John Clarke: Thanks for your time

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John Clarke is widely regarded as one of the best satirists Australia has ever seen. Those who knew the man, his wit and his work pay tribute to his legacy following his sudden death earlier this month.

Sam Neill

As a university student in Wellington in the 1970s, Sam Neill was struck by the comedic talents of a fellow student. John Clarke was a "funny kind of lout" whom Neill noticed entertaining the room at parties and, later, performing on stage.

"He came out of sketch comedy at Victoria University, and I thought, 'I'm looking at some kind of genius in embryo of some kind'," Neill says.

Their friendship was sealed over more serious ideas. Neill remembers running into Clarke in a university cafeteria about a week before his final exams.

"I was in a terrible panic about passing my last unit, which was philosophy," Neill says.

"And he said, 'Don't worry, son — two nights in the library with me, and I'll get you through that paper'.

"I had four hours with John Clarke doing logic, which is a bit like algebra — it was gobbledygook to me — and he got me across the line. He was a sort of genius."

Many of Clarke's friends recall similar stories of generosity and kindness. Neill says it was ever-present in his comedy, too.

"John was always a satirist, but his great characters were treated with affection," Neill says.

"Even the politicians that he most despised — there was part of him that was kind of fond of their folly."

Neill and Clarke acted together in the 1990 Australian movie Death in Brunswick. Neill describes it as "probably the happiest experience I've ever had on a film".

"He played my mate in it. I played a no-hoper. He was a, sort of, solid guy. It kind of echoed life in that way," Neill laughs.



While Clarke is known in Australia for his ability to parody personalities of all kinds, in New Zealand he is still best known for his 1970s breakthrough character, Fred Dagg.

"It's hard to remember just how popular he was; he was like as big as The Beatles," Neill says of the fictitious, gumboot-clad farmer.

"He couldn't leave the house without people saying, 'g'day Fred', couldn't go into the pub without people putting their arms around him.

"And John wasn't Fred Dagg. He wasn't a boofhead from the country. He was a shy, erudite, very charming, witty, quiet man, and I think Fred became a burden.

"And it became necessary for John to leave New Zealand and leave Fred behind, and he moved to Melbourne, settled down happily with his darling wife Helen, and reinvented himself."

Lano and Woodley

Clarke was a script editor on The Adventures of Lano and Woodley, which aired on ABC TV in the late 90s.

The comic duo that starred in the program — Colin Lane and Frank Woodley — remember Clarke as a supportive mentor who helped them find the confidence to trust their instincts.

"I don't know what he did with the scripts, I'm sure he improved them, but it was really his presence and his wisdom [that was important]," Lane says.

He says Clarke had what comedians like to call "funny bones" — an endearing personality that goes beyond the jokes.

"When John Clarke would walk on stage or sit down and start talking, the whole audience knew that they were in good hands.

"And he had that twinkle in his eye — you can't teach people how to have a twinkle in their eye.

"That twinkle, that smile, that little air of mischief, the audience just kind of goes 'Ooh' and they sit forward and they kind of can't wait to see what comes out of his mouth and that is a rare thing."

Woodley says one of Clarke's most amazing traits was his ability to criticise an idea without being mean-spirited.

"He was angry, you could feel his outrage, but you never felt like he was being mean. He could be acerbic and warm in the same tone, somehow," Woodley says.

"I don't know how he did that."

Ross Stevenson

Ross Stevenson, who co-wrote The Games with John Clarke, says his collaborator was "the greatest satirist in the English language".

Stevenson says he and Clarke would individually write the scripts for each episode before giving them to the other to edit.

"I would write my episode, I would email it to John, he would have what he called a tinker, and it would come back and … what he had done to it to make it 100-times funnier, it was just extraordinary," Stevenson says.

"I just laughed my head off every time, and shook my head in astonishment."

However, after the episodes were written, Clarke would not always stick to what was in the scripts.

"It was great, because he would deliver his approximation of what the line was at the time, even throw in something new," Stevenson says.

Unlike many of his peers, Clarke actually cared about the things he wrote satire about, Stevenson says.

"I once read a definition of satire that said, 'Satire should be something that suggests that there is a better way of doing what you are talking about'.

"His writing was from the point of view that he is satirising this because there is a better way of doing this, and if he can get that message across whilst making people laugh, then he's achieved what he set out to do."

