Just A Minute

 
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Re: terrible news

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Dean BedfordApr 16, 2009
 

 
Tony Hawks and Stephen Fry have paid tribute on the Today programme

Comedian and writer Tony Hawks, who worked with Sir Clement, told BBC
Radio 4's Today programme: "Through his great intellect he would always
bring out the best in you, because you sometimes would think 'Who's
doing the show?' and when you knew it was Clement, you thought 'Oh, I'd
better be on tip-top form'."

Fellow Just A Minute star Stephen Fry paid tribute to a "charming and
wonderful man".

He told Today: "I got to know him because I was lucky enough to do a
couple of Just A Minutes and I became immensely fond of him.

"I was at first very afraid of him - a lot of people were. There were
stories that he was immensely grouchy, he was rude sometimes to people
who asked for autographs. I never experienced that side of him at all.

"And another element to him which perhaps should not go unmentioned is
his raffishness, if you like, his air of disreputability.

"He, during the 1950s and 1960s, was a real Soho figure, he knew all the
girls of easy virtue, he knew the pimps, he knew the racetrack tipsters
and, of course, the restaurateurs, which is where he learnt his business
as a chef.

"His fund of stories about that time was simply remarkable, and he lived
a sort of life on the edge. His brother Lucian is known as the more
bohemian, I suppose, as an artist but Clement had that quality too."

Asked what Sir Clement was like to perform with, Fry added: "He was
immensely good company and he enjoyed, I think, particularly meeting new
young comedians.

"Just A Minute, of course, takes on new talent and he became very fond
of that new generation, led by Paul Merton, who I suppose now is old
guard.

"But I think after the sad, earlyish deaths of Kenneth Williams and
Peter Jones he was left sort of marooned as the last of their generation
but he really enjoyed the young clustering about him."

 
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