Low Life: The Spectator Columns

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In mid-March this year, he found strength for a short journey to the local mairie, where he and Catriona were married. The following morning he returned to hospital in Marseilles, where nurses decorated his bed with wildflowers. “Catriona’s dear face appeared around the door,” he ended that week’s column. “She’s here now, beside me… I am enveloped in kindness. I feel tons better.” Clarke doesn’t try in his Low Life columns to wrest lessons from his illness. He lets events speak for themselves. Nor does he construct a tight linear narrative of disease progression, as he does here. He describes noteworthy changes in his health whenever they occur — sometimes weekly, sometimes not. He often folds cancer anecdotes into accounts of other dramas occurring in his life, including his move from England to Provence. Philip, there’s a man here writing about going to the Cheltenham Festival and messing his pents.”“Very easily done at Cheltenham, my dear. I’ve often wondered why nobody has written about it before.”Or,“Philip here’s that man again, the one who messed his pents at Cheltenham, assisting the ferret-judging at a country show. It’s frightfully interesting. The judge takes so long to judge each class, they drive a car into the tent so that he can judge them in the headlights.”“Does he mess his pents again?”“He doesn’t say.”

June 2022: ‘I’ve often wondered whether Her Majesty the Queen glances through The Spectatorfrom time to time. And if she does, I wonder whether her kindly eye lights on this column. And if it does, I wonder what she thinks of what she reads there.Fans of the column – he's described as a cult columnist so there must be some such – will no doubt welcome the chance to reacquaint themselves with past episodes. Newcomers like me may have no idea what to expect. Eight years ago the British journalist Jeremy Clarke learned that he had metastatic prostate cancer. October 2014:‘But what do I know about art? I don’t even know what I like. And I was feeling so good, so alive, and so in love with London, that I mentally apologised to myself, God and the universe for slipping into judgmental nitwit mode again, and I headed on up the road towards the drumming and the tumults in Trafalgar Square.’ My year of drugs December 2013:‘I couldn’t believe it: 3 a.m.in the bohemian quarter of the greatest city on earth and you can’t get a reasonably priced drink anywhere? What was I supposed to do next? Go home? Boris! Are you listening! It’s an absolute disgrace!’ On grandsons

He passed only two O-levels, however, and his next phase of development was neatly summarised on the flyleaf of a Low Life anthology published in 2011: After his love for Catriona and his family came West Ham United. In his younger days he was an active supporter, relishing the intense fanaticism of a football hooligan. He occasionally referred to the odd punch-up in his column with an almost wistful sense of nostalgia. He remained a loyal supporter to the end, seeking out bars in and around Cotignac to watch the games. Even Jeremy’s great optimistic spirit was becoming severely tested by his aggressive cancer. The French health service was remarkable in its support for him, greatly assisted by Catriona who had been a nurse herself. He was in severe pain and became increasingly restricted in his daily habits. Yet every week he produced a searing, often moving, column. Lesser mortals would have thrown the towel in a long time before Jeremy. His readers followed his demise with a mixture of admiration for his courage and sadness at the impending conclusion. He was greatly touched by the messages of support sent by many. He was especially proud of a librarian from Oxford who revelled in the literary references in his articles. March 2008:‘”Do you smoke?”Only when I’m drunk, I said.“You get drunk?”Of course I get drunk, I said — I’m a journalist. It’s expected of us.“I see,”she said, again finding the explanation perfectly satisfactory.“As long as you don’t smoke inside the cottage,”she said.’ On hotels March 29, 2008: “Do you smoke? Only when I’m drunk, I said. You get drunk? Of course I get drunk, I said — I’m a journalist. It’s expected of us. I see, she said, again finding the explanation perfectly satisfactory. As long as you don’t smoke inside the cottage, she said.” Hotels April 15, 2023: “I’m going downhill fast. The numb fingers of my left hand are barely strong enough to unscrew the cap from a tube of toothpaste. And the morphine dose occasionally still fails to mask the pain, which achieves an unsurmised, unimaginable, unsupportable level. It makes one wonder what role in nature that level of pain is supposed to be playing. ‘Treena,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I want to live any more.’ Then I swallow a big short-acting morphine dose and after half an hour the pain subsides slightly, and I have a sip of tea, and I can hear a choir of village children singing over at the school, and a soppy dove almost flies in through the open window, and life has interest once more.” The endIain Johnstone, the film critic and documentary maker who told the stories of stars like Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand and John Wayne.