RIP Clement Freud

[Pip Madeley]

Writer Clement Freud dies aged 84



Sad news, I'd always enjoyed him on Just A Minute. RIP.

[Andrew Curnow]

I must admit I thought he had already died. Sad news for his family. As you say, Pip, he was excellent on Just A Minute, very dry.

[Antony Cox]

Sad news - a very amusing chap indeed.

RIP Clement.

[Dirk Gently]

It is sad news. I first heard of him as a food critic & then caught a couple of interviews of him & he had a great but very dry wit, which if you weren't paying attention you could be forgiven for missing the joke.

His slow measured way of talking was excellent & helped him immeasurable on Just a Minute. I always got the impression that he was a very intelligent man who sometimes found it hard to understand why someone could not grasp things that were obvious to him...probably unfounded.


R.I.P Clement.

[Captain Tancredi]

I always got the impression that he was a very intelligent man who sometimes found it hard to understand why someone could not grasp things that were obvious to him...probably unfounded.

I can see that- the radio tributes this morning were stubbornly trying to pigeonhole a real polymath- writer, broadcaster, quondam politician and yet still known for the Henry dog food adverts with that wonderfully lugubrious delivery. And of course father of the lovely Emma Freud, one of my major crushes in student days- went a bit wonky when I discovered she was about 15 years older than me, but just the thought of her still makes me go weak at the knees.

And if nothing else, he avoided the death that all Just a Minute panellists must dread- dropping dead during a recording and nobody realising until you've been successfully challenged for hesitation for the twentieth time.

[Lissa]

I liked Giles Brandreth's remark that Clement's one regret would've been that Nicholas Parsons outlived him. He was the last of the old school Just a Minute panellists. I saw him at a recording once and he was exactly as you would expect. No playing to the crowd, no expression on that remarkable face - just competitive wit and a winning points total. The one line I remember from that evening was "As the man said to the prostitute, it's been a business doing pleasure with you."