Clive James retains his wit and good humour despite his failing health. 
Clive James retains his wit and good humour despite his failing health.

London: Clive James is dying, but he's pretty good-natured about it. A man who found his way from a poor suburb of Sydney to become a beloved writer, entertainer and figure in British life, he can look back with astonishment and bemusement, and look forward with a trenchant eye.
Asked what he would miss about ordinary life, James answered, "All of it, alas, even the false steps and the humiliations."
On the other hand, "some deprivations will be over," he said in an email interview. "I won't have to miss smoking any more. Nobody smokes where I'm going: It's like a row of restaurants in California."
Clive James spoke with Kerry O'Brien in 2013 for the ABC's The Boy From Kogarah. Clive James spoke with Kerry O'Brien in 2013 for the ABC's The Boy From Kogarah. Photo: ABC

Born Vivian James in 1939 – he was named after Vivian McGrath, an Australian tennis player of the time – James soon found that the stardom of Vivien Leigh made his first name embarrassing. His mother, widowed in World War II when her husband survived Japanese captivity only to die in a plane crash on his way home, finally allowed the young Vivian to choose a new first name. He picked Clive out of a wartime Tyrone Power film.
His father hangs over his memories. "I suppose that was the defining effect on my life," he once told the BBC. "I talk about it even now with difficulty but, yes, he was meant to come home, and he didn't, and I was on my own with my mother."