Bafta tribute to terminally ill Clive James

The career of broadcaster and TV critic Clive James will be celebrated at tonight’s Bafta Awards.

The audience at the event in London’s Covent Garden will see a short-film of his career which includes travel documentaries, landmark series looking at some of the stranger aspects of foreign TV and his stint as the television critic of The Observer.

Clive James

(Andy Butterton/PA)

Comic Charlie Brooker will lead the tributes and the film will also include footage of James, who is seriously ill, receiving his Bafta Special Award earlier this year.

Sydney-born James is also a critically-acclaimed poet and his series of memoirs tracking his travels from Australia to Fleet Street fame were best-sellers.

He was diagnosed with terminal cancer five years ago but has continued to work, joking in a recent interview that “the end is nigh, but not that nigh”.

Clive James

(Andy Butterton/PA)

Tonight’s event, formally known as the House of Fraser British Academy Television Awards, will also see producer and writer Jeff Pope given the special award and Channel 4 News journalist Jon Snow given the Fellowship, the highest accolade the Academy can bestow.

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