POET Annie Freud has been remembering her late uncle, the MP and broadcaster Sir Clement Freud after his death aged 84.

Annie, who lives near Cattistock, is the daughter of the painter Lucian Freud and has happy memories of time spent in the Freuds’ family home in the pretty Suffolk village of Walberswick.

Lucian is the elder brother and Annie says that the two men had ‘a life-long conflict’. However, this did nothing to prevent the friendship between her and Clement’s daughter Nicky.

She said: “I used to call Uncle Clement ‘Cle’, pronounced clay, and was close to his wife Jill. One year when I was a child, we had an incredibly hard winter and I went to stay with my grandmother in Walberswick, where Cle also had a house.

“I spent a lot of time there because I was very close to my cousin Nicky and we did naughty things together, as girls do.

“That particular winter, in all the snow, we built an igloo on Cle’s immaculate lawn behind the house and I think we made a big, raw patch on the grass.

“It was so cold and there was so much snow that I expect the igloo was there until February – although I had long left the house by then.”

In a varied career since his famous family moved to the UK in the 1930s, Berlin-born Sir Clement worked as an apprentice cook at the Dorchester Hotel in London before joining the Royal Ulster Rifles during the Second World War.

He first became a household name in the 1960s and 70s in Minced Morsels dog food adverts. His role on the small screen with Henry the dog launched him on a long career as a television and radio personality, helping him become a stalwart on the BBC’s Just A Minute for more than 30 years.

Sir Clement was also a celebrated food, sport and comment journalist, who worked for a string of titles including the Observer, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express.

Last year he spoke about his death, claiming his relatives would want to inherit his wine.

Among those who have mourned him is the comedian and writer Stephen Fry, who appeared with him on Just A Minute and the television quiz Have I Got News for You.

He said: “I got to know him because I was lucky enough to do a couple of Just A Minutes and I became immensely fond of him. I was at first very afraid of him – a lot of people were.

“There were stories that he was immensely grouchy, he was rude sometimes to people who asked for autographs. I never experienced that side of him at all.”