Holmes - John Clarke

These two excerpts from Holmes highlight John Clarke's longtime comic partnership with Australian Bryan Dawe, and show Clarke promoting 1990 movie Death in Brunswick. Clarke weighs up who had the most sex appeal on-set in Melbourne: him or Brunswick lead actor Sam Neill. Clarke is also seen in action on Australian programme A Current Affair, with Bryan Dawe. In the first sketch, Clarke plays Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. In the second, he plays Hawke's successor Paul Keating, and satirises Keating's May 1993 meeting with New Zealand Prime Minister Jim Bolger.

He plays a character very unlike the sort of thing that we've become accustomed to seeing Sam in. The character ... gets in an awful lot of trouble, and is not smooth, is not attractive, is not at ease, and it's very funny. Sam's performance is a beautifully judged bit of comedy, and I think he pulls it off magnificently.

– John Clarke on Sam Neill's role in Australian black comedy Death in Brunswick (1990)

Key Cast & Crew

Bryan Dawe

As: Interviewer

Sam Neill

Subject

John Clarke

Subject, As: Bob Hawke & Paul Keating

Paul Holmes

Interviewer