Gina Riley

Most fans would associate Clarke with Gina Riley through their work together on ABC TV mockumentary The Games.

But Riley's first conversation with Clarke was several years earlier, just after Channel Seven aired the first episode of Big Girl's Blouse — the skit program Riley created with fellow comedians Jane Turner and Magda Szubanski.

"We were out on a limb sort of going 'tada' to the world, and that can be a pretty scary, lonely place to be, and the first person who called at about nine o'clock in the morning was John," Riley says.

"And he was so generous and absolutely got where we were coming from and it was most profound moment really for us to go, 'OK, if no-one else likes it, John Clarke thinks we're OK'."

There were frequent bloopers on the set of The Games, Riley says, because Clarke was constantly making her laugh, but she remembers the show as being a great idea that was "incredibly well executed".

"That was John and [co-writer] Ross [Stevenson], of course — it always starts with the script," she says.

"Often what they wrote happened [in real life] two weeks later. They weren't following, they were leading."

Clarke would find it "absolutely hilarious" that so many of the politicians he lampooned are now paying tribute to him, Riley says.

"Many of us have been on the phone going 'What the?'," she laughs.

"The missile finding the bullshit, finding the absurdity — you know, he was absolutely a master at that."

Andrew Knight

It is hard to see who in contemporary Australian comedy could step into the void left by John Clarke, his one-time TV collaborator Andrew Knight says.

"I've been in the industry for 40 years and I've never met anyone anywhere near his level," says Knight, who worked with Clarke on producing the 1980s TV series The Fast Lane.

"It's not that we don't have great satire. Charlie [Pickering] and Shaun [Micallef] and people are doing really funny stuff.

"But John and Bryan [Dawe] as his foil were just a lethal combination, because they would view things in a way that no-one had even thought of.

"He also just had this extraordinary language that no-one would think to use."

Knight says Clarke's contribution to comedy is equal to that of Australia's "other great satirist", Barry Humphries — best known as his alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson.

But the two differ in some significant ways, Knight says.

"Barry was really tearing the guts out of society. John actually loves people and … brought great humanity to his humour," Knight says.

"Humphries changed the agenda of Australia and John raised the humanity."

Lorin and Lucia Clarke

Many of Clarke's friends, peers and collaborators say he did not revel in the limelight, and valued time with his family over anything else.

His daughters, Lorin and Lucia Clarke, describe him as mischievous, supportive and playful, with an endless fascination for nature and a love of bushwalking and bird photography.

"Every time a flock of birds went over, he'd go, 'Look at the birds, kids'," Lorin Clarke says.

"It's just always been a part of his way of connecting with the, kind of, larger world."

Clarke also loved words, speech and conversation. "Dad always said he was largely influenced by talk," says Lorin Clarke.

"He used to leave the house and say he was going down to the office — he had lots of very important things to do.

"And we'd call the office in 10 minutes — it took him 10 minutes to get to the office — [but he] wasn't there.

"Call him back half an hour later, not there. Call him back an hour later, he still hadn't arrived.

"But he had some great chats in the street between the house and the office.

"And lots of people had connections with him. His audience had a great connection with him as well."

Paul Keating

Paul Keating was repeatedly sent up by Clarke in his sketches with Bryan Dawe, but the former prime minister was a fan of the satirist, whose work he rated "10 out of 10".

"We had to take it in a good-natured way," Mr Keating says.

"John Clarke had enormous intellectual energy and an acute power of observation. No fact, argument, mannerism, habit escaped him.

"His great contribution was to cut through the static and the humbug and to give the viewer, the community, a stripped-down view of these characters from the inside out."

The Clarke and Dawe political skits first aired on Channel Nine's A Current Affair in 1989 — two years before Mr Keating became prime minister.

The pair continued to appear on commercial television until 1997, before moving to ABC TV, and the standard never faltered in the almost two decades they were on air, Mr Keating says.

"Public life is losing, or has lost, a lot of that kind of effervescence of the quality that he played upon, and to have an observer of the scene, in a pithy way, retell it all, weekly, for a long, long time — it's something that no country can just whistle up out of the media firmament," Mr Keating says.

"I don't think we'll see the likes of Clarke again."

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Topics: arts-and-entertainment, comedy-humour, television, government-and-politics, australia, new-zealand, pacific

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