcards, particularly the Buenos Aires one with his tango lessons and also Havana.

    Buenos Aires :



    :):):)


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    #21
    0lddog
    Registered Users Posts: 3,292 ✭✭✭0lddog


    odyssey06 wrote: »
    Bittersweet, these are his Desert Island Discs from BBC radio.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00949tr

    Edit... download the podcast version as player seems to be overloaded.




    He may have done DiD more than once ;)


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    #22
    xper
    Registered Users Posts: 1,061 ✭✭✭xper


    A Point of View, BBC Radio 4, 18 Dec 2009

    "I have been registered for VAT since 1973. Great stories are often introduced by a sentence similarly factual, bald, terse. Gaul is divided into three parts. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. I have been registered for VAT since 1973”.

    Enjoy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b00p99nb


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    #23
    stoneill
    Registered Users Posts: 3,610 ✭✭✭stoneill


    OldRio wrote: »
    Lovely poem above.
    I read a number of books by Clive James but 'Unreliable Memories' is simply wonderful. Very very funny.
    A great intellect with warmth and compassion.
    RIP

    The sulphretted hydrogen reference to his uncle still make me laugh!


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    #24
    Loafing Oaf
    Registered Users Posts: 16,032 ✭✭✭✭Loafing Oaf


    Does anyone else have Rory Bremner's impression of Clive more imprinted on their mind rather than the man's own voice? This catchphrase 'Mr Mitsubishi Wishy-Washy Plenty Doshy' popped into my head when I heard Clive had died but then I realised it must have been a Rory Bremner line rather than one of Clive's own.


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    #25
    Mad_maxx
    Registered Users Posts: 13,505 ✭✭✭✭Mad_maxx


    wonderfully wry and sardonic observer

    Most of the great raconteurs are gone


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    #26
    maudgonner
    Registered Users Posts: 5,455 ✭✭✭maudgonner


    maudgonner wrote: »
    I'd completely forgotten those, they were great. There's a bunch of them on Youtube, so that's what I'll be watching tonight :)




    Watching Clive James on 1993 now and so far we've had Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter, Ted Heath, Michael Jackson and Prince Andrew pop up. There's definitely a drinking game (a very depressing one) in this - if Jimmy Saville features in the next segment I'm cracking open a bottle.


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    #27
    Loafing Oaf
    Registered Users Posts: 16,032 ✭✭✭✭Loafing Oaf


    Clive James interviews Jonathan Miller on Sky Arts right now


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    #28
    Better Than Christ
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,135 ✭✭✭Better Than Christ


    As a child, I used to take notes while watching his 'Postcard From...' series, so I could cleverly adapt/shoehorn his dryly funny little one-liners into essays and stories at school.


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    #29
    Badly Drunk Boy
    Registered Users Posts: 6,458 ✭✭✭Badly Drunk Boy


    Loafing Oaf wrote: »
    Clive James interviews Jonathan Miller on Sky Arts right now

    And there's an Arena programme on BBC4 at the moment with Jonathan Miller, until 00.30.


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    #30
    dxhound2005
    Registered Users Posts: 20,548 ✭✭✭✭dxhound2005


    OldRio wrote: »
    Lovely poem above.
    I read a number of books by Clive James but 'Unreliable Memories' is simply wonderful. Very very funny.
    A great intellect with warmth and compassion.
    RIP

    Unreliable Memoirs.


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    #31
    cj maxx
    Registered Users Posts: 13,393 ✭✭✭✭cj maxx


    Mad_maxx wrote: »
    wonderfully wry and sardonic observer

    Most of the great raconteurs are gone

    I used to sit up to watch his show on BBC. It took me a while to get his sarcastic ( maybe not the best word) humor


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