Clive James's Postcard from ...

[Private Frazer]

I thought his postcard from Sydney was the most interesting one because of his comparisons of the Australia he remembered to that of the 1990's. The London one gave a good idea of how difficult life had been for a while. In most of the "postcards" he did something daring; in Paris he was a passenger in a speeding car and last night - from Miami - it was both being out in a police patrol car and water-skiing/gliding which he did pretty well, motivated again no doubt by his youthful assistants! The Miami vice he tongue in cheek hope to find was funny to the end.

[Nigel Stapley]

"...in Paris he was a passenger in a speeding car..."

Driven by the novelist Françoise Sagan, if I recall correctly, and it wasn't so much 'speeding' as 'being driven recklessly'. There was a shunt at some point, I think.

There was an earlier series on a similar concept called "Clive James In...", and the one from (I think) Las Vegas featured James going up in a light aircraft piloted by the tight-end for the San Francisco 49ers Russ Francis. The voiceover for the sequence contains one of my favourite James lines: "Once we got up there, I realised that a tight end was something I didn't have..."

[Private Frazer]

Driven by the novelist Françoise Sagan, if I recall correctly, and it wasn't so much 'speeding' as 'being driven recklessly'. There was a shunt at some point, I think.

A pedestrian I think, but she drove on as they thought that as he had spun they probably had only hit his briefcase!

The moment I remember most from one of Clive James's TV books was when he described how good TV could be when something like gymnast Olga Korbut's Olympic performance came out of the blue.