Columns skipped between subjects from Steven Seagal to Proust and went ‘like a racing dog’
I’d tried to commission Clive several times before I asked him to write for Weekend, and always got a polite no. My mother is an
Australian of his generation, who like him came to
London in the 1960s and never left, and I grew up on his writing – Unreliable Memoirs, Falling Towards
England, the TV criticism. So I kept asking.
In autumn 2015, he was interested. A shortish column with a wide brief was something he thought could work – but he’d need time to think. He emailed me again a minute later, an email intended for his agent, with a cunning plan to raise the fee and delay the start time, though both, he wrote, were fine. “I want to avoid making close contact with her by voice because I’ll see her viewpoint too easily,” he schemed. Nice try, wrong recipient. He emailed again (subject heading: Clive James says duh), we agreed terms, and promised never to mention it to his agent. Onward, Clive, he signed off, as he did every email thereafter.