12 JUNE 1947, Page 5

Even his enemies—and I suppose a small minority of the

people whom at one time or another he annoyed might care to count them- selves such—must have felt a sense of loss when Mr. James Agate died last week. He was in his way an institution, a minor but not an inconspicuous landmark of the London scene. Every other revue had a gag about him in it, and even if they were not very good gags they evoked the pleased, rather aimless, laughter with which the English greet the mention by a comedian of an easily recognisable personality. His style, with its frequent digressions, its gallicisms and its usually disarming egotism, was a standing—or perhaps a sitting—target for the parodist. He lived and wrote with gusto, and if he was not above malice I am pretty sure that he helped far more people than he hurt. As a dramatic critic he was un-Olympian but on the whole good, as a film critic he was at least a vigorous contro- versialist, and as a literary critic he was Forever Agate. * *