Much-loved satirist John Clarke was a Dagg with sharp wit

OBITUARY: Given his New Zealand birth and long-time Melbourne address, perhaps the greatest testament to satirist John Clarke’s comedic talent is that he was never run out of Sydney.

Writer and satirist John Clarke from A Current Affair, in 1990.

Given his New Zealand birth and long-time Melbourne address, perhaps the greatest testament to satirist John Clarke’s comedic talent is that he was never run out of Sydney, even when he lampooned our organisation of Australia’s biggest athletics carnival in decades.

Good-natured Sydneysiders even helped his top-rating The Games to a Logie Award, despite episode four in 1998 implying that the Sydney Olympics would host a 94m sprint race because cables and three rows of seating precluded a traditional 100m track.

Born on July 29, 1948, in Palmerston North, New Zealand, Clarke, 68, died while bushwalking in the Grampians with his wife on Sunday. Clarke’s father Ted was a retailer; his mother Neva a dramatist and short-story writer who wrote a newspaper column until she was 88.

The family shifted to New Zealand capital Wellington when Clarke was 12, where he recalled the clack of his mother’s typewriter “was the sound you heard when you came in from school’’.

His mother discussed authors she was reading with Clarke and his sister Anna, while Clarke says his father was a talented raconteur who lectured Clarke ‘‘continuously between 1948 and 2008”.

Clarke went shearing when he left school, then worked in a 24-hour service station while studying English at Victoria University, where he first joined stage performances. Moving into theatre in Wellington, he acted with Canterbury University alumni Sam Neill, a lifelong friend who described Clarke as “the funniest person I know”.

Comedian, writer and satirist, John Clarke in Melbourne in 1979.

As his parents marriage collapsed, in 1971 Clarke moved to London where he met future wife Helen, an Australian schoolteacher, while an actress-friend told him about a film that was looking for men.

“She put my name down,” Clarke says. “I went along and met Bruce Beresford and Barry Humphries. They said ‘Come along whenever you like and do stuff.’ They were very generous.”

After giving him a bit-part in The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, Clarke says Humphries and Beresford took him aside and advised, “Think about doing this for a living”.

Returning to New Zealand in 1973, Clarke married Helen at Wellington’s Old St Paul’s church. Helen’s teaching salary supported them as Clarke donned gumboots and a singlet to launch his philosopher-farmer Fred Dagg, who with “The Old Sheila” had seven sons, all called Trevor, as a satirical wrap for weekly NZBC farming show Country Calendar.

A teen fan of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Clarke says he learned to listen without laughing so he could memorise details of their routines. His other comedic favourites where Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers in The Goon Show.

Bryan Dawe and John Clarke from 'A Current Affair', in1990.

Although Dagg became “more famous than the New Zealand Prime Minister” and allowed Clarke to earn a living from show-business by 1975, Clarke’s father was not a Dagg fan.

“That didn’t bother me ’cause my priorities were to learn as much as I could and earn a living and I loved Fred Dagg,” Clarke recalled.

After a national tour in 1976, Dagg was forced off New Zealand television in 1977 for being too political with his satire. Clarke moved to Melbourne, eventually setting up an office near Fitzroy, and introduced Dagg on the ABC’s The Science Show and radio 2JJ.

He co-wrote 1982 offbeat romantic comedy movie Lonely Hearts with Paul Cox, and joined Max Gillies’ team of satirists as an expert in the fictional sport of “farnarkling” for The Gillies Report in 1984.

He co-wrote Anzacs TV miniseries in 1985 and provided the voice of Wal Footrot in the feature-length animated film Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tale (1986), when he wrote a regular newspaper column that began with fictional interviews.

“In 1987 I started doing them on radio,” Clarke said. “Bryan Dawe ran the department that employed me. I asked Bryan to read the questions ’cause Bryan’s got a supernatural understanding of speech rhythm. Then I was asked to do something on Channel 9 on a Current Affair.”

Comedian John Clarke (right) with Gina Riley and Bryan Dawe in scene from TV program The Games in 2000, which won a Logie Award.

Clarke and Dawe formed a popular and enduring partnership, producing such skits as

The Front Fell Off, about an oil spill off Western Australia in 1991: Dawe: “What sort of standards are these oil tankers built to?” Senator Collins (Clarke): “Oh, very rigorous maritime engineering standards.”

Dawe: “What sort of thing?” Senator Collins: “Well, the front’s not supposed to fall off, for a start.”

In a recent skit on Australia’s energy crisis, Dawe asked who owned the Victorian energy network: “So it’s owned by the Victorian Government?”

Clarke: “No Bryan, it’s owned by the Singapore Government and the Chinese Government, but to answer your question, yes, it is still government-owned.”

Clarke joined Neill in the black comedy movie Death In Brunswick (1990) and in 2004 they joined Jay Cassells to form Huntaway Films. Scottish comedian Billy Connolly starred in the 2001 movie based on Clarke’s screenplay, The Man Who Sued God.

Clarke, who is survived by his wife and two daughters, also wrote several books including The Fred Dagg Careers Advisory Bureau (1978), The Complete Book of Australian Verse (1989), The Howard Miracle (2003) and The 7:56 Report (2006).

Originally published as Much-loved satirist John Clarke was a Dagg with sharp wit