When he was not poking fun of bizarre Japanese game shows on ITV, Clive James was doing a travelogue that initially began on the BBC.
His postcard from London was rather personal. In the 1960s James arrived in London from Australia with a dream of making his fortune and equality for all. He was a mixture of left wing idealism with a body of an Australian surfer and looking for sex with females. The swinging 60s was a good start.
When James were penniless, walking the streets of London was all he could do and watched the best free shows in town, whether it be on the streets or the museums or art galleries.
When James found employment and made his name in Fleet Street, he found out that two decades later the newspaper industry were leaving it, deserting the once grand buildings such as those of the Daily Express.
James noted that back in the 1960s accommodation in London was cheaper, you pooled together money with five others and shared a bedsit. At the time the program was made, house prices in London had skyrocketed. They have gone even higher since then.
Clive James Postcard from London was made in 1991, sadly many of his contributors have passed away. Terence Donovan the famous photographer talked about enjoying the good life, he committed suicide a few years later battling depression. Peter Cook the satirist, actor, comedian also died a couple of years after the show was broadcast. Journalist and wit Alan Coren lasted longer than those two but he too went.
I always recall an anecdote that Clive James used to say about his life in a bedsit. At one time his room was being shared with another person and both of them did not know about it. Clive James meets her, someone who became famous in her own right, Victoria Wood who both laughed back at those days when Wood came down to London on a promise of some job as a piano player.
Clive James has been dying of cancer for some years but he has still managed to see off most of the guests featured here, even Victoria Wood.
His postcard from London was rather personal. In the 1960s James arrived in London from Australia with a dream of making his fortune and equality for all. He was a mixture of left wing idealism with a body of an Australian surfer and looking for sex with females. The swinging 60s was a good start.
When James were penniless, walking the streets of London was all he could do and watched the best free shows in town, whether it be on the streets or the museums or art galleries.
When James found employment and made his name in Fleet Street, he found out that two decades later the newspaper industry were leaving it, deserting the once grand buildings such as those of the Daily Express.
James noted that back in the 1960s accommodation in London was cheaper, you pooled together money with five others and shared a bedsit. At the time the program was made, house prices in London had skyrocketed. They have gone even higher since then.
Clive James Postcard from London was made in 1991, sadly many of his contributors have passed away. Terence Donovan the famous photographer talked about enjoying the good life, he committed suicide a few years later battling depression. Peter Cook the satirist, actor, comedian also died a couple of years after the show was broadcast. Journalist and wit Alan Coren lasted longer than those two but he too went.
I always recall an anecdote that Clive James used to say about his life in a bedsit. At one time his room was being shared with another person and both of them did not know about it. Clive James meets her, someone who became famous in her own right, Victoria Wood who both laughed back at those days when Wood came down to London on a promise of some job as a piano player.
Clive James has been dying of cancer for some years but he has still managed to see off most of the guests featured here, even Victoria Wood.
