"If you don't get me a cup of tea now, you'll have a dead chancellor on your hands." The first words I heard spoken by Arthur C. Clarke, in Colombo in 1992, revealed two aspects of his personality which were to become clear as I got to know him better over the next two years. The first was that, as one of the world's foremost science fiction writers and Sri Lanka's most celebrated foreigner, he was used to getting his own way.
The second was that, despite being physically frail, the chancellor of the University of Moratuwa, where I was lecturing, could still be quick-witted at his own expense. In the midday heat he really could have expired in front of our eyes. Two directors of a British company had come all the way to Sri Lanka to show him their satellite imaging product, but without a cup of tea he would endorse nothing.
Following a recent article in Britain's Sunday Mirror, Clarke (80) is now defending himself from accusations of paedophiliac activities with young boys. Many will feel his choice of residence supports these charges. Sri Lanka, like other southern and south-eastern Asian countries, has a visible child sex industry, catering mainly for Western tourists. But to be fair to Clarke, there are many reasons why someone like Clarke would choose to live there.
Tropical climate
Suffering from post-polio syndrome, Clarke looks much older than most men in their mid-70s. He walked with a stick in one hand and a valet supporting the other, sat rather than stood at university ceremonies, and played table-tennis at the Otters Aquatic Club with one hand rooted to the table. His status in Sri Lanka is such that the law was changed to allow him to stay. Preferring its tropical climate, he refuses invitations to celebrate his December birthday in his home town in Somerset, England, saying he is willing to travel there only in summer.
Colombo's balmy climate is only one of many respectable reasons for settling there. Being only slightly north of the equator, it offers astronomers like Clarke a complete view of the sky over a six-month period. On a clear night with an unobstructed view, one can see the North Star near one horizon and the Southern Cross near the other.
On top of this Sri Lanka offers some of the best reef diving in the world. Clarke, a director of Colombo-based Underwater Safaris, has dived the reefs off the Great Basses lighthouse in the south-east. He believes that outer space and the ocean depths are the only remaining unexplored regions.
Sri Lanka also offers an opulent lifestyle to wealthy expatriates. Clarke lives in a large house in Colombo 7, the local equivalent of Dublin 4, and like many there he has staff to look after him.
Sex tourists
Sadly, Sri Lanka is has done little to curb the child sex industry. From Negombo, about 30 kilometres north of Colombo, to Tangalle in the extreme south, many of the beautiful beaches are frequented by paedophile sex tourists. Mostly European, middle-aged and portly, they can be seen frolicking in the sea with gangs of local "beach boys" who look sometimes as young as 11 or 12 years old. By night the same boys are feted in cheap restaurants, before being taken back to hotel rooms for paid sex.
This business has become so widespread that some local parents in the poor seaside shanties will approach foreigners offering their children for money. One parent, interviewed on a local television documentary, was content to let his young son perform in a Swedish porn film since, being male, "he can't get pregnant".
One local organisation called Protecting Environment and Children Everywhere (PEACE) is combating the child sex industry and foreign aid workers have tried to get children to testify against the paedophiles back in their own countries. However, the truth is that most paedophiles do not get caught, despite their open behaviour, and those that do are usually only deported. Tourism revenue, it seems, is more important than children.
This environment can and does attract paedophile residents to countries such as SriLanka. If there is found to be any truth in the accusations against Clarke, it will be a very low end to the high regard in which Sri Lankans hold their most famous foreign guest. But Clarke has strongly denied the Sunday Mirror allegations, saying the charges are "nonsense" and "revolting", and that he has been sexually inactive for 20 years. He is now reportedly frailer than ever, mostly confined to a wheelchair.
Planned knighthood
He claims the article was "a political hatchet job - not aimed at me - but designed to embarrass Prince Charles" (whose planned investiture of Clarke with a knighthood was called off at Clarke's request because of the controversy). Certainly the description of the open-air, middle-class Otters swimming club as a "notorious pick-up haunt for perverts" sounds like poorly researched sensationalism. Children there are supervised by their parents and there are no foreign tourists.
The general secretary of the club, Sam Lovell, told Sri Lanka's Sunday Times: "Dr Clarke is a quiet person who has held club membership for the past 40 years . . . If he behaved in an unbecoming manner, especially taking into account the young membership here, we would have noticed, and 40 years is long enough for our staff to discover unusual sexual preferences and the like."
The only time I saw Clarke with local children was when he set up a telescope in the same swimming club one evening to show them the stunning view of the planet Venus as the sun was setting. The queue of smiling young faces was testimony to the admiration local children had for him. Unless proven otherwise, we should assume that the opportunity to view Venus on warm sunny evenings was what drew him to Sri Lanka, rather than those smiling children.