August 20, 2005: “Once you’ve been doing it for a while, it’s not easy to stop being a low life. There’s nothing people enjoy more than watching someone going to hell on a poker, and they rather resent it if that person suddenly decides he wants to get off. No one objects in principle to an idle, self-centered, addicted life, as long as it ends prematurely in lonely and squalid circumstances and everyone can read about it in the papers. Renege on the deal, like a footballer in mid-contract, and people feel cheated.” Jeremy, with his fellow columnist, Taki, in 2015 Drugs

Eight years ago the British journalist Jeremy Clarke learned that he had metastatic prostate cancer.April 19, 2014: “The young amateur boxers dash over to their father — their favorite punchbag — climb up on to his chair, and administer a damn good leathering. Their father cowers weakly in his chair as the blows rain down. ‘Good day at the office?’ I ask him. He looks out at me between the blows and I get another one of those desperate looks.”

My hangover was what the great Kingsley Amis describes in his Everyday Drinkingguide as a ‘metaphysical’ hangover Pamplona

Dr Moira Woods

By the time Jeremy moved to France to be with his true love, the beautiful artist Catriona, he was already seriously ill. They lived in Cotignac, quite literally in a cave, in a cliff overlooking this picturesque village. We had a house about an hour away, and would meet for lunch when we could. He bore his illness with fortitude, his laughter and his interest in everyone unabated. Gallons of rosé were consumed over countless happy hours. At one point he began to write a comic novel but found it very hard going and gave up early on. He had always found writing his column extremely draining as he was a literary perfectionist. He was terrified of letting his readers down although clearly he never did. March 29, 2008: “Do you smoke? Only when I’m drunk, I said. You get drunk? Of course I get drunk, I said — I’m a journalist. It’s expected of us. I see, she said, again finding the explanation perfectly satisfactory. As long as you don’t smoke inside the cottage, she said.” Hotels Philip, there’s a man here writing about going to the Cheltenham Festival and messing his pents.’ ‘Very easily done at Cheltenham, my dear. I’ve often wondered why nobody has written about it before.’ Or, ‘Philip here’s that man again, the one who messed his pents at Cheltenham, assisting the ferret-judging at a country show. It’s frightfully interesting. The judge takes so long to judge each class, they drive a car into the tent so that he can judge them in the headlights.’ ‘Does he mess his pents again?’ ‘He doesn’t say.’” TikTok Fans of the column – he's described as a cult columnist so there must be some such – will no doubt welcome the chance to reacquaint themselves with past episodes. Newcomers like me may have no idea what to expect.

After his love for Catriona and his family came West Ham United. In his younger days he was an active supporter, relishing the intense fanaticism of a football hooligan. He occasionally referred to the odd punch-up in his column with an almost wistful sense of nostalgia. He remained a loyal supporter to the end, seeking out bars in and around Cotignac to watch the games. Even Jeremy’s great optimistic spirit was becoming severely tested by his aggressive cancer. The French health service was remarkable in its support for him, greatly assisted by Catriona who had been a nurse herself. He was in severe pain and became increasingly restricted in his daily habits. Yet every week he produced a searing, often moving, column. Lesser mortals would have thrown the towel in a long time before Jeremy. His readers followed his demise with a mixture of admiration for his courage and sadness at the impending conclusion. He was greatly touched by the messages of support sent by many. He was especially proud of a librarian from Oxford who revelled in the literary references in his articles.October 2014:‘But what do I know about art? I don’t even know what I like. And I was feeling so good, so alive, and so in love with London, that I mentally apologised to myself, God and the universe for slipping into judgmental nitwit mode again, and I headed on up the road towards the drumming and the tumults in Trafalgar Square.’ My year of drugs July 3, 2021: “I sat between Phillipe and the detached French woman. She was quite old. She hadn’t yet got over the death of her lover, she told me, even though she’d passed away a decade before. After telling me this she rested her head against my chest as though exhausted by grief. Offered wine, she sprang to life and filled her glass dangerously close to the brim with red. I told him I thought I was more or less finished. Gilles wasn’t having any of that kind of defeatist talk. At rest, his slanting French eyebrows oppose one another like one acute and one grave accent. As he manoeuvred our way out of the enormous hospital they became tautly horizontal as he made an impassioned speech about never giving up, about fighting on to the beaches, about not thinking of myself in this fight, but of those who love me. The heartfelt outpouring lasted several minutes. I didn’t know where to look. When we approached the village where we both live, I commented on the variety of tree blossom and the advancing season. The eyebrows stood smartly to attention. He too was a man who noticed such things.

There will be a memorial service for him, the details of which will be arranged in due course. The Spectator will be paying tribute to him in next week’s magazine. For now, we have his columns to treasure: a legacy that has enriched, and will continue to enrich, the lives of everyone who comes across them. His column was not a study in ‘low life’ drink and debauchery, although there was certainly plenty of that. The theme that I drew from them, especially in his references to Catriona, was about the role and power of love: its ability to magnify and transform the smallest, most seemingly insignificant parts of life. January 8, 2011: “Bed was fine. No complaints there. Well, there was one thing, actually. My kissing technique was rubbish. ‘No tongues!’ she’d exclaim crossly, even when she was tied up.” Cancer December 7, 2013: “I couldn’t believe it: 3 a.m in the bohemian quarter of the greatest city on earth and you can’t get a reasonably priced drink anywhere? What was I supposed to do next? Go home? Boris! Are you listening! It’s an absolute disgrace!” Grandsons July 2021: ‘I sat between Philippe and the detached French woman. She was quite old. She hadn’t yet got over the death of her lover, she told me, even though she’d passed away a decade before. After telling me this she rested her head against my chest as though exhausted by grief. Offered wine, she sprang to life and filled her glass dangerously close to the brim with red.If he never quite achieved that ambition, he was certainly an intellectual manqué, whose secret vice during his roughhouse youth was an unquenchable thirst for reading.