Comic great John Clarke will be greatly missed, writes Andrew Rule

IT WAS once said of John Clarke that he had helped so many people everyone at his funeral would be amazed to see so many strangers there, writes Andrew Rule.

JOHN Cleese once said of John Clarke’s sometime friend, the late Peter Cook, that whereas it took the entire Monty Python team a week to write 30 minutes of comedy, it took Cook exactly 30 minutes. If his lips moved, it was gold.

J. Clarke had something of that offhand genius, too: his casual conversation was full of observations that were hilariously acute — and which seemed so obvious to the rest of us about two seconds after he’d said them.

After Cook arrived in Melbourne — mostly as a favour to Clarke — to help launch our first comedy festival 30 years ago, one day Clarke took him to play golf.

Not to one of the exclusive sand-belt courses. They went to the Burnley public course, where Cook was able to demonstrate his boast that “my short game is among the shortest in the world.”

MORE: Tributes flow for comic great

You can’t get much more unpretentious than that but Clarke never stopped trying. He stood apart in a neurotic and narcissistic business.

John Clarke has died while on a hike in the Grampians National Park. Picture: AAP

He was generous in deed as well as spirit — and nearly always in private. He loathed publicity so much that the one way to risk his anger was to push the spotlight his way. Unless it was in a good cause, of which he had many.

Yet Clarke was no recluse. He was fond of people — just as long as they weren’t one of the phonies and bullies he saw as his duty to skewer. He just didn’t trust the idea of celebrity, of others or himself.

Long ago, I was asked to profile Clarke for a newspaper because I’d met him enough times to become one of the dozens of acquaintances he called with an idea or an observation or a suggestion — or a request to help someone else.

I tried to warn the boss it wouldn’t go well. It didn’t. Not only did Clarke torpedo the idea but everybody who knew him closed ranks.

But one of Clarke’s circle, the prolific writer-producer-actor Rob Sitch, offered something I never forgot: Clarke had helped so many people that if he fell under a bus, everyone at his funeral would be amazed to see so many strangers there, too.

Clarke saw it as his duty to skewer phonies and bullies. Picture: AAP

Well, that metaphorical bus arrived on Sunday, and so Sitch’s gentle little homily will come true. That’s because, apart from being a sort of benevolent Godfather to Australian comedy, Clarke couldn’t stop helping every man and his dog.

The list will be long and there’s no need to attempt it here. But there was Ray Parkin, the remarkable World War II prison camp survivor Clarke befriended.

When Parkin produced a brilliant (and unavoidably expensive book) on the Captain Cook’s ship, Endeavour, Clarke hustled everyone he knew to take out a small bank loan and buy a copy.

Parkin, too, has left us but his family will not forget Clarke’s selflessness. Neither will the Middle Eastern refugee he befriended in a Persian rug shop. Clarke rang around and found someone to teach English to the man and his family.

Clarke, a voracious reader, had an eye for what interested others. If he saw something in The New Yorker he thought a friend needed to know, he’d tear out the pages and mail it.

Bryan Dawe and John Clarke in 1990.

If he found a book that hit the spot he would buy three or four copies — one for himself, the others for people he thought would appreciate it.

The Red Smith collection next to me arrived that way.

It is ironic Clarke died during the comedy festival because without him, it might not have taken the baby steps that has led to it becoming an institution.

Who knows how many careers in comedy, television and radio owe their success to Clarke’s wise advice?

He was a gentle man. Yet his humour was fuelled by a sort of simmering anger at injustice in all its forms. Clarke could have played a dour Presbyterian minister or bank manager, but those eyes blazed with mischief and intent. And with empathy.

When my father died too young in 1998, Clarke sent just the right piece of writing to help a broken heart. Now it’s his family who are broken-hearted. Nothing will mend that. But if they want his monument, it’s that so many people who don’t know each other choked back tears when they heard the news.

[e-mail]