Tributes stream in for Clive James after Cancer Battle admission.


CliveJames


One of this planet's finest presenters has announced he's lost his ongoing battle with leukaemia.

Since being diagnosed less than three years ago, he admitted in a recent interview that he's "almost died four times… I am man who is approaching his terminus."

Speaking with the Daily Mirror the 72-year-old broadcaster/author/TV critic said: "I've been really ill for two-and-a-half years. I was diagnosed with leukaemia then I had COPD which is a fancy name for emphysema and my immune system packed up. And that's just the start. I almost died four times and I swore to myself if I can just get through this winter, I'd feel better. And I got through the winter and here it is a lovely sunny day and guess what, I don't feel better… I'm getting near the end… My tragedy now is that I'm so ill I can't get out so I’m a bit of a recluse. I keep thinking of things I might have done better and remember the good times of course. But mainly I remember the errors. It's my nature, it makes me almost ¬impossible to live and work with."

As if that wasn't enough, the likelihood of him ever getting to see his native Australia again is dwindling: "You couldn’t get enough oxygen aboard a plane to get me to Sydney. I used to be in Australia for five or six times a year but now I can't go. The wistfulness is really building up and I'm facing the possibility I might never see Sydney again. I've still got an Australian passport, that's ¬patriotism, loyalty, and that's also because I'm a masochist and I like being on the end of the longest queue for anything in Europe which is the security queue at Heathrow."

His admission regarding his health has obviously touched a lot of people, who are expressing their loss via the Twitter Mill. Here's just a few.

@MrChrisAddison: Clive James is the best kind of intellectual - one who doesn't let you know that's what he is. A genius and a one-off.

@AlexPetridis: Such sad news about the great Clive James. Anyone who writes popular criticism in a UK newspaper does it in his shadow.

@AndrewCollins: The great Clive James is terminally ill. This makes all other Tweets today seem insignificant… The approachable genius.

@Neilhimself Neil Gaiman: Google for Clive James' poem "The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered". It is the thing I most love him for.

@ CharltonBrooker: Only just read about Clive James being ill. He made me want to write for print and do TV about TV. Impossibly perceptive & hilarious writer… When I was writing TV columns, I went back and reread some of his old Observer columns and was profoundly shaken by my comparative shitness.

@CharlesLavery: As Clive James said: "Stop worrying, nobody gets out of this world alive." #clivetalking
 

'Meeting Myself Coming Back - Clive James' is on BBC Radio 4 (get busy with yer radio app), Saturday at 8pm.

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