The British bon vivant who was a major crank

Clement Freud

1924–2009

“Good men,” Sir Clement Freud wrote, “are gruff and grumpy, cranky, crabbed, and cross. I am also acerbic, waspish, sour, belligerent, and very occasionally shrewish.” Although Freud had a multifaceted career, he was known mainly as one of Britain’s biggest curmudgeons. His misanthropy extended to his brother Lucian, the painter. When Clement was winning a boyhood foot race, Lucian called out, “Stop, thief!” thus causing passers-by to grab him. Clement stopped speaking to him after that. “I’m not great at forgiving,” he explained.

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A grandson of Sigmund Freud, Clement escaped with his family from Austria to England before World War II, said the Associated Press. He acquired a taste for good living as an apprentice cook at London’s Dorchester Hotel, where he “welcomed the new year of 1942 with 10 portions of Beluga caviar and a bottle of Dom Pérignon pilfered from his employer.” After the war, Freud entered the catering business, but also pursued journalism, becoming a sports writer and a sharp-tongued restaurant critic. Once, after waiting 25 minutes for turtle soup, he told the waitress, “If you are making fresh turtle soup it is going to take two days and we do not have the time. If it is canned turtle soup, I do not wish to eat here if it takes you 25 minutes to open a can.”

“By 1967 Freud was believed to be the highest-paid journalist in the country,” said the London Times. He became even wealthier with his many broadcast appearances, especially a commercial for Minced Morsels dog food that “had his expression competing for dolefulness with that of a basset hound.” In 1973 Freud was elected to Parliament (he bet 1,000 pounds on himself at 33-to-1) and struggled to be taken seriously; whenever he rose to speak, his colleagues cried, “Woof woof!” Freud invited some of that mockery; “he made a speech in the Commons calling for better wine to be served in Parliament, and when the Northern Ireland secretary Jim Prior ruled out the hanging of terrorists, Freud suggested that they might be lynched instead.”

He is survived by his wife, Jill Raymond. “I call her my first wife,” he said, “to keep her on her toes.”