Postcard to Clive James

Punch - September 6th 1997

When Fiona Russell Powell had an affair with Clive James, she didn't expect him to portray her as a screwed-up junkie in one of his novels years later. Well, two can play at that game..

There are some things a girl likes to forget, particularly, in my experience, the time in her callow youth when she succumbed to the attentions of a portly Australian TV chat-show host. It doesn't take a Cambridge degree to guess that I must he referring to Clive James, the Fostered -down Roland Barthes who has been filling our TV screens with his witty critiques for at least two decades. He, on the other hand, decreed that I should not be allowed to forget our five-month affair of 10 years ago, by betraying every confidence and putting details of my private life into his "novel" (I use the term loosely; try reading it) Brrm! Brrm!

First published by Jonathan Cape in 1991, the book has since been re-issued for the American market under the title The Man From Japan and was stockpiled in UK remainder shops earlier this year by Random House, which obviously wants to get some return from the investment of buying Cape.

When the novel first appeared, many friends rang in to ask if I was aware that Clive's book contained a main character that was clearly based on rne. Even people who weren't aware of my liaison were asking him if I knew him after reading the book. I only flicked through Brrm! Brrm! briefly in a shop, but saw immediately that Clive had indeed based the lead female character on me: from borrowing my physical appearance, to using the nickname of Jane Austen he had given me (he was always telling me that, if I pulled my finger out, I could write as well as her), to practically drawing a map of my council flat down the road from his Barbican pad.
I was annoyed at his cheek, but not overly surprised that he'd used our relationship for inspiration, given that all artists must draw from their life experiences to some extent. I would not normally fork out precious money for a Clive James book and I was certainly not going to pay to read about myself, so I decided to ignore it and wait for the fuss to die down.

The odd comments persisted over the years, but it wasn't until The Man From Japan flooded the remainder shops this spring and a flurry of new phone calls began that I finally bought the damn thing. When I finished reading it I was almost weeping with rage and humiliation.
It was breathtaking that Clive thought he could get away with it. There were so many similarities between the Jane Austen character and myself. I grew up in Sheffield and did not get on with my parents. I was in the pop group ABC and also worked as a freelance style journalist writing for The Face, ID, Blitz and Arena. I was friends with Rupert Everett, who had just moved to Paris to embark on a singing career. I drank and took a lot of drugs. Well, guess what? Jane Austen grew up in the North, did not get on with her parents, was in a famous pop group, had a famous bisexual singing friend living in Paris, is a drug-addled alcoholic and tries to write for magazines "like The Face, Blitz, ID and Arena" only she isn't quite good enough. And, as if that weren't bad enough, Clive made her a psychotic slag by drawing on my battles with depression and the fact that I once tried to commit suicide (private information I had told him in confidence).

I now understood why so many people had been surprised by my casual attitude to the book. Frankly, I simply hadn't realised what a vicious and insulting portrait he had painted or how utterly obvious it was, even to those who barely knew me, that Jane Austen was clearly Fiona Russell Powell. I determined that if it were not too late, something would have to be done. But before deciding on which course of action to take, I reviewed our affair; he must have a very different memory of our relationship to have written something so nasty.

Clive greeted me - "Hi! You are cute" - as he bumbled over my threshold clutching a doggy bag of avocado and bacon sandwiches in one podgy hand and a bottle of Australian chardonnay in the other. It was his idea: when we discovered that we lived near each other, he suggested he bring a picnic to my flat. At first I resist-ed, embarrassed by the state of my small flat, which I shared with a male model friend, Stephen Bliss, but Clive persuad-ed me by pointing out, "Think what a great story it'll make!" Although it was our first meeting in the flesh, so to speak, we had got to know each other well over the phone since I first rang him about an interview in February. Now it was April.

I had been introduced to him indirectly by Martin Amis whom I had inter-viewed for The Face the year before, 1988. When I asked Amis if he liked the piece, he said: "Yes, and so did a friend of mine who would like to be interviewed by you too." I wasn't particularly interested when he told me his friend was Clive James, hardly groovy Face material. But over the intervening months, I discov-ered I could get a lot of money for an exclusive with him. I learned that, though he appeared to be everywhere, in truth he strictly controlled his prodigious output and rarely gave interviews.

When I phoned to arrange an interview he refused, saying he had changed his mind and asking why I had taken so long to call him. After an animated conversa-tion, he changed his mind again, saying he'd like to meet me as I "sounded so interesting" and came "highly recommended by Martin". I'd have to wait, though, as he was going around the world filming documentaries.

Naturally, I agreed.

We got on well during that initial phone call, but I was surprised when he started to ring at the end of his day's shoot to entertain me for hours with gos-sip about the international movers and shakers he had just interviewed. He would phone me from whichever hotel he was staying at with the words: "Guess which subcontinent I'm calling you from today!" I liked him and was flattered by his attentions, but didn't think he fancied me - as friends claimed - because we'd never actually met. When we finally did, at my flat that April lunchtime, Clive James already felt like an old friend.

