The Blaze of Obscurity

The Blaze of Obscurity – The TV Years/Unreliable Memoirs V by Clive James (2010 Picador  326pp)

Despite being billed as the fifth volume of the author’s “Unreliable Memoirs” (and having that printed on the spine), this is quite a different beast than earlier books. While those at least attempted to cover his life and the feeling of the times, this book is very narrowly focussed on his television work. Covering a period roughly from the mid-1980s to around the year 2000, it’s partly the behind the scenes story of the weekly programmes he made for first ITV then the BBC and then ITV again and mainly about the “Postcard from…” travel shows made over the same time period. While the glimpses behind the façade are sometimes fascinating, I felt it lacked a certain something that the previous memoirs provided. Its almost as if the TV work existed in isolation from the world beyond and its only towards the end when James becomes disillusioned with the task that we learn about changing tastes in society. There are few interesting tangents – learning to drive at a later age, the hassles of being photographed and his friendship with and grief at the death of Princess Diana. Some time after the turn of the century he simply walks away from television and goes back to his earlier life as a writer. He hints at a further volume of memoirs covering things beyond television but as far as I know that never eventuated. Overall entertaining, especially if you have fond memories of watching the TV shows in the 80s and 90s, but could have been so much more.