I never met John Clarke But all the people I know who met him could not stop praises. He was a real genius of comedy, and of gentle niceness, offering great insight in the bullshit of government with the best, the most imaginative type of satire on TV there is: being oneself and make sure people see someone else. His documentary on Aussie sports was the summit of mixing satire without denigration of people. It's a very delicate surgery work that I cannot do. I am bombastic, Clarke was subtle. I am acidic, Clarke was generous. 

I loved Fred Dagg. I loved the farnackling... I hope I have the correct spelling...

Condolences to his family and to his partner in crime, Bryan Dawe who entertained us with political satire skits for over 25 years. The ABC has collated some of their most loved segments and classic exchanges.

Go there.

'The highest accolade one could have': politicians pay

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/the-highest-accola...

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"It's terribly sad and just a loss, I feel so much for John's family, but [it is] a loss to the comedy community and broader Australian society," she told ABC Radio Melbourne.

"Forget other political parties, he was the one who kept the bastards honest because he just had this moral centre that was so flawless and a sense of true north that was impeccable.

"He was just such an honourable man and I think that informed his comedy and what made it so brilliant."

"He's been someone who's been a very important figure for all of us, the next generation of comedians," she said.

"As [comedian] Gina [Riley] mentioned, he was the one who rang us after Big Girl's Blouse when we stepped out to do something we didn't think was controversial but apparently was, three women doing comedy.

"To get his tick of approval meant so much, because we did face some opposition.

"He was just such a thoroughly honourable man, and not everyone in our business is."

Szubanski said Clarke was also a man of hidden talents.

"A friend of mine said she was talking to him at a party about ornithology and his knowledge was comprehensive and he would often shoot me poems from Irish poets," she said.

"He was just such an extremely intelligent, well read, very considered man. There was no bullshit in him at all. 

"He was so wry and [had] that twinkle in his eye, he was just naughty. You know, that delicious naughty giggly. 

"He was a really exceptional man. We're really grieving his loss."

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-11/john-clarke-kept-the-bastards-hone...

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The tears of sadness are still coming to my eyes but the one thing I know from my long experience, SATIRE HAS NEVER KEPT THE BASTARDS HONEST.  Satire will make you laugh but it never tells the real hardship the trodden will suffer. For all politicians, especially the sarcastic psychos, satire is water on a duck's back. It amuses the plebs and those who desperately want to be entertained, but overall, it DOES NOTHING TO STOP THE BASTARDS SCREWING YOU.

And this is a fact. Only a revolution does stop the bastards, a revolution the ground of which is prepared by satire.

Mr Keating, who led the country as prime minister through the early-to-mid 1990s, was not spared by the pair.

"One had to take it in a good-natured way," Mr Keating told ABC TV's tribute special, John Clarke: Thanks For Your Time.

"John Clarke had enormous intellectual energy and an acute power of observation.

"No fact, argument, mannerism, habit escaped him. It all went into the mix. He was making a story, in a sense, all the time."

Mr Keating said Clarke had an unequalled way of understanding what politicians were actually thinking, stripping them of "humbug and cant" and translating their thoughts for the broader public.

"He revealed things that may not have been immediately apparent to the community at large," Mr Keating said.

"In his hands, a set of circumstances or facts or a moment was revealed with clarity.

"I think that revelation, that ability to do that, we're going to very greatly miss."

Mr Keating took the prime ministership after challenging Bob Hawke from the backbench on the last day of Parliament in 1991.

Before the successful challenge, Mr Keating, as treasurer, made an unsuccessful tilt for the leadership in a drama that was breathlessly covered by the press.

Clarke and Dawe skewered the two rivals in a skit, with Clarke playing both men.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-17/john-clarke-was-10-out-of-10-paul-...

I repeat:

The tears of sadness are still coming to my eyes but the one thing I know from my long experience, SATIRE HAS NEVER KEPT THE BASTARDS HONEST.  Satire will make you laugh but it never tells the real hardship the trodden will suffer. For all politicians, especially the sarcastic psychos, satire is water on a duck's back. It amuses the plebs and those who desperately want to be entertained, but overall, it DOES NOTHING TO STOP THE BASTARDS SCREWING YOU.

And this is a fact. Only a revolution does stop the bastards, a revolution the ground of which is prepared by satire.

The late satirist, John Clarke, has left another lasting legacy — this time, to conservation.

Key points:

• John Clarke and his family spent years planting trees and birdwatching on the property
• Clarke's widow Helen McDonald has donated the land to the Trust for Nature
• The property will now be used for education and conservation purposes

The much-loved performer, who was also an avid birdwatcher and nature-lover, died while bushwalking in Victoria in 2017, at the age of 68.

His family has donated an eight-hectare section of Ramsar-listed, globally significant wetland on Phillip Island to the conservation organisation, Trust for Nature.

John Clarke was born in New Zealand but made his name as a comedian and satirist in Australia after arriving in the 1970s.

For 27 years he appeared on Australian television conducting mock interviews and skewering politicians with his comedy partner, Bryan Dawe.

His daughter, Lorin Clarke, told ABC Radio Melbourne it was "a lovely thing to have happen, especially because it was Dad's birthday yesterday, so we feel there is a nice celebratory element to it as well".

She said her parents bought the property on the Rhyll peninsula in 1999 as a conservation project, and spent many years planting trees, weeding and birdwatching on what used to be farmland, with group tree-planting days that would often take place around this time of the year.

