Sir Clement Freud |
Roll up, roll up for the many lives of Sir Clement
From participating in the Nuremberg Trials to starring in a hit radio show Sir Clement Freud reminisces with Tom Foot
I FIRST met Sir Clement Freud – the celebrated raconteur now in his 82nd year – outside Oxford United’s new Kassam stadium on a dreary afternoon in November 2001.
We had both watched a bore-draw with Plymouth Argyle and I was surprised to hear he had supported the west country club since a boy.
Had he enjoyed the game? “Better than being dead,” he said in low tones. An Evening with Clement Freud takes place at Hampstead Theatre next month in the space dedicated to Freud’s great friend and colleague the playwright Michael Frayn.
I was expecting him to be in an irreverent mood and he did not disappoint.
Freud, a devotee of the Hampstead Theatre since it opened in 1964, has led an extraordinary life. Knighted in 1987, he has been a cook, soldier, nightclub owner, journalist, broadcaster and liaison officer in the Nuremberg Trials.
A veteran panellist on the quick-witted radio show Just a Minute, he was elected rector of the University of St Andrews in 2003 and represented Ely in Cambridgeshire in the Commons between 1973 and 1987.
His formidable family tree includes Sigmund Freud, his brother the artist Lucian Freud, his daughter the broadcaster Emma Freud – who married Richard Curtis, scriptwriter of Blackadder and Four Weddings and a Funeral – and his son Matthew Freud the co-owner of the Press Gazette who is married to Rupert Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth.
Sir Clement doesn’t appear to be in any way self indulgent but he holds no qualms about his public walk down memory lane.
“I usually talk for an hour and a half about myself so I shouldn’t think it will be a problem,” he says.
“I have been going to Hampstead Theatre since it opened – I’m a huge fan of the place. It’s wonderful what they’ve done with it.
“I had one of my strangest experiences there when a woman came on stage and said the theatre had been burgled the night before. She wanted us to clap the people working on the box office.
“They have some very important people like Michael Frayn and Lady Lucy French. Michael Frayn is a great friend of mine.
“We worked together on The Observer – he had a serious political column, I did the sport. Lady French’s grandfather fought in World War I. I think he was Field Marshall French.”
He adds: “People with titles always want to know what other people with titles think about their titles – it’s all rather absurd.”
In 1946, Sir Clement was sent to the Nuremberg Trials as a liaison officer.
He recalls: “We were split into four nations and we all had our own questions and agendas. We created retrospective laws and charged people for things that have always been done.
“What usually happens in wars is that one side shoots everyone on the other side, rapes their women and then the whole thing starts again.
“But what we did in Nuremberg was different – this time it didn’t start again.”
In 1952, he ran a comedy club above the Royal Court Theatre, now the Jerwood Theatre. He looks back on these days as the best of his life – the memories of aspiring comedians, glamour and late night parties.
He claims to have launched the careers of Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Rolf Harris, Jonathan Miller and David Frost.
He says: “Those were exciting times. We had all the big names in there before they became big names.
“A lot of the acts came to nothing, nothing at all.
“David Frost had three aborted runs.
“David used to pretend to be Harold Macmillan and ask the audience to ask him questions. Someone would ask: ‘Do you still think we never had it so good?’
He’d reply: ‘Lady Dorothy hardly had it at all?’”
The club at the Royal Court was, of course, the scene of many late night parties.
He says: “One of my most memorable days was when Roger Bannister set off from the club to run the four-minute mile.
“That was a great, great day.
“He came back with me afterwards to the club and we had a party.
“He was accompanied by Shirley Williams (the future Lib Dem leader in the House of Lords) – that’s quite a scoop, I’ve never told anyone that.”
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