(The ballad of) Clement Freud

I spent hours of my youth enjoying Clement Freud (that's him in the picture, standing on the left, with Derek Nimmo and Kenneth Williams, while seated in front were Ian Messiter (left) and Nicholas Parsons). He was a politician, a cookery expert, a press columnist, a businessman, a gambler but above all, he was a marvellous radio game show contestant. That's how I got to be acquainted with the deadpan wit of Clement Freud, through a BBC radio game show called Just A Minute.

I first heard this half-hour radio programme over the local radio (a re-broadcast, of course) and got so addicted to it until I had to tune in to the BBC World Service to listen to the programme when the local radio service no longer carried it.

It was an addiction that lasted for several years until I grew out of it. Part of the addiction arose because of Williams and the other part was because of Freud. He owned a deep, mournful voice and from the way he intoned his lines, you'd have thought that there was a tragedy in the family.

Anyway, Clement Freud died yesterday at his home, on 15 April 2009, nine days short of his 85th birthday. He was the grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud but he never lived in his grandfather's shadow. He was born in Berlin or Austria but his family later fled to Britain to escape from Nazi Germany.

In February last year, he wrote in The Times newspaper:

"Last week, 58 years, five children and 16 grandchildren later, my first wife (we remain together, I call her “my first wife” to keep her on her toes) asked whether I had made a will. Not for a while, I admitted, and determined to do it all over again. So, January 2008. Sound mind. Last will and testament; our Portuguese Maria to be the witness.

"Things have changed, the way they do. My fortune has increased. I lost Sigmund's night-shirts and the heavy leather luggage, but have quite a lot of wine, the odd painting, a letter from Margaret Thatcher and a picture of me with Muhammad Ali. I took my children around our flat in turns to glean who wanted to have what when we died. They all wanted all the wine, my wife's desk, my collection of cookery books and the same picture, so that will be no trouble. When it came to money, all are hugely well heeled and what I leave, especially a fifth share of what I leave, is likely to be an embarrassment: what they tip the milkman at Christmas."

Finally, here a little anecdote about him from today's edition of The Times: "... he set up a restaurant and club on the top floor of the Royal Court Theatre in central London. The club did well, and is reputed to have given cabaret work to various unknowns including Dudley Moore and Rolf Harris. Freud claimed to have suggested the line: "Hold my platypus duck, Bill" to Harris, for the song Tie Me Kangaroo Down which went on to be his first hit."