The first Kiwi to make me laugh
From Fred Dagg to Kevin the Kiwi, John Clarke consistently demonstrated a supportive, kind and generous nature.
THE king is dead, there won’t be another like him.
The second part of that line is usually ‘‘long live the king’’, to acknowledge that even though we’re sad about the last monarch passing, we still get to celebrate who will replace them.
But it’s safer than a booking on a United Airlines flight to say that with John Clarke’s passing, his like will not be seen again.
New Zealand has been extraordinarily fortunate that his spirit entered life via our patch of Earth and we should be exceedingly grateful to his parents. From now on there should be no more jokes about Palmerston North.
There probably will be, of course, but that city should be celebrated as the place that gave us John Clarke. Sure, he left the soil of Aotearoa in 1977. But by then he’d already done what he needed to do.
I was just a kid in West Auckland still learning English when I first saw his character Fred Dagg on TV. He was the first Kiwi to make me laugh and even though me and my mates had never been on a farm, he helped us appreciate that aspect of the country.
The awesome Diana Wichtel writing in the NZ Listener put it best: ‘‘Clarke took our slightly delusional self-belief, often misdirected pioneering resourcefulness and phlegmatic sense of humour, poured it into singlet, shorts and gumboots and clapped a hat on it.’’
With Clarke having shone a light to reveal an aspect of the New Zealand character, the following waves of comedians here were inspired to get to work sifting through and exploring the rest of it.
But Clarke was like a hilarious Dad who loved his family and yet couldn’t stand the garden so he only moved as far as next door, so he could keep shouting jokes over the fence.
His dear friends talk about his ongoing love for New Zealand. Even while he was cracking up Australians about what they were doing, he always kept abreast of what was going on here in the news, sports and culture.
He loved it when there was finally an All Black with the same surname as his iconic character and in 2008 he noted the election result observing that New Zealand had ‘‘thrown the car into reverse’’.
When we were doing our animated prime time comedy bro’Town on TV3, we had an episode where the boys got a pet pig and so decided to become vegetarians.
The show’s creator and producer Elizabeth Mitchell contacted him about reprising his Fred Dagg character and to our astonishment and great thrill, he said yes. It demonstrated Clarke’s supportive, kind and generous nature.
Elizabeth and I went to his house in Melbourne to pitch other ideas and all I remember was being overawed at the thought of being in the presence of true greatness. I now know how that feels – with Clarke it felt like a nice cup of tea in a cosy house surrounded by warm and interesting chat.
In our sketch show Radiradirah, he starred as the voice of a character called Kevin the Kiwi in an animation set in the Mangroves. In a sketch set in New Zealand in the year 3000, we needed someone to play the Prime Minister. There was really only one person for it, plus we loved the thought of it actually being true.
And like every role he ever performed, John Clarke, was magnificent.
‘ Clarke was like a hilarious Dad who moved next door, so he could keep shouting jokes over the fence.’