Sir Clement Freud: 1924 - 2009

A great man once said: “If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer; it just seems longer”. That was Clement Freud: Liberal MP, ‘celebrity chef’ over half a century before the term was coined, TV star, night club owner and an award winning culinary journalist. He was a renaissance man who lived off his wits, invariably delivered in the definitive deadpan style that defied age.

And he never suffered fools glady, even though his exact reason for detesting them often slipped his mind. On one occasion, when he caught the eye of a lady smoking in a non-smoking train carriage and she told him it was ok because she was only five feet from the door, he stood up and said “Well, I’m only six feet from the toilet, so do you mind if I piss here?” He was always aware of the big laughs to be had from partnering his lugubrious delivery with outrageous profanity. Here’s another of his classic gags:

Most of all, though, he will be much missed on the radio comedy panel show ‘Just a Minute’, where he’d been a regular panelist for every series since it’s very first episode in 1967. Here’s a show highlight, and I must confess to slightly moist eyeballs at the thought of never hearing his voice create such magic again. Roundcat, likewise, has even written a poem about the dear boy. Please check it out on his blog here. So long Clement, and thanks for all the ’shits’.

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