Kate Chisholm

In love with words

No wonder Clive James thought he was writing his own obituary when he was interviewed by John Wilson for the Radio 4 series, Meeting Myself Coming Back (Saturday night). Wilson played him a clip from a recent Mastermind programme on which one of the Specialist Subjects was…Clive James. ‘I was halfway between being amazed and appalled,’ he told us. ‘I’m already being treated like some kind of historic monument.’

His mistake was to have agreed to do the programme in the first place. The series is made by the Archive on 4 team, whose job is to ferret around in the BBC’s repository of lost conversations, old achievements, forgotten soundtracks like audio archaeologists searching for mummies in the Valley of the Kings. After being forced to listen again to an hour’s worth of clips from his past, James, like an ancient pharaoh, began to wonder, ‘How much of this stuff can I take with me?’

From the off he sounded as if he was preparing us for his own imminent demise: ‘I’m getting near the end…I’m a man who is approaching his terminus.’ (He is suffering from leukaemia, and any number of medical complications.) This did not make for cheerful listening. But it was compelling. James sounds older but he still talks almost as fast as ever, and still with that machete-like wit. He’s in love with words, and with the sound of his own voice delivering them. This is not all that unusual. But James combines this with a rueful, yet not self-lacerating, honesty.

That’s why we heard so much about his illness, his obsession with his own mortality. It’s in the forefront of his mind. Wouldn’t we all feel like this if we were in his shoes? No longer able to travel, to do what he once could after not just one but four near-death experiences.

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