James was renowned for his pithy turns of phrase. He once likened Arnold Schwarzenegger to “a brown condom full of walnuts” and said motor racing commentator Murray Walker sounded “like a man whose trousers are on fire”. He was equally waspish when describing Dame Barbara Cartland, whose eyes he said “looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff”.
Clive James: Australian broadcaster and author dies aged 80
“Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds,” was another of his famous quotes.