John Clarke
John Clarke was a Kiwi comedy legend. Beloved on both sides of the Tasman, he took the character of farmer Fred Dagg to stardom before relocating to Australia, and starting over as a political satirist.
When Clarke passed away on 9 April 2017, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull argued that Clarke's weekly TV sketches with Bryan Dawe were "required viewing", and kept "politicians on their toes". Kiwi comedian Jesse Griffin said that Clarke's "dry Kiwi understated humour" had influenced Flight of the Conchords, Taika Waititi, and The Front Lawn. "That celebration of the mundane, that dry observation ... he was the first to really bring that out in a performative way."
Growing up in Palmerston North, Clarke was "delighted by laughter and by funny people". Later, at Scots College in Wellington, indolence was mistaken for rebellion; he was often caned. Clarke's parents were keen on the arts, and had a gift for language. His mother Neva acted in local theatre, and wrote. John occasionally got dragged on-stage when an actor was unavailable.
At Victoria University he dabbled in various courses, and did holiday jobs in a shearing gang. He was helping out backstage on a university revue when Roger Hall told him "you should be out there". The live comedy and music shows attracted big audiences; Clarke realised that New Zealand was becoming "more interested in the sound of its own voice". Kiwis could be funny, even when they weren't making a joke. But in the early 1970s, many of the locals who appeared on TV still used an English accent, and local screen comedy was rare.
Clarke shot through to London, after a brief job selecting shows for state television, where he sometimes walked around the office with a clipboard, asking staff how they were. In London he appeared briefly in Australians abroad hit The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972), where he was thankful for the encouragement of Aussie comedian Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna Everage).
In 1973 Clarke returned home. Two years later he was acting in the edgy Buck House, the country's first sitcom. His student character sounded distinctly Kiwi, although the flatting comedy ran "along substantially English lines". Buck House was where Clarke’s signature line “that’ll be the phone”, was first widely heard. The same year, he cameoed on this beloved episode of Grunt Machine, as a rock star.
But the key character in this period was a certain deadpan farmer. In 1971 live show One in Five, he'd done a sketch in a singlet and gumboots (he also impersonated singer John Rowles flinging his head back until he toppled over). In December 1973, Fred Dagg made his TV debut holding a shotgun on Lambton Quay, after Clarke was invited to add some humour to current affairs show Gallery. "David Exel was the reporter and we had to give the character a name. He thought Fred. I thought Dagg." In a 2012 interview, Clarke spoke of how the character needed "a recognisable kind of iconography": a hat and a black singlet.
Dagg was soon doing short monologues for current affairs shows Nationwide and Tonight at Nine. Clarke often directed himself, sometimes even starting the camera before doing a monologue. One of his favourite Dagg moments was this beloved spoof episode of Country Calendar, which featured a family of Trevors.
Clarke assembled many classic Dagg sketches in compilation The Dagg Sea Scrolls. Public response to the character "was immediate and very gratifying", despite jitters from TV executives. Fred Dagg's Kiwi accent could not be denied. As comedy expert Paul Horan argues, Dagg's comedy "slotted into who we were; it wasn't over the top, but it was eloquent ... he was clever, and didn't speak down to you." Clarke improvised much of the material, which had its pros and cons; sometimes he "performed his way out of trouble".
Although Dagg proved a sensation, his short screen appearances were not big earners. Dagg toured, wrote books, and his singles became sizeable hits, notably 'The Gumboot Song' and 'We Don’t Know How Lucky We Are' (which was updated in 1998). Recorded in a morning and deliberately priced so that kids could afford it, his debut album Fred Dagg’s Greatest Hits sold by the truckload. (for more on Dagg's evolution, go here.)
Wary of overexposure and becoming stale, Clarke relocated to Melbourne in 1977, with his Australian wife Helen McDonald. There had been frustrations over trying to get a Kiwi TV series off the ground; as he told magazine Sunday, television executives "liked to impose their authority by changing their minds", and Clarke heard through the grapevine that the Head of Light Entertainment at the NZ Broadcasting Corporation had said publicly that he wasn't funny. Clarke recalled "directors who thought they were comic geniuses and regarded me as a hired hand. I have never had those problems in Australia".
Fred Dagg did not immediately expire. Soon Dagg was doing daily spots on Aussie radio — at least until he got told to avoid "politics and current affairs". Clarke helped his friend Geoff Murphy secure a cinema release for West Coast romp Wild Man (in which Clarke appears, four minutes in) by doing a Fred Dagg short. Clarke flew to Wellington, jumped in a car with Murphy and co, and shot Dagg Day Afternoon in roughly five days. It was one of Dagg's final on-screen bows, alongside (now lost) 1978 series The Fred Dagg Lectures on Leisure.
