I caught a marathon of The Games on PBS many years ago and absolutely fell in love with his sense of humor. Through Youtube I’ve watched many more hours of his work. Brilliant satirist, painfully funny guy.
ETA - sorry for the misspelling of Clarke, I’ve reported the post for edit.
WHAT???
FUCK!
(not now, not NOW! dammit! We need him more than ever!)
Massive loss, his short political satire pieces with Brian Dawe were just brilliant. I recommend you YouTube John Clarke and Bryan Dawe. Yes, there will be many pieces where local knowledge is required to get a full appreciation, but a lot of it cuts across politics as a whole.
Such wonderfully written prose.
I fixed the spelling in the title for you.
Rest in peace, Fred Dagg. One of the funniest things John Clarke did was a collection of parody poems taking the piss out of everyone from Coleridge to Leonard Cohen:
In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Till Alf, the Chief Surveyor said,
“You can’t build that, it contravenes
The Act of '63”
Oh, damn. Was just gonna post about The Games in the “TV shows nobody but you remembers” thread. Maybe the funniest show I’ve ever seen. The scene where they’re discussing the length of the hundred-meters track is brilliant.
And, of course, the front fell off.
Such a funny man. He will be missed. I think I laughed the hardest at his out of depth defense minister arguing both sides of the plan in Iraq.
“Bearing in mind the very significant and very important reasons went in there in the first place.”
“Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
“No no no, Brian. I mean the real reason.”
“Oh. Oil.”
“No no, Brian. No. Sorry. My mistake. I mean the official reason.”
“Ah! To bring peace and democracy.”
“That’s the one I was looking for.”
We don’t know how propitious are the circumstances, Frederick.
Or just maybe we didn’t know how lucky we were
HA!
These two were on TV as long as I can remember. I remember watching their faux interviews in 1988.
Ah yes. Context.
I actually had a Fred Dagg LP back in my youth, and I especially loved his expose of the real estate industry. I won’t link here, but google it if you want.
Mister Clarke, you have given me more laughs over the last forty years than I probably deserved. You have lifted my spirits when I was a bit down, and made me think a bit more when all I wanted to do was retreat into socio/political oblivion.
But what a bloody way to go…
Vale
Sorry for the bump of this older thread, but I came across this retrospective of his life on Youtube so I thought I’d post it here. He was a special talent.
