Jeremy Clarke remembered: by Boris Johnson, Sophie Winkleman, Eric Idle and more

Boris Johnson   

When Jeffrey Bernard died in 1997, it seemed possible that we would never again have a regular Low Life columnist in The Spectator – or no one half as good. We needed someone who could match Taki for appalling frankness, for saying the unsayable; but not about the denizens of Gstaad or New York nightclubs.

Low Life meant the opposite milieu. We needed our man with the half-eaten packet of prawn cocktail flavour crisps and the monster hangover, our man in the pub lock-in, the ferret show, the debtors’ court, the A&E at 3 a.m. with the drunk guy going crackers. It had to be someone who knew how to argue with social workers.

We needed a new literary Hogarth. After a few years of struggle and several false starts we found him; or someone even better, someone with that rare ability to be both totally readable and transparently honest.