Clive James loves Paris, you can tell as he reminisces about his first visit when he was a young penniless man in the 1960s.
Clive James loves art and literature. Paris would be his city. He used to sit in the cafe watching the pretty girls walk past.
Now he has a BBC camera crew, at least he now can get the pretty women to stop and have a chat with him. One of them is actress Béatrice Dalle. She tells Clive that she has now outgrown Paris and would like to move to America. However being busted for drugs has made that difficult. Dalle started out as a model, she tells Clive that her big teeth and big forehead has brought her luck. I think the lips help a lot.
Dalle once seduced Rupert Everett. When a journalist told her how did she managed to do this as Everett is openly gay. She replied that he never met a woman like Beatrice Dalle before.
I sense when Dalle gets older she would behave a lot like writer Françoise Sagan. She became famous at a young age, she was also addicted to drugs and liked to drive fast. Sagan takes Clive out for a spin on the roads of Paris, she even manages to collide with someone. If Clive had hair, there would be lot less of it after being a passenger in a car with Sagan.
Clive is less sure of the new buildings erected under the Mitterrand presidency. The tall buildings and the Grand Arch in La Defence area. The pyramid in the Louvre, Clive thinks it belongs in Egypt. The young people like it though.
As for the Pompidou Centre, Clive might have a point although you cannot blame Mitterand for that, it was built in the 1970s and the architect was British.
In a way the Paris of 1989 is not much different to the Paris of today. There is a disparity between rich and poor, the have nots are mainly immigrants. Pigalle is still sleazy, Moulin Rouge is a tourist trap. I always wondered why so many tourists line up and pay so much to see a few topless women dance.
However I share with Clive that as a city of culture, it is one of a kind.
