Clive James has died

Australian broadcaster Clive James has died, aged 80.

https://news.sky.com/story/clive-james-poet-critic-and-broadcaster-dies-aged-80-11871788

Suprised Gary Rhodes' death hasn't been mentioned on TV Forum either, he was all over TV in the 90s. Was suprised to see BBC News show a clip of him on Hot Chefs, I remember that show from when I was off school ill, it was on either before or after the CBBC birthdays slot, can't remember which.

To be fair, Clive James is generally regarded as one of our finest TV critics, and of course hosted a show featuring clips from TV. Gary Rhodes did change the style of food programmes in the '90s, and inspired lots of today's TV chefs.

And bad news comes in threes, Jonathan Miller who influenced a lot of TV in the 60s and 70s has also gone

https://news.sky.com/story/sir-jonathan-miller-british-theatre-director-and-author-dies-aged-85-11871728

Will always remember this

Apparently Clive James appeared on Takeshi's Castle - Keshi Heads lists is as the original Episode 42 from 10th Apr 1987 which appeared on Challenge as part of their "second" series. The honeycomb maze finished him off apparently

I was going to embed a video from YouTube here but what's labelled on there as the correct episode doesn't match the Keshi Heads database events wise so...

Yes, he did appear, and indeed was also shown on Challenge!

I seem to remember Challenge's "first" series was actually the last series in Japan, and their second series was the first. Was strange when Challenge's "first" series had the end game with laser guns and dodgy effects, then the "second" series was water guns and paper rings.

Never understood why Challenge retrofitted a different title sequence onto repeats of the show after a few years either, especially as the "new" version was awful, just one shot of the same character, and didn't match the audio.

The Takeshi episode was featured on a travel documentary on Japan he did at the time, regularly repeated on Sky Travel in the early 2000s during the Challenge run of the main show. He was allowed to take part in most of the episode despite losing a few games because he was so entertaining on screen. Never saw him on the edited Challenge repeats although that perhaps would have confused Craig Charles a bit.

Clive James appeared on Neighbours too of course.

Clive James was interviewed for Front Row Late last year, in what I expect was probably his final TV appearance (or at least his last notable TV interview), and I expect it will get repeated as a tribute

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bw5d0z

New Year's Eve telly has never come close to his end-of-year reviews in the 80s and 90s.

Clive James was mentioned in the opening of the BBC 6 o'clock News. No mentions of Gary Rhodes or Jonathan Miller though.