Kiwi icon to receive honorary doctorate

victoria-university-of-wellington

Mon May 28 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)

Kiwi icon to receive honorary doctorate

Monday, 28 May 2007, 10:59 am
Press Release: Victoria University of Wellington

28 May 2007

Humorist, writer and actor John Clarke—best known in New Zealand for bringing laconic farmer Fred Dagg to worldwide attention—is to receive an honorary doctorate from Victoria University of Wellington.

Mr Clarke will receive the honorary Doctorate of Literature at a special conferment ceremony as a part of a University alumni reunion in Melbourne on June 28. Vice-Chancellor, Professor Pat Walsh, said Mr Clarke was a living icon on both sides of the Tasman.

"Through his comic exploits John has revealed the inner truth of society, culture and politics in the Antipodes. With his Fred Dagg costume now in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, he gives real meaning to the words of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche—yes another Fred—that we should call every truth false that is not accompanied by at least one laugh."

Mr Clarke, who was born in Palmerston North in 1948, was a student at Victoria in the late 1960s. He also wrote and performed in a satirical review at the University in 1969 and appeared in several shows at Downstage during this period. But he came to wide public attention for portraying a farmer called Fred Dagg on stage, film and television. As the gumboot and singlet-clad farmer Dagg, Mr Clarke recorded a series of popular records and published several books and was named New Zealand Television Personality of the Year in 1975 and 1976. He then moved to Australia and appeared as Dagg on radio and on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Science Show.

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In 1984 Mr Clarke was part of the ABC series The Gillies Report, