Leanne Edelsten pictured talking with Clive James on A Current Affair. Picture: Channel 9 Source: The Daily Telegraph 
Leanne Edelsten said she had an eight-year affair with Clive James. She was married to Geoff Edelsten (centre) in the 1980s. Source: Supplied Clive James has no comment on Edelsten sex claims Media personality says: "I'm quite ill, I have nothing to say" Edelsten said pair had nicknames - Mr Wolf and Ms Hood CLIVE James has refused to confirm or deny allegations he engaged in a tawdry affair with "Miss Hood" mistress Leanne Edelsten.
Speaking from his London flat today, James, who has been battling leukemia since 2010, said: "I'm quite ill, I have nothing to say except no comment."
Their alleged relationship began in 2004 - two years before he moved out of his marital home in the UK - yet until Edelsten went public with news of her long-running affair James on Australian TV last night, few knew of it.
In what she calls a pre-emptive strike, which she says was motivated by a fear that the British media were soon to leak news of the redundant affair, Edelsten sang like a bird about her eight-year fling with writer James - and the trail of emails and lingerie snaps which, when discovered by his wife of almost 40 years Prudence Shaw, Edelsten believes ended James' marriage.
The 48-year-old St Vincent's Hospital nurse and ex-wife of Geoffrey Edelsten was married to Edelsten's former lawyer Chris Curtis when she met James in in 2004.
"We had an instant attraction," Edelsten said. "I don't know whether it's got to do with experience, intelligence ... (but) he'd leave men half his age for dead."
After a "ravishing" in his room at the Four Seasons Hotel, the lovers chose nicknames - Mr Wolf and Ms Hood.
Footage showing a frail-looking James emerging from what ACA called a "dingy" basement flat in Cambridge, England - his home since his wife discovered Edelsten's emails - revealed the once-celebrated broadcaster, now 73, to be an unco-operative subject. He ended the affair with an email, though exactly when is unclear.
While Edelsten calls James a "champion" in the bedroom, other rumoured lovers have been less generous.
In 2009 British opera singer Anne Howells, 68, recounted a long affair with a man she called Clyde that the UK press said was James.
She recalled being seduced with this appalling line: "I've been eating shortbread, so you can start by sucking the crumbs from between my teeth."