Clarke reinvented himself, from a Melbourne office plastered with maps of New Zealand. Lucrative offers, some involving broad, Paul Hogan-style comedy, got turned down. The initial plan was to "lie low" and learn what was different — and often familiar — about Australia. As Clarke told author Matt Elliott, it was time for "a big think. I did radio, which is a great medium for writing, then I went into movies and only came back to TV after about five or six years". The radio work taught him about structure, tone, and good research.
The scripts included Lonely Hearts, which beat more high profile entries to be awarded Best Film of 1982 by the Australian Film Institute. The middle-aged romance helped launch director Paul Cox. Clarke turned down the chance to co-star. That decade he was heard on both sides of the Tasman, after providing the voice of black-singleted farmer Wal in a hit movie based on beloved comic strip Footrot Flats.
In 1984 Clarke joined influential sketch show The Gillies Report — where he satirised politicians while dressed as an exotic bird, and first reported on the perilous sport of farnakeling. Clarke also co-created The Fast Lane (1986), with Fast Forward's Andrew Knight. The series involves two private investigators whose receptionist is a better detective than them. In the same period Clarke directed short film Man and Boy, a labour of love inspired by an old workmate.
Clarke's sly wit in satirising the pompous and powerful soon became clear. Keen to take a rest from monologues, the self-confessed "public broadcasting boy" began a near three-decade partnership with radio presenter Bryan Dawe. The two presented satirical weekly interviews — first on radio, then on TV's A Current Affair, then on the ABC network. Making little effort to sound like the person he was imitating, Clarke often played a public figure trying to avoid Dawe's questions.
The Clarke & Dawe interviews screened as part of a news and current affairs slot, allowing more freedom than on a straight comedy show. From 2010 they also appeared on YouTube, where viewers sometimes reached as high as a million. "I don't need to know what the politicians are like because I'm not being them," Clarke told The Age in 2015. "They're just carrying the virus we're trying to deal with. It should be about the ideas ... We're not banging anybody's drum, we're not pushing any party barrow."
The duo also co-starred with Kath & Kim's Gina Riley in the high rating The Games. Satirising dodgy bureaucratic dealings behind the 2000 Sydney Olympics, "it was shot as a documentary, played as drama, with no laugh track and about a real event". Clarke created and co-wrote with radio DJ Ross Stevenson. One episode introduced an actor with the same name as Prime Minister John Howard, apologising for the treatment of Australia's aborigines. Season two won two awards, including a Logie for Outstanding Comedy.
Clarke also won a reputation for "spending a huge amount of time" helping and encouraging others (as Dawe put it). Wendy Harmer argues that he "helped cement the success" of women in Australian comedy.
Clarke did drama too. He co-wrote high-rating miniseries Anzacs (1985). Over eight hours, it follows a group of WWl soldiers. In 2004 Clarke launched Huntaway Films with actor Sam Neill and lawyer Jay Cassells. The company made TV movies Stiff and The Brush Off, with David Wenham as a bumbling political fixer. Clarke adapted the somewhat comical detective tales from Shane Maloney's novels, and directed Stiff. He also worked on the script of Billy Connolly hit The Man Who Sued God.
On-screen, Clarke acted in acclaimed prison camp drama Blood Oath, played the villain in Crackerjack, and did "terrific" black comedy Death in Brunswick. It features Clarke in a memorable cemetery routine, alongside Sam Neill. Fascinated by history and culture, he chronicled the Australian accent (in documentary The Sounds of Aus) and charted the country's relationship with sport in AFI nominated series Sporting Nation.
Alongside anthologies of his comedic work, the keen environmentalist wrote comic novel The Tournament, and bestselling parodies of poets. But Kiwi projects still entered the picture on occasion. He channelled the voice of Fred Dagg for episodes of bro'Town and this quirky musical, and cameoed in comedy Radiradirah. But as Clarke said near the close of this 1994 interview, he had no interest in putting on Dagg's gumboots again. "Everything changes, and it's absolute folly to go back."
Clarke died on 9 April 2017, while on a bush walk with his wife and friends. He was 68. Days before, he'd completed an acting role in TV comedy The Ex-PM.
Among the intriguing projects that never came to pass were a Fred Dagg feature, a second Country Calendar episode — for the show's 50th anniversary — and a semi-improvised movie in which Clarke was to have played a TV executive, firing his friend Patrick Cook.
