TV legend and wit Clive James has been writing about Adele, amongst other matters, while he continues to battle leukaemia.
Writing in his Reports of My Death column in the Guardian newspaper, the 76-year old Aussie noted how he was struck by the opening bars of Adele’s recent hit song, Hello but felt quickly let down as 'the opening phrase never really arrives.'
“The whole number is one of those big ballads in which the singer whispers her way through a verse section that hasn’t got a melody and then goes soaring and bellowing into a chorus section that hasn’t got a melody either, " he declared before ending the paragraph with a glittering aperçu: "The virtuosity leaves you yawning with admiration.”
Whitney Houston, he observed “ drove herself bonkers yelling stuff like that.” Celine Dion at full volume put up such a barrage that she might be part of Canada’s anti-missile defence system, he continued. “But Adele still has time for better things, “ he concluded hopefully. “The young almost always have time, as long as they don’t go surfing at night.
James has been prescribed a new chemotherapy drug, which he decided for the purposes of journalism to call ‘Pill X.’ “Its real name sounds like the result of falling accidentally on the keyboard of an ancient Greek typewriter, “ he explains. As a result of the new drug, he has been ‘stuck with the embarrassment of still being alive.’ The one-time TV host/TV critic has also been battling emphysema, and various carcinomas, aside from leukaemia.
