Moving tribute to the legend that was Clem
BRENDAN GALLAGHER picks his must-read books of the year and remembers the great Clem Thomas
“Clem spoke his mind fiercely and saw the bigger picture long before the IRB”
Clem by Chris Thomas (Iponymous, £19.99)
ONE of the best sports books never written must surely be Clem Thomas’ autobiography – alas he left us too soon – but chapeau to his eldest son Chris for producing this funny, nostalgic, quirky and entertaining personal tribute. Be warned, it’s not all totally about rugby. How could it be? Clem was into everything – politics, journalism, the arts, food, wine, music – and knew everybody including the likes of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
This is the man, the tough guy minder on the 1955 Lions tour, who once decked Lee Marvin in a Fijian beach bar before drinking all night with the Hollywood star who he hadn’t recognised despite being a big fan. In many ways Clem was a Hemingwayesque figure, who lived the life that many dream of and made no apologies along the way.
His playing career was distinguished and rumbustious and I loved his trenchant writing in the Observer and Guardian which I soon realised also contained a good deal of inside track if you learned to read between the lines. Much more important from a personal perspective, though, was the encouragement he gave to some of us younger scribes back in the day.
Clem was invariably coming from or going to a rendezvous with the game’s glitterati, but he always found time to pull over for a yarn and a bit of conspiratorial gossip before an international with us wannabees. Lodged in a corner of the cosy writers’ room and bar at the old Arms Park, he would call over Gerald or Gareth or whoever and in the most relaxed and natural circumstances you would suddenly find yourself mixing with the legends and getting to know them just a little. What a privilege and that was largely down to Clem.
More often than not he would still be there with you, taking alternate glugs of hot soup and red wine, until a few minutes before kick-off which resulted in a last-minute dash into the precipitous and cramped tribune just before the anthems. Pens, glasses, binoculars and notepads would go flying but were somehow always retrieved just in time.
During the match you needed to have your wits about you because if Clem’s eyes failed him when a try had been scored he would want – demand – the exact sequence and remember there were no TV monitors and replays in the box those days. The pressure was on, if he and the
Observer got some snooty letter the following week pointing out that it was Bleddyn Bowen who made the try-scoring pass not Mark Ring he would not be amused.
He saved my bacon at the 1995 World Cup final which I watched alongside him and Paul Ackford. I was half dead with the lurgi and the unfortunate Clem found himself next to a sweating snivelling, sneezing wreck of a human being.
Miraculously he produced a big box of tissues but I got through that before the game even kicked off. Then, with the air of a knowing country GP, he produced a tablet of impressive dimensions that he insisted I wash down with some beer the security guards in Mandela’s box above had handed down. God knows what it was – presumably something he kept for emergencies, I never asked – but it did the trick, or at least anaesthetised me until the following day.
Whenever he was in Paris for a game Clem would insist the journalistic mob – another distinctly Hemingwayesque trait – dine at some far flung bistro in the suburbs on the Friday night – it might have been La Gaulloise which Chris mentions in the book.
A fleet of taxis would travel in convoy and although I’m not sure said bistro was any better than the one 50 yards around the corner from our hotel, Clem was welcomed like a long lost son and the evenings were always long, songful and rather hectic. In fact one eminent award-winning feature writer found the going so tough he headed straight for Charles de Gaulle Airport the following morning and was in his sickbed at home by kick off. He didn’t move for a week.
Clem was always a journo at heart, regardless off his prowess at rugby, and certainly Chris makes it clear in the book how the job was the cornerstone of his career from the day he retired as a player in 1959 to the day he died from a heart attack in September 1996.
The chapter on those journalistic
days offers an evocative look at what the job used to involve and how Clem went about it. He spoke his mind fearlessly – he was for example far from impressed with the management of the 1977 Lions – and was a massive supporter of rugby in the Pacific Islands and Romania. He saw the bigger picture long before the IRB and the fact that he knew most of the movers and shakers personally never stopped him from heavily criticising them.
This is a highly recommended, rollicking read and yes it does occasionally go off on some rather odd and seemingly irrelevant tangents... which in itself is endearingly reminiscent of a rugby day or night with Clem himself. Rating