Clive James

26/03/2009

Aussie comedian and satirist

If I knew then...
What would you say to your 16-year-old self if you could go back in time? We ask another well known celebrity to offer their younger self some words of wisdom.

I wouldn’t like to have met me when I was 16. I was pretty brash. I didn’t know anything and I made a lot of noise. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life at all. I was in the wrong school studying mathematics for which I have no aptitude. The prospects looked pretty bleak. Things improved a bit later when I went to university and started to find myself as a writer. But at the age of 16 I was pretty much adrift.

Frank Sinatra was very important to me. I went to see him in The Tender Trap, in it he wore special shirts – they were called ‘Sinatra red’. I had a Sinatra red shirt and generally wanted to be him. I would do quite a lot of crooning in the bathroom. I couldn’t hold a tune but it didn’t stop me. Singing below a girl’s window proved to be a very ineffective way of making an acquaintance or persuing one.

The young Clive spent a lot of time worrying about his appearance. We modelled ourselves on the American crooners, like Frankie Laine. The combination of the Sinatra red shirt, the blue jacket, the bottle green peg-top trousers and the very large quilted Ox blood shoes with one and a half inches of foam rubber on the bottom – it was a pretty dazzling sight.

I would tell the young Clive to study hard. I didn’t and I almost ruined everything. I was very, very lucky to get any further education.

I’d tell him to listen to the girl. Listen to the girl and she’ll tell you what to do; talk all the time and she’ll drift away.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the shape of my head. I used to worry that my head stuck out in the back. Later I realised it is actually preferable to have a head that sticks out too much at the back rather than one that goes straight up like a pencil. I didn’t know that at the time and I suffered agonies of self consciousness.

I was a very early smoker. I think I smoked from the age of nine. I should’ve avoided that. And I should’ve avoided fatty foods. You don’t get fat at the time because you’re burning it all off, but you lay the foundations for getting fat later. Given the chance again I would never go anywhere near fried food.

Interview: Jane Graham