Clive james
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Talking in the Library - Series Five

Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry, like Oscar Wilde, is fated to carry the tag “prodigy” until the day he dies. With the same combination of talents as his great predecessor, he is even harder to categorize. Wilde, for example, never tried to deliver his own lines on stage. Fry would be a valuable actor even if he never wrote a word. There is no point in trying to list his achievements in this paragraph, but I can personally vouch for one aspect of his wide range of knowledge that sometimes gets underemphasised in the press coverage: he is profoundly acquainted with poetry, as his book The Ode Less Travelled proves. The English language is in love with him and he generously attempts to reciprocate. When he arrived at my apartment for this conversation, he had already given half an hour’s riotous entertainment to the crew before we even sat him down. Then the cameras rolled and he really got going.

Victoria Wood

Victoria Wood is too alive and too productive to be talked of merely as an historic event, but it would a mistake to leave that aspect out, because modern television would be a lesser thing if she had not first broken down so many barriers. As a television dramatist alone, she is on a par with Alan Bennett, while as a creator of comedy programmes she changed the field for women and indeed for everybody, because very few of the men were trying hard enough as writers before she came on the scene and showed them what penetrating social humour should actually sound like. Above all, it should sound like an inside job. At her advent, the old framework in which Footlights graduates reported on the British social structure from above was at last outflanked, and a whole new intimacy began: often much more devastating, but always far less condescending. Such is her range, it is often easy to forget that her ability to write, and star in, a whole complex television drama is solidly based on the music-hall skills by which she can sell out the Albert Hall night after night and hold the audience enthralled on her own. When she kindly came to call, I raised these topics and others, including the recycling of household rubbish and the increasing prevalence of swearing on television – two themes that might well be closely related.

