Clive James, Australian author and broadcaster, says he’s ‘getting near the end’

Clive James, the Britain-based Australian writer and broadcaster, has said he is "getting near the end," two years after being diagnosed with leukemia, kidney failure and lung disease.

James, 72, told BBC Radio 4's Meeting Myself Coming Back: "I'm getting near the end. I don't want to cast a gloom, an air of doom, over the program but I'm a man who is approaching his terminus."

In the show, to be broadcast on Saturday, James said he has "been really ill for two-and-a-half years" and "almost died four times in that period".

He continued: "I was diagnosed with leukemia then I had COPD – which is the fancy name for emphysema – and my immune system packed up. And that's just the start … I almost died four times and I swore to myself if I could just get through this winter, I'd feel better.

"And I've got through the winter and here it is, a lovely sunny day – and guess what? I don't feel better."

However, following the release of material from the Radio 4 program, James' spokeswoman issued a statement — cited by The Independent — denying that he was about to die, even saying that he was, "in fact in reasonable shape."

"On air today the interview which Clive James gave to the BBC sounded much less doom-laden than it does when transcribed," she said, adding that he was, "looking forward to years of working".

James, who moved to the UK in 1961, started his career in journalism, making his name as a literary critic and then TV columnist for The Observer newspaper.

He is perhaps best known in the UK for his hit show "Clive James On Television," and elsewhere for his string of best-selling books of, as the New York Times Review of Books put it, "criticism, autobiography, fiction, and poetry."  

According to the Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair writer James Wolcott and author Martin Amis are among those who've said they sought to emulate the prose of Sydney-born James, who now lives in Cambridge, England.

"Kingsley Amis, Martin’s father, would read pieces by his 20-something son aloud in an Australian accent, so closely did he think Martin was aping James," the WSJ wrote.

Sky News quoted James as saying he would probably never make it back to Sydney.

"I've been so sick I'm not allowed to fly. You couldn't get enough oxygen aboard a plane to get me to Sydney. I used to be in Australia for five or six times a year but now I can't go. The wistfulness is really building up and I'm facing the possibility I might never see Sydney again.'

According to The Australian Times, James — who left Australia for England in 1871, added: "I’ve still got an Australian passport – that’s ­patriotism, loyalty, and that’s also because I’m a masochist and I like being on the end of the longest queue for anything in Europe which is the security queue at Heathrow."

More from GlobalPost: Rich People have a dirty little secret…