He stayed at my flat for five hours and the interview never got done, not because we were up to anything untoward, but because I hadn't read his entire oeuvre to date. Two of his books were quite enough. He seemed particularly upset that I had skipped through his, frankly embarrassing, book of poetry, Other Passports. We agreed to do the interview proper once I'd read all his work. However, he didn't leave. While we sat and pattered, Rupert Everett kept ringing from location in Yugoslavia threatening never to speak to me again "if you let him get in your knickers!" Clive smiled indulgently while I apologised for the interruptions.
I was very candid about my lifestyle and he already knew that I was the original wild child, one of the hip London cognoscenti who drank a lot and took drugs. He seemed to find it exciting. He also kept telling me how talented I was. During the afternoon, he made some staggering proposals. He knew that I was heavily in debt and offered to give me £3,000. I (stupidly) refused. Then he offered to pay Steve's half of the rent so I could have the place to myself. I didn't want to make my flatmate homeless and refused again. Some friendly flirting went on but that was as far as it went.

He left in the early evening, but a matter of moments after waving good-bye to him, my phone rang. It was Clive. He said he was in a phonebox at the end of my street and felt compelled to tell me he thought he was falling in love with me. I laughed and told him not to be silly. He's the sort of man who's in love with the idea of being in love.

A few days later I went around to the flat in the Barbican where he worked during the week (he only went home to his family in Cambridge at the weekends). Clive had prepared a candle-lit meal of Lean Cuisine and lashings of Ozzie plonk (LWT had put him on a diet and bought him a treadmill and a gold card to an exclusive City gym). We had a lovely evening. He was entertaining and the fact that he tried to seduce me with Bizet and much wine didn't bother me at all. I realised that sex with him was inevitable. I saw it as the price to pay for such enjoyable company. Besides, a big brain turns me on, and I was curious.

He told me a lot about his various women, claiming to have several on the go at the same time. As well as his wife (Prue Shaw, an Italian lecturer at London University), he said that whenever he went to Australia, he still saw an old girl-friend he'd known before he married ("She loves sleeping with me because I get her to swear, something she never does with her husband"), that he'd had a mistress for 15 years and had recently finished an affair with a 22 year old called Emma who studied English Lit at London University. He described her as having "long chestnut hair, kissable mouth, fabulous dancer's body, lovely large breasts". He also said he had put her in his novel The Remake which was just about to be published (one doesn't have to look very hard in it to find her, or him).

I quickly discovered that beneath the carefully maintained facade, he is a typical unreconstructed Australian male: he loves sheilas with big tits. One thing he liked me to do was display my own sizable bazumi funbags. (I recall a memorable night when there was a full moon. He turned off the lights and got me to pull up my black cashmere jumper while he silently stood there, drinking in the sight to the sound of an operatic duet.)

When I asked him how he managed to fit in all these women while he led such a busy life, he grinned: "I have to make a little go a long way." He liked talking about sex, telling me "my sexual fantasies are fairly normal for a middle-aged married man, mainly two women making love together." He said he got his sexual thrills from "knowing that the woman is having as good a time as me", adding for good measure: "I'm not happy until the woman is truly satisfied. I suppose I'm a bit of a masochist really."

But when I tottered, invariably shit-faced, up to the top floor of his flat to go to bed with him (I doubt I could have slept with him sober), I had a different experience. According to my diary, I found him "adequate" as a lover, and remember feeling that he was a performer, the sort who expects a gold star for going down on you. He certainly didn't seem to know whether I'd climaxed or not, and I'm not that good an actress.

That evening set the pattern of our relationship for the next few months. We spoke on the phone every day. I would go round for Lean Cuisine dinner (with breakfast) whenever we could co-ordinate diaries, until we made th arrangement that I could go to his flat after clubbing as long as it was before 1am. It suited me perfectly; I would spend the evening with my fabulous but fatuous cronies and, if things began to flag, turn up at Clive's for a cerebral fix.

I learned a lot about him, all dutifully noted down for "the article". He said thought he was descended from Joan d Arc on his mother's side and had recently found his father's grave in Hong Kong after spending a year searching for it (' wept like a baby"). He told me he learns about TV technique from Dick Cavett, the Seventies American chat-show host, and was most dismissive of his main rival Terry Wogan. Whenever I suggested guest he didn't approve of, he would sneer scornfully "that's Wogan material".He revealed his rather dishevelled appearance as being deliberate in order to avoid "looking anything like Terry Wogan. The minute he puts on one of those suits he has lowered himself in my opinion."

Clive is a workaholic, rewriting the scripts to his documentaries at least three or four times. However, he suffers no doubts when it comes to the quality of his work, announcing to me one day: "My scripts read better than movies. People will be watching my documentaries in the future more often than they'll see any of those films that are around at the moment." One Sunday he rang me from his study in Cambridge to get my critique on the previous Saturday Night Clive, which starred Joan Collins. He then demonstrated his intimations of immortality by breathlessly announcing: "The ratings for the show read like the Second Coming. Over 12 million watched it in the LWT area alone, that's three times more people than were at Gandhi's funeral." He seemed to think it was only a matter of time before he got a knighthood, while confiding that his royal friends were rather "thick and boring".

