My Dad, Such A Dagg

Lorin Clarke, the daughter of legendary satirist John Clarke, pays tribute to the work of her late father while carving out a successful writing career of her own.

- Russell Baillie

Lorin Clarke remembers a moment during her first year at university when an English lecturer started discussing a James Joyce novel. 

That’s odd, she thought, isn’t it a kids’ book? After all, her dad had played a tape of it in the family car in an era before audiobooks were common. She knew it well. And there were those other Wiggles substitutes on family road trips: Dylan Thomas, the monologues of Ruth Draper and Joyce Grenfell, readings of Cold Comfort Farm, cassettes of The Goon Show.

Dad was a bit unusual like that. Dad being John Clarke, possibly the greatest and definitely the smartest and best-read comedian of his generation on both sides of the Tasman. When he died in April last year, two nations mourned. For Australia, it was his decades on television as a satirist that were remembered. For New Zealand, it was his short but revolutionary turn in the 1970s as spokesman for the rural sector, Fred Dagg.