"We built up this area with vegetation and we wanted that to continue," she said.

"It's quite an incredible area, Western Port Bay, and my mum and dad were quite involved, they ended up learning quite a lot about that area and why it's particularly special and needs to be protected," she said.

"We spent a lot of time on the beach and walking through the bush saying 'look at that bird, no look closely, see that yellow beak, that means it's the yellow spotted whatever'," she said.

Lorin Clarke said her family would continue to visit the area, where they always felt a bit closer to her father.

"We all love it dearly, it'll always be a really important part of our family and hopefully it'll be important in a sort of grander sense now too."

"It's magical because of the work they did."

Trust for Nature Port Phillip and Westernport Manager Ben Cullen said John Clarke and his wife Helen McDonald had been "fantastic custodians".

"The way they've done the revegetation is fantastic," he said.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-30/john-clarke-family-gives-phillip-island-property-to-conservation/12506334

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We still need satire, mind you, for our own sanity even if IT DOES NOT KEEP THE BASTARDS HONEST...

Comedian John Clarke celebrated by his filmmaker daughter, Lorin, in new documentary

By Stephen A Russell

While chatting with Lorin Clarke, daughter of the much-missed political satirist and The 7.30 Report veteran John Clarke, I suggest his made-up sport, farnarkeling, has become every bit as real to Australians as Joan Lindsay and Peter Weir's mystery, Picnic at Hanging Rock.

"Oh, he'd have loved that," Lorin says with a big smile. I blush. Who wouldn't want his seal of approval, even if posthumously?

The writer, performer and director's gleaming documentary, But Also John Clarke, is a tribute to her dad's lifelong quest to laugh along with us at the egregious and the absurd.

That is the thing about her beloved father, who tragically died far too young, at 68, while hiking in Victoria in 2017. Both here and across the ditch in his native Aotearoa, everyone felt like John and his mischievous twinkle were a part of their family.

Perhaps even the politicians and assorted scoundrels he skewered while pretending to be them in faux interviews with partner in crime, Bryan Dawe.

As British comedian and author Ben Elton notes in the film: "He would always bring such charm, there was never malice, even when he was putting the rapier in deep … they don't even know they are dead until the following day."

Stitched together from an abundance of archival material from his radio days, plays, films, news spots, and TV shows, as well as thousands of hours of Clarke family home videos and in-house interviews, Lorin's film is packed with riotously funny riches.

Where do you even begin to tell the story of a life this rich?

"When the tsunami of love happened [in the immediate aftermath of his death], I realised people wanted to talk about dad," Lorin says. "They also wanted to know if he was the person they saw on the TV."

This is a question Lorin has been asked all her life.

"It's an impossible one for a little girl, or any human being on Earth, to answer, because you sort of don't have several dads against which to measure," she says.

Some would argue she did, because her dad was also Fred Dagg for countless New Zealanders — the fictitious sheep shearer so beloved that his trademark gumboots, singlet, shorts and bucket are preserved for posterity in Wellington's Te Papa Museum.

It was only very recently that Lorde knocked 1975 album Fred Dagg's Greatest Hits off the all-time number one spot in Aotearoa.

"He used to borrow the one news camera from the one TV station [NZBC], drive to a paddock, set up, run round and do a Dagg monologue to camera," Lorin recalls.

"Then he'd get back in his car, go into the office, and cut the clip himself with scissors. You can see a direct line to TikTok in that."

Just as Clarke was obsessed with The Goon Show and with Dudley Moore and Peter Cook's Not Only … But Also — the documentary was originally called Not Only Fred Dagg But Also John Clarke — countless comedians pay tribute to his guiding voice.

When Andrew Denton's comic talk show The Money or the Gun flatlined, John rang to say that he was funny regardless of what anyone else thought.

Wendy Harmer says he opened the door for many women writers and performers. Anne Edmonds's notes went out the window when she asked him to mentor her, and they would chat for hours about anything but the show.

"He was the kind of cat who would sneak in, up the back of an audience, with a hat and sunnies on, and he would just listen," Lorin says.

As a family, the Clarkes watched comedy like a sport — pausing, rewinding, and re-watching to see what made it so funny.

"We thrashed them," Lorin says of their VHS study sessions. "I know children who are instinctively hilarious, but it's like any craft. The more you do it, the more muscles you get."

It was about finding your voice and strengthening it.

"He loved poetry, the rhythm of language, and could read the ebb and flow of writing," she says. "His car would pull up in the driveway and you'd hear Dylan Thomas or Ruth Draper booming out of it, or an audiobook of [Stella Gibbons'] Cold Comfort Farm. We grew up watching Marx Brothers films and Jaques Tati as the funny postman."

It was what made Lorin the writer and director she has become. To quote an old African proverb, when her father died, it was like a library had burned down — a line picked up by one of Clarke's favourite singers, Laurie Anderson, in her song World Without End.

"That's how I feel," she says. "You can talk about dad for 103 minutes and you're still not going to get all of him."

But Also John Clarke offers so much through his remarkable strength in speaking truth to power through humour.

"You absolutely can disrespect authority," Lorin says.

"Like so many areas of society, the arts are undervalued. But it's a really powerful tool for helping you get to the heart of what it is that you actually believe."

But Also John Clarke opens nationally on September 4.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-05/john-clarke-documentary-lorin-clarke/105728110

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