Catherine Tate

Both as a female solo act and as a pivotal figure of sketch comedy, Catherine Tate now rules the distaff castle that was built from the ground up by Victoria Wood. Tate is a worthy successor, and has opened up a whole new, and sometimes frightening, frame of reference: the British under-class. In Tate's gallery of grotesques, a moronic, sociopathic teenager has no redeeming features. It could be said that Tate's Nan, the harridan who can't keep her knees together while she mouths obscenities, goes all the way back beyond Shakespeare. But the continuity was broken in the Victorian age, and even Oscar Wilde had to dress up his witch as Lady Bracknell. Tate gives us the full House of Horrors termagant. She does so, as she does everything else, with an acute ear for language and a protean acting ability which is perhaps her sole drawback, because her admirers can only dread the prospect that she might be too often lured aside to speak lines that other people write. I, too, liked her in Doctor Who, but the Catherine Tate Show  is where her real gift for drama is on sumptuous display, and the public is right when it buys the DVD boxes by the trolley-load. Talking to her, I was nervously aware that I might be face to face with an historic movement. Luckily she chose to be kind, but I had an uneasy sense that she might be gathering material, and that I was it.
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  • Home
    • Archive
  • Author
    • Profiles >
      • The Texture of Reality
  • Books
    • The Fire Of Joy
    • Unreliable Memoirs
    • Falling Towards England
    • May Week Was In June
    • North Face of Soho
    • The Blaze of Obscurity
    • Latest Readings
    • Cultural Amnesia
    • Play All
    • A Point Of View
    • Flying Visits
  • Essays
    • Visions Before Midnight
    • The Crystal Bucket
    • Glued To The Box
    • The Metropolitan Critic
    • At the Pillars of Hercules
    • As of This Writing
    • The Meaning of Recognition >
      • Introduction
      • Polanski and the Pianist
      • Fantasy in the West Wing
      • Pushkin's Deadly Gift
      • Great Sopranos of Our Time
      • A Memory Called Malouf
      • Bing Crosby's Hidden Art
      • Larkin Treads the Boards
      • The Iron Capital of Bruno Schulz
      • Criticism a la Frank Kermode
      • Fast Talking Dames
      • Rough Guides to Shakespeare
      • General Election Sequence 2001
      • Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
      • A Big Boutique of Australian Essays
      • Cyrano on the Scaffold
      • A Nightclub in Bali
      • Aldous Huxley Then and Now
      • A Man Called Peter Porter
      • Philip Roth's Alternative America
      • The Miraculous Vineyard of Australian Poetry
      • Save Us From Celebrity
    • The Revolt of the Pendulum >
      • The Question of Karl Kraus
      • John Bayley's Daily Bread
      • Kingsley and the Women
      • Canetti Man of Mystery
      • Camille Paglia Burns for Poetry
      • The Guidebook Detectives
      • Zuckerman Uncorked
      • The Flight from the Destroyer
      • Saying Famous Things
      • Insult to the Language
      • The Perfectly Bad Sentence
      • Happiness Writes White
      • All Stalkers Kill
      • Best Eaten Cold
      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
      • Made in Britain, More or Less
      • Movie Criticism in America
      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
      • Robert Hughes Remembers
      • Modern Australian Painting
      • On Diamond Jim McClelland
      • The Voice of John Anderson
      • Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
      • Damon Hill's Bravest Day
      • Jonathan James-Moore
      • Ian Adam
      • Pat Kavanagh
      • Starting with Sludge
    • Guest Writers >
      • Zoe Williams
      • Russell Davies
      • Bryan Appleyard
      • Marina Hyde
      • Bruce Beresford
      • Michael Frayn
  • Poetry
    • Poetry Collections >
      • Injury Time
      • Sentenced to Life >
        • Japanese Maple
        • Sentenced to Life
        • Procedure for Disposal
        • Leçons des ténèbres
        • Driftwood Houses
        • Event Horizon
        • Neuland
        • Echo Point
        • Change of Domicile
        • Holding Court
        • Too Much Light
        • Nature Programme
        • My Latest Fever
        • Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven
        • The Emperor's Last Words
        • Winter Plums
      • Nefertiti in the Flak Tower >
        • Whitman and the Moth
        • The Falcon Growing Old
      • Angels over Elsinore
      • The Book of My Enemy >
        • Recent Verse
        • Verse Letters
      • Opal Sunset
      • Other Passports >
        • Recent Verse >
          • The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered
        • Parodies etc.
        • Earlier Verse
        • Verse Diaries
      • Fan Mail >
        • To Russell Davies: a letter from Cardiff
        • To Martin Amis: a letter from Indianapolis
        • To Pete Atkin: a letter from Paris
        • To Prue Shaw: a letter from Cambridge
        • To Tom Stoppard: a letter from London
        • To Peter Porter: a letter to Sydney
    • Epic Poems >
      • The River in the Sky
      • Gate of Lilacs
      • The Divine Comedy >
        • Hell - Cantos 1-3
        • Purgatory - Cantos 1-3
        • Heaven - Cantos 1-3
      • Poem of the Year
    • Books About Poetry >
      • Somewhere Becoming Rain
      • Poetry Notebook >
        • Listening for the Flavour
        • Five Favourite Poetry Books
        • Velvet Shackles
        • Meeting MacNiece
        • The Donaghy Negotiation
    • Poetry Readings
    • Articles on Poetry
    • Back from The Web
    • Guest Poets >
      • Daniel Brown
      • Liane Strauss
      • Les Murray
      • Peter Porter
      • Alan Jenkins
      • Stephen Edgar
      • John Stammers
      • Simon Barraclough
      • Isobel Dixon
      • Christian Wiman
      • Olivia Cole
      • Judith Beveridge
      • Peter Goldsworthy
      • Kapka Kassabova
  • Lyrics
    • My life in lyrics
    • Selected Song Lyrics >
      • Dancing Master
      • Faded Mansion
      • Have You got a Biro I can Borrow?
      • I Have to Learn to Live Alone Again
      • Hill of Little Shoes
      • History & Geography
      • I See the Joker
      • Laughing Boy
      • My Brother's Keeper
      • National Steel
      • Nothing Left to Say
      • Sessionman's Blues
      • Song for Rita
      • Stranger in Town
      • Sunlight Gate
      • The Egoist
      • The Eye of the Universe
      • The Ice Cream Man
      • Femme Fatale
      • The Master of the Revels
      • Thirty-year Man
      • Winter Spring
  • Video
    • Talking in the Library >
      • Series One
      • Series Two
      • Series Three
      • Series Four
      • Series Five
    • Postcards
    • CJ on YouTube
  • Radio
    • A Point Of View
    • Book Talk