My debt to Clive James, the howlingly funny critic who made TV-writing sing

Clive James was a devoted fan of Game of Thrones despite a hitherto lifelong rule “to have nothing to do with any art form which has dragons in it” and declared it his ambition when he first fell seriously ill at 74 to live to see season four. In the end, he survived both emphysema and leukaemia for long enough to see the eight-season run entire. He died a few days ago at the age of 80.

After leaving Australia (he was born in the Sydney suburb of Kogarah) for Cambridge, James began his post-university life as a literary critic – and if you do nothing else today, read his take on Judith Krantz’s Princess Daisy in the London Review of Books, which remains the most bravura of takedowns. But it was his time as the Observer’s TV critic (from 1972 to 1982) that first made his name. Mainly because he made the form his own. He was perhaps the first person to take the medium – still generally considered slightly infra dig – seriously, and he brought his vast intelligence and erudition to bear on the job.

Even more unusually, he reviewed programmes of all kinds and from high to low brow, often within a single piece. Every one of which, of course, was howlingly funny. His piece on 6 November, 1977, for example, covered Charlie’s Angels (“It’s a sort of George Plimpton number, whereby the Angels solve the crime by merging unobtrusively into the milieu”) and its recent cast change (“Farrah Fawcett-Majors … has been replaced by Cheryl Ladd. Cheryl’s teeth are big and strong like Farrah’s so she will probably become equally famous, if my theory is correct. My theory is that the majority of males in the audience harbour an unspoken desire to be eaten alive”) before seamlessly linking the US show to a Granada adaptation of Hard Times via a discussion of Chesterton’s analysis of Dickens’ success: “‘He wanted what the people wanted’”.

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But to read any of James’s reviews is to marvel (his description of Jane Lapotaire projecting as Marie Curie “what must have been the beauty of the great scientist’s mind with a vividness made all the more intense by the absence of ordinary charm” is a thing of beauty itself). And to learn and to laugh, all at once. What marks them out even more particularly now, in our age of snark – contempt cut with cool, masquerading as humour – is the genuine warmth and wit suffusing them. He doesn’t mock but riffs on absurdities, enjoying himself and making sure we do too. You sense that he enjoys being able to drop in references to Chesterton and Dickens (and Verdi, and Camus, and Sartre, and, and, and …) but they are all deployed to illuminate a point or a performance in the best way he can. To decry it would be to complain about someone giving you the best of themselves.

Related: Clive James, writer, broadcaster and TV critic, dies aged 80

James appeared on television too, becoming most famous for his shows … about television. On Clive on Television for ITV he would introduce us to intentionally hilarious adverts from around the world (this was pre-internet, children – we had not known before that foreigners did humour) and unintentionally hilarious TV programmes (notably the fabulously sadistic Japanese game show Endurance). The clips would be interspersed with various interviewees. During an in-depth discussion about Dallas with one, James recalled watching it dubbed into Spanish abroad and realising that half the mesmerising power of JR’s villainry came from Larry Hagman’s decision to give him such a light, airy voice and manner in superb contrast to his diabolic nature. No other host could have provided such an insight.

The later Clive James Show introduced us to the exuberant Cuban novelty singer Margarita Pracatan. You really had to be there, but he was good to her and she added much to the gaiety of nations for at least half the 90s. Perhaps it’s fitting to end on the tribute she posted on Twitter when the news of his death broke. “Saying goodbye is so shocking. Makes you quiet rewinding the memories. So many. Years and years of that intelligence and the talent and beautiful way of living, always to do excellence. Thank you Clive James from the bottom of my heart. You live forever with us.” In his poems, essays and books as well as his programmes and reviews of course. The boy from Kogarah did get about.