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| Clive James | |
|---|---|
 Clive James (1976) | |
| Born | October 7 1939 Kogarah, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Occupation | TV critic, Essayist, Poet, Author |
| Nationality | Australian |
Clive James AM (born October 7, 1939 in Kogarah, New South Wales) is an expatriate Australian writer, poet, essayist, critic, and commentator on popular culture.
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Born in Sydney, Australia as Vivian James, he was allowed to change his name as a child because "after Vivien Leigh played Scarlett O\'Hara the name became irrevocably a girl\'s name no matter how you spelt it". His father was taken prisoner by the Japanese during the Second World War and, although he survived the POW camp, he died when the plane returning him to Australia crashed. James, who was an only child, was therefore brought up by his mother in the Sydney suburb of Kogarah. An IQ test taken in childhood put his IQ at 140. He was educated at Sydney Technical High School (despite winning a bursary to Sydney Boys High School) and the University of Sydney, where he became associated with the Sydney Push, a libertarian, intellectual sub-culture. After graduating, James worked for The Sydney Morning Herald.
In late 1961, James moved to England, which he has now made his home. After a number of years spent in London, during which time he shared a flat with the Australian film director Bruce Beresford (lightly disguised as Dave Dalziel in the first three volumes of James\' memoirs), was a neighbour of Australian artist Brett Whiteley, became acquainted with Barry Humphries, and had a variety of (sometimes disastrous) short term jobs (sheet metal worker, librarian, photo archivist, market researcher), he was able to gain a place at Pembroke College, Cambridge to read English Literature. Whilst there, he was a member (later President) of the Cambridge Footlights and also appeared on University Challenge as captain of the Pembroke team. His contemporaries at Cambridge included Germaine Greer (known as Romaine Rand in his memoirs) and Eric Idle. Having, he claims, scrupulously avoided reading any of the course material (but having read widely otherwise in English and foreign literature), James graduated with a 2:1 — better than he expected — and began a PhD on Shelley.
James is able to read, with varying fluency, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian and Japanese[citation needed].
He worked as a television critic for The Observer between 1972 and 1982.
He developed his television career as a guest commentator on various shows, including as an occasional co-presenter with Tony Wilson on the first series of So It Goes, the Granada Television pop music show. On the show when the Sex Pistols made their TV debut, James commented: "During the recording, the task of keeping the little bastards under control was given to me. With the aid of a radio microphone, I was able to shout them down, but it was a near thing...they attacked everything around them and had difficulty in being polite even to each other."The Observer, November 1976. Retrieved on 2007-12-24..
In the fourth volume of his autobiography James mentions the unpleasant behaviour of Sid Vicious, but several commentators have pointed out that he could not have met him as the Sex Pistols\' bassist at the time was Glenn Matlock, Sid Vicious only joining the band in 1977.
James subsequently hosted the ITV show Clive James on Television, in which he showcased unusual or (often unintentionally) amusing television programs from around the world, notably the Japanese TV show Endurance. After his defection to the BBC in 1989, he hosted a similarly-formatted programme called Saturday Night Clive which later became Sunday Night Clive. In 1995 he set up Watchmaker Productions to produce The Clive James Show for ITV, and a subsequent series of this launched the British career of singer/comedienne Margarita Pracatan. James hosted one of the early chat shows on Channel 4 and fronted the channel\'s Review of the Year programmes. For several years in the late 1980s and 1990s, he hosted the BBC\'s New Year\'s Eve celebrations.
In the mid-1980s, James featured in a travel programme called Clive James in... (beginning with Clive James in Las Vegas) for LWT (now ITV) and later switched to BBC, where he continued producing travel programmes, this time called Clive James\' Postcard from... (beginning with Clive James\' Postcard from Miami). The 1980s also witnessed James presenting the 1982, 1984 & 1986 official Formula One season review videos. A keen motorsport enthusiast, his style of witty narration was popular with fans.
One of his most famous quotations concerning television is: "Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world."
Unreliable Memoirs, an account of his early life in Australia, was published in 1980. This was followed by three further volumes of autobiography: Falling Towards England (1985), which covered his London years; May Week was in June (1990), which dealt with his time at Cambridge; and North Face of Soho (2006), concerning his subsequent career.
During the seventies he collaborated on six albums of songs with Pete Atkin:
A revival of interest in the songs in the late 1990s, triggered largely by the creation by Steve Birkill of an internet mailing list "Midnight Voices" in 1997, led to the reissue of the six albums on CD between 1997 and 2001. A double-album of previously-unrecorded songs written in the seventies and entitled The Lakeside Sessions: Volumes 1 and 2 was released in 2002 and "Winter Spring", an album of new material written by James and Atkin was released in 2003.
James has acknowledged the importance of the "Midnight Voices" group in bringing to wider attention the lyric-writing aspect of his career. He wrote in November 1997 that "one of the midnight voices of my own fate should be [that] the music of Pete Atkin continues to rank high among the blessings of my life, and on my behalf as well as his I bless you all for your attention."
The Book of My Enemy, a collection of James\' poems, was published in 2003 and includes the lyrics to 53 Atkin/James songs.
In 2007, James started presenting the BBC Radio Show "Point of View", with transcripts appearing in the "Magazine" section of BBC News Online. In this show James discusses various issues with a slightly humorous slant, not dissimilar to a newspaper op-ed. Topics covered included media portrayal of torture,The clock\'s ticking on torture. BBC News Magazine. Retrieved on 2007-12-24. young black role modelsYoung, gifted and black. BBC News Magazine. Retrieved on 2007-12-24. and corporate rebranding.The name-changing fidgets. BBC News Magazine. Retrieved on 2007-12-24.
In July 2007, James presented a short documentary piece on BBC Radio 4 about the benefits and shortcomings of Wikipedia.
James is married to Prue Shaw; the couple have two daughters, Claerwen and Lucinda. In 1992, he was made a Member of the Order of Australia, in 1999 an honorary Doctor of Letters of Sydney University, and in 2003 he was awarded the Philip Hodgins memorial medal for literature.
While a detractor of communism and socialism for their tendency towards totalitarianism, James still identifies himself with the left, accepting socialism\'s planned economy and state-owned media and eschewing capitalism\'s free market and privatization. In a 2006 interview in The Sunday Times, James states of himself: “I was brought up on the proletarian left, and I remain there. The fair go for the workers is fundamental, and I don’t believe the free market has a mind.” In a speech given 1991, he criticizes privatization: “The idea that Britain’s broadcasting system — for all its drawbacks one of the country’s greatest institutions — was bound to be improved by being subjected to the conditions of a free market: there was no difficulty in recognising that notion as politically illiterate. But for some reason people did have difficulty in realising that it was economically illiterate too.”
James is currently a Patron of the Burma Campaign UK an organisation that campaigns for human rights and democracy in Burma.The Burma Campaign UK: About Us. Retrieved on 2007-12-24.
\'Clive\' (a cartoon representation of Clive James) appeared in part 4 of Alan Moore\'s \'D.R and Quinch go to Hollywood\'. In the distinctive style of ‘Clive James on Television’, he reviews the film \'Mind the Oranges Marlon\'.
| Preceded by Andrew Mayer | Footlights President 1966–1967 | Succeeded by Jonathan James-Moore |
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia
