Clive James reflects on a life drawing to an end

• 
  by: Nick Leys
• From: The Australian
• August 26, 2013

Clive James, at his home in London in 2011,  tells of crying 'authentic tears' later in life when visiting his father's grave in Hong Kong. Picture: Britta Campion

BY his own admission, Clive James will never again return to Australia. Our greatest living expatriate dreams of dipping a fishing line in Sydney Harbour, he tells ABC doyen Kerry O'Brien, but accepts it is now a dream that will remain unfulfilled.

"I'm alive and quite well and I didn't expect to be," James says of his condition. "But the truth is I've got almost everything wrong. I won't see Australia again and it weighs on me. I'm very sad about that."
His leukaemia might be in remission for now, but emphysema has James by the throat after a lifelong love of smoking and, as he tells O'Brien in a remarkable interview for the ABC, his immune system must be replaced every three weeks. And yet, with a sparkle in his eye, the kid from Kogarah is very much still with us.

The one-hour interview, Clive James, The Kid From Kogarah, will be required viewing for anyone with an interest in our culture and the life of someone who has made such a contribution to it. And without being mawkish, it will stand as one of the final interviews with a man whose life has been based on such great self-reflection.

"This may be the last substantial interview he does," O'Brien says, slightly uncomfortable discussing this reality. "Certainly as a reflective conversation looking back over the whole course of his life and in such a reflective state of mind.
"He knows the score more than anyone. He is very conscious his life is coming to an end and let's hope he hangs on for some time yet. He will become increasingly restricted but let's hope his mind continues to function as it does now."

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