John Clarke (satirist)
| John Clarke | |
|---|---|
| Born |
John Morrison Clarke 29 July 1948 Palmerston North, Manawatu-Wanganui, New Zealand |
John Morrison Clarke (born 29 July 1948) is a New Zealand–Australian comedian, writer, and satirist. He was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand, and has lived in Australia since the late 1970s. He is a regular actor and writer on Australian TV.
Clarke first became known during the mid to late 1970s for portraying a laconic farmer called Fred Dagg on stage, film and television. Gumboot and singlet-clad, Dagg had seven sons all named "Trev". Clarke also recorded a series of records and cassettes and published several books as Dagg. Thirty years after its release, the first Fred Dagg album, Fred Dagg's Greatest Hits (1976), remains one of New Zealand's biggest selling records. Some of his earliest appearances as Fred Dagg in the Australian media were on the ABC's The Science Show and Dagg later made regular radio appearances on 2JJ until the station moved to FM and was renamed 2JJJ in 1980. An LP of some 2JJ sketches, The Fred Dagg Tapes, was released in 1979.
In 1984 Clarke was part of the Australian ABCTV series The Gillies Report, starring Max Gillies. Among the highlights of this satire were Clarke's straight-faced reports on the fictional sport of "farnarkeling" and the exploits of Australia's farnarkeling champion, Dave Sorenson.
Clarke also became known for his screenwriting when, in 1982, he was nominated for an AFI award for co-writing the acclaimed Paul Cox film Lonely Hearts. He also co-wrote the mini-series Anzacs and provided the voice of Wal Footrot in the feature-length animated film, Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tale (1986), based on the comic strips by Murray Ball. Towards the end of the 1980s, he featured in a number of other films, and began to be known for his political satire.
In 1989, along with collaborator Bryan Dawe, Clarke introduced weekly satirical mock interviews to television, and these short pieces (usually between 2-5 minutes in duration) became a regular and popular segment of the Nine Network current affairs programme A Current Affair.
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