KEY POINTS:
John Clarke, the satirist formerly known as Fred Dagg, talks about the release of his double-disc memoir The Fred Dagg All Purpose DVD & Music CD which arrives in the afterglow of his 60th birthday and lifetime achievement induction into Australian telly's Logie Hall of Fame
Since he upped sticks with his Dagg character across the Tasman, Clarke diversified into writing all sorts of things, editing, acting, current affairs commentary - and doing semi-regular interviews with New Zealand journalists and broadcasters asking: "Whatever happened to Fred Dagg?" of which this is another.
But he also still gets fan mail from across this side of the ditch, asking him for those bits of Dagg which made the early to mid-70s of single-channel television a much funnier place...
Why the DVD?
I did the DVD because I keep getting mail from people who want bits and pieces. I did a huge stocktake a couple of years ago, figured out what was there, what people wanted and to see if I could collate something that could include everything that was required. Because for a lot of people in Australia, for example - to use your annual whatever happened to Fred Dagg? - it might be: Where did John Clarke come from? Because they have no idea of any of this stuff. I've been showing people I work with that stuff and they just roll around on the carpet laughing because I've got this long hair and I look about 12.
Do you keep in touch with the home paddock?
I'm on the blower to New Zealand all the time and lots of family members still live there and lots of my mates. I have a look at New Zealand newspapers online. I don't have the expertise you would need to offer any comment about the texture of life there. But I stay in touch with what is going on.
I was aware, for example, that if I wanted to go into business there I could set up something that would telephone everybody in New Zealand during the swimming at the Olympics and tell them what was going on. Apparently they couldn't see poor old Moss bloody doing all the hard yakka in the 200m 'fly. He should have won a medal. He did all the heavy lifting. It was a brilliant swim.
What would John Clarke of The Games (in the mockumentary he played the Sydney Olympics organiser, also named John Clarke) be doing at Beijing?
At the moment he'd be trying to explain that it is completely legitimate to pre-record parts of the opening ceremony and feed them into the broadcast and completely legitimate to have people miming. And he would be ringing Putin and saying "Listen cock, the point of the Olympics is not to distract attention from warlords like you. You don't want for the opening ceremony to start, then do that. That is not how it works."
And would Fred Dagg be retired to the Gold Coast?
I don't know if he would have retired completely, he would be still checking a few gates and doing a bit of crutching and stuff. I don't know if he would have had the brains to move into dairy. But he might know some people who are in the milk racket.
The DVD includes your reports on the great imaginary sport of Farnarkeling. You wrote a book [The Tournament] about a tennis tournament between the great minds of the 20th century. How did the language of sports and commentary affect your sense of humour?
That's an interesting question because I have always enjoyed sport and always thought the language was funny. The way sport is described is very often awful. I am watching the Olympics at the moment and the commentary is pretty dire. But good sports commentary and good sports writing are quite fantastic because the drama of the event is there to be written about.
But what a lot of people do when they write about sport is they pull a jockstrap down over their head and pretend to be the sportsperson and it's all testosterone-addled drivel. Actually properly described, it can be brilliant.
Farnarkeling, for example, is about flicking the radio on when I was a kid in New Zealand and listening to a sports report which I thought I understood, though I missed the beginning of it and I didn't quite know what the sport was. But you can follow it by just using the cadence of the voice and you know that so-and-so got injured and you know that New Zealand actually scrambled back and got away with a win.
You just turned 60 and got a lifetime achievement Logie. Which was more daunting?
Neither of them was particularly daunting, There is an inevitability about the speedo rolling over now and then. I have always enjoyed getting a bit older. I don't know quite why but ...
Well Fred was a few years older than you were back then ...
Indeed. But I think a bit more life experience has done me a lot of good. I was bit of a mess when I was younger in lots of ways so I am quite happy about that. The Logies Hall of Fame was a kindness by the Logies people. They ring you up and they say, "Look, we've had a bit of a meeting and it's unanimous, so shut up, you are getting it." Which is nice.
So you have been down the hall?
The hall? I don't want to worry you, but the hall is imaginary.
