Richard Neville: Oz magazine co-founder dies aged 74

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Sorry, this video has expired Video: Journalist Peter Luck compiled this profile on Richard Neville in 1970 (ABC News)

Australian author and social commentator Richard Neville has died at the age of 74 after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Neville made a splash in Australia and the United Kingdom in the 1960s as the co-founder of counterculture magazine Oz, which was known for its use of satire and pop art alongside serious journalism.

He shot to fame in 1963 when he published the magazine, in partnership with his friends artist Martin Sharp and editor Richard Walsh, which specialised in dissent and was known for pushing boundaries.

Published on April Fool's Day, the first issue of the magazine sold 6,000 copies by lunchtime on the first day it hit the streets.

The 16-page issue of Oz included a lengthy feature on backyard abortions — a practice that was, at the time, both illegal and taboo.

The magazine took aim at the White Australia policy, the treatment of Indigenous people, homosexuality, police brutality and Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War.

Neville, Walsh and Sharp had only published three issues of the magazine before being charged for distributing an obscene publication — to which they pleaded guilty.

After the success of the Australian version of Oz, Neville shipped off to London in 1966 to establish a UK version, which found even more success than the Australian Oz.

This morning Walsh said he, Neville and Sharp had "found a hole in the fence" and were "the first to squirm through it".

"We had to have it hand-sold through the city by attractive girls, Richard seemed to be able to have an endless supply of those," Walsh told 702 ABC Sydney.

"Richard was charming in the right sense of the word. He just loved people of all kinds.

"He just relished people so he had a lot of people who loved him right through his life."

John Lennon marched in rallies to protect Neville

The publication of the magazine in London lead to the men being charged with "conspiracy to corrupt public morals" in the 1970s.

It was the longest obscenity trial in the history of British law and sparked outrage across the country, with the defence calling it a battle of liberty and freedom of expression and speech.

The trial resulted in the men being given prison sentences — a decision that was eventually overturned on appeal.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono marched in rallies to protest their guilty verdict.

Members of parliament argued on their behalf, concerned about the comparison between themselves and the Soviet Union on the treatment of dissenters.

After his return to Australian Neville famously inhaled marijuana on live television to test whether it would affect his ability to drive.

He was diagnosed with early onset dementia in his 60s and lived out his years in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.

Walsh said those who knew Neville well "understood the path that his life was taking" with Alzheimer's.

"I'm in a sense beyond sadness because it's been a very sad route that he's taken.

"I'm glad that he has finally come to the end of the yellow brick road."

'We were The Chaser then'

Peter Kingston, who worked as a cartoonist on the Oz, said his life would have "taken a very different course without Neville".

"I miss him terribly," Kingston said.

"It was sort of like what The Chaser is today, we were The Chaser then."

He said Neville was "absolutely delightful, and warm" and "always encouraging".

"Absolutely adorable person, adorable human being, and very concerned about the world and the environment, all the good things," he said.

"In a way I'm very sad he's gone but he had a very unfortunate ending and I'm glad it's over for him, the battle now."

Neville worked with the likes of feminist writer Germaine Greer, cartoonist Michael Leunig and filmmaker Phillipe Mora.

In an interview with ABC Radio National in 2013, Neville said the heady mood of the times led him to become part of the controversial project.

"There were lots of kind of stuff going on in the ether that was beginning life quite a lot different from the life of our parents, and I guess you could say sex, drive-in movies, rock and roll, the pill, great music all over the world," Neville told the Big Ideas program.

Speaking on ABC North Coast local radio, Glenn Mitchell, a senior history lecturer at the University of Wollongong said Neville, Sharp and Walsh began a "collective tilt against what they saw as the oppressive conservatism of Australia at that time".

"He became a very articulate spokesperson on counter-cultural matters and expanding on those themes that he had begun to develop in the 1960s," Dr Mitchell said.

"He is a man who leaves us with a wonderful legacy, not just for historians interested in the legal intricacies of various cases, but here is a person who stood against conservative Australia in the 1960s and the early 1970s and left a mark."

Topics: arts-and-entertainment, community-and-society, 20th-century, information-and-communication, australia, england

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