By August, however, the surreal novelty of having Clive James as a over was wearing thin. To be honest, he was getting on my nerves. He still claimed to be in love with me, which I continued to laugh at or ignore. But he had grown possessive, refusing to believe that my friendship with Rupert Everett was purely platonic, and was jealous of my flatmate Steve. He rang me so often that I just left the answering machine on. He began complaining about my drink and drugs intake; the danger element which had previously excited him now frightened him. He didn't like the fact that he couldn't control me. When he went off on a family holiday to Antibes, I was relieved, but irritated that he even rang me from there like some lovesick puppy. Always erratic with my time-keeping, I started not turning up at his flat for dinner when arranged.

The end came one warm September night when I turned up at his flat in the early hours completely off my head. After paying the taxi driver, he rounded on me in fury because he thought the man had recognised him, hissing: "There will be a crowd of paparazzi at the front door in the morning." Clive had always been careful not to be seen with me in public; I remember how annoyed he was when I mentioned that a neighbour had seen him visit me. He let me sleep the pre-vious night off, then told me we would "have to cool it for a while". I left early the next day and it was the last time I saw him, though we continued to talk on the phone for a while.

I rang Clive on Good Friday in March this year and finally confronted him. I taped the conversation, which was long and mostly amiable. To listen to it, one wouldn't know we hadn't spoken for years: he alternates between being friendly and patronising, calling me honey this and sweetheart that. He seems prepared for my call and thinks my threat to sue is not my idea but that I am being advised by men around me. Unbelievably, he denies that the Jane Austen character is based on me. He also points out he would "be crazy not to" deny it. As usual, he is incredibly smug and seems to think he is untouchable. When I tell him I have been advised to go to the papers, he tells me not to, then turns around and dares me to go ahead.

But it is when he asks me if I am prepared to go into court and admit I have a "psychiatric history and took lots of drugs" and would make an unreliable witness, that I realise what a shit he is to try to use against me what made excellent material for his book. It is a warning which reminds me of his reply when I asked him a decade ago if he always wrote the truth in his best-selling autobiographies: "Supplying the facts is the best way of keeping back the truth." I didn't understand what he meant. Now I think I do. To his credit, he did want to reach some sort of compromise and asked for the weekend to think about what offer to make. However, after receiving a snotty letter from his agent's legal department telling me to fuck off in legalese, I decided to go to the press.

It wouldn't have been my first choice of action but I had tried to give him every chance to make amends. After all, without me, he would not have been able to write Brrm! Brrm! and I felt I deserved some form of apology or compensation. But expecting Clive James to behave like a gentleman was naive. He told me the novel "was not a success, it didn't make back its advance", though I'd imagine that the advance was sizable given his status. He also tried to frighten me off by warning me: "My publisher's forces are already marshalling and they will be enormous." I said I was prepared to fight to the end, to which he asked: "Do you have any idea how bitter that would be?" while claiming "I'm trying to save you from that." Yeah, I bet. When he left a message later on my answering machine (old habits die hard) suggesting that I "let sleeping dogs lie", I'm afraid I couldn't extend the same generosity of spirit.

When it comes to lawyers, Random House is the biggest publisher in Britain and has a bottomless pit with which I could not hope to compete, so I served a writ on Clive James personally. Then I went to Max Clifford. He wanted to go for maximum money which meant, inevitably, the News of the World, while I wanted to hoist Clive by his own petard.

I had expected Max to be a grubby and unpleasant little man, but he turned out to be the opposite. I think he sees himself as being on a crusade to expose wrong-doers and moral hypocrisy. I saw him as an oasis of calm in a sea of shit. He is a man of few but pithy words; when I told him Clive was planning to paint me as a nutter and a junkie, his smooth response was: "Of course you were. You'd have to be to sleep with Clive James."

Climbing aboard the good ship Clifford was the best move I made, he was well worth his 20 per cent. For that, I received complete protection from what could have been a feeding frenzy. The tabloids don't want to alienate their major source of juicy stories. Going to The Screws was an extraordinary experience and not one I would have missed. I had no problem doing it; it was not I who kissed and told but Clive who kissed and wrote. It is human nature to have a prurient interest in others' affairs and, if people step over the line, they should be held to account.

I had to drop the suit after learning that it would cost me up to £100,000 - galling, as I am sure I would have won the case. At least I had the satisfaction of doing to Clive on April 13 (when he made the front of The Screws) what he had done to me - invading his privacy, painful for such a private man. Another thing about that last phone call: he whined several times about the fact that I didn't make use of all the information he gave me to write my piece on him. Well Clive, better late than never. This is for you. Touche, I believe.