Clarke spoke fondly of this 100 minute interview about his career. He also did this on-stage chat with Ian Fraser in 2012, and talked wih Kim Hill. Clarke's daughter Lorin charted her father's career in an extended interview shot for comedy history series Funny As. John Clarke's influence on Kiwi comedy is demonstrated by how often Clarke won praise during the Funny As interviews. Those paying tribute included varsity acting colleagues Dave Smith, Helene Wong, Simon Morris and Roger Hall (56 minutes in), friend Ginette McDonald, plus fans Paul Horan, Jeremy Corbett, Jesse Griffin and Fane Flaws (78 minutes in).
- In June 2021 NZ On Screen launched a collection of John Clarke's work. It features tributes by fans and friends, and longer pieces by John's daughter Lorin, Funny As producer Paul Horan, and Aussie comedian Wendy Harmer— plus interviews with Bryan Dawe and a speech by Ginette McDonald.
Profile updated on 25 June 2021
Sources include
Mr John Clarke website. Accessed 25 June 2021
John Clarke, Tinkering - The Complete Book of John Clarke (Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2017)
Julian O'Brien
Roger Simpson
'Lorin Clarke - Funny As Interview' (Video Interview) NZ On Screen website. Director Rupert Mackenzie. Loaded 25 September 2019. Accessed 25 June 2021
'Fane Flaws - Funny As Interview' (Video Interview) NZ On Screen website. Director Rupert Mackenzie. Loaded 13 September 2019. Accessed 25 June 2021
Roger Hall - Funny As Interview' (Video Interview) NZ On Screen website. Director Rupert Mackenzie. Loaded 14 October 2019. Accessed 25 June 2021
Simon Morris - Funny As Interview' (Video Interview) NZ On Screen website. Director Rupert Mackenzie. Loaded 25 September 2019. Accessed 25 June 2021
David Dale, 'Two politicians as one' (Interview) The Age. Loaded 21 June 2015. Accessed 25 June 2021
Karl Du Fresne,'Is NZ Too Small For Fred Dagg?' (Interview) in TV People (Wellington: INL Print, 1979)
Trisha Dunleavy, Ourselves in Primetime - A History of New Zealand Television Drama (Auckland University Press, 2005)
Matt Elliott, 'Fred Dagg Profile' AudioCulture website. Loaded 10 April 2017. Accessed 25 June 2021
Matt Elliott, Kiwi Jokers: The Rise and Rise of New Zealand Comedy (HarperCollins, Auckland, 1997)
Paul Horan & Philip Matthews, Funny As. The Story of New Zealand Comedy (Auckland University Press, 2019)
Paul Horan & Mark Hutchings, 'Dagg-liography' & 'First steps: an overview of John Clarke's television work in New Zealand before 1980' - Comedy Studies (14 April 2019 (Volume 10, number 1), page 119
Steve Killgalon, Glenn McConnell, Kylie Klein-Nixon & Shaun Bamber, 'John Clarke, the man behind New Zealand cultural icon Fred Dagg, has died' Stuff website. Loaded 10 April 2017. Accessed 25 June 2021
Brent Lewis, 'John Clarke - Fred Who?' (Interview) - Sunday pullout (The Sunday Star), 7 January 1990, page 6
Clive Morris, 'Making Hay While The Sun Shines' (Interview), in TV Personality Parade, page 4 (Wellington: Television One/INL Print, 1976)
Matt Philp, 'John Clarke Reflects' (Interview) - North & South, July 2008, page 68
David Stratton, The Avocado Plantation - Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry (Sydney: Pan Macmillan Publishers Australia, 1990)
Unknown writer, 'Fred Dagg creator John Clarke dies at 68' - The NZ Herald, 19 April 2017
Face to Face with Kim Hill - John Clarke (Television Documentary) Director Norman Sievewright (TVNZ, 2003)
The Dagg Sea Scrolls (Documentary) Producer John Clarke & Jay Cassells (Huntaway Films, 2006)
Interview with John Clarke (National Film and Sound Archive, Cinema and Media Studies, La Trobe University, 2006) on The Fred Dagg All-Purpose DVD (Huntaway Films, 2006)
Taking Baby Steps - The Making of Lonely Hearts (Documentary, on Lonely Hearts DVD) Director Mark Hartley (Umbrella Entertainment, 2007)
John Clarke interviewed by Ian Fraser (NZFGC conference) (Interview, New Zealand Food & Grocery Council, 2012)