(more) CLIVE JAMES

James has just published the latest iteration of his autobiography, NORTH OF SOHO. It promises much.

For most of their 38-year marriage, James has lived apart from Prudence Shaw, an academic who lives in Cambridge, where she did most of the parenting of their two daughters. The self-described "absentee father" has spent his weekends there and weekdays in London. Without giving any details, he makes it clear in the fourth volume of his highly personal memoirs, North Face of Soho, that he struggled with the concept of monogamy. "Marriage to a beauty had done nothing to blind me to the beauty of all the women I had not married: far from it. If my libido could have been given a face, it would have been the face of Robbie Williams singing a one-night date at a training camp for cheerleaders.

His apartment in a converted warehouse 200m from the Thames is full of books, many written in the German, French, Spanish and Italian he has taught himself. Upstairs is a small dance floor reserved for his hobby, tango.