Anthony Clare

Nov 1 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

HE HAD one of those smiling, quizzical and alert faces, which seemed to have been squeezed from the mosses of his native Ireland.

And when it combined with the sympathetic tones of his voice, it persuaded people to reveal their dark secrets, as if to a priest freed from the confessional box.

Anyway, that was the idea. It worked often enough to make Professor Anthony Clare’s In The Psychiatrist’s Chair radio programme compulsive listening to those who liked gossip delivered in an intellectual gown.

In fact, his guests often failed to reveal quite as much as had been hoped.

Ken Dodd, in many ways a psychiatrist without letters after his name, dealt with questions about money and why he hadn’t had children with great skill.

“Ken Dodd, you wear a comic mask,” said Clare. “Does it worry you that today you are going to remove that mask, strip yourself bare, reveal your innermost thoughts?”

“Not at all, in fact the idea leaves me feeling tattifilar- ious and totally full of plump- tiousness,” replied the com- edian. Clare said he wanted to ask him about money.

“Why, have you got some?” said Doddy, seamlessly.

But other guests, including Bob Monkhouse, Jimmy Savile, Anthony Hopkins, PD James and Esther Rantzen, exposed more of their true nature than they would have wanted to.

Clare, the son of a genial solicitor with a love of model trains, was brought up in Dublin. His mother was of a nervous disposition. Clare later discovered that the presents his father had bought his mother had remained unused in drawers.

This, he would claim, had stirred his interest in the human mind. From a Jesuit school, run with the custom- ary zeal for corporal punish- ment, Clare studied medicine at University College, Dublin, where his skill as a debater led to occasional radio and TV appearances.

He specialised at the Institute of Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, London. He was appointed professor of psychological medicine and head of department at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College in 1983.

Five years later, he was back in Dublin as clinical professor of psychiatry at Trinity College. By then, he had established himself as a performer on Radio 4’s Stop the Week and then on In The Psychiatrists’ Chair (1982-2001).

Married with seven children, Clare collapsed during a weekend in Paris.

Anthony Clare, psychiatrist; born December 25, 1942, died October 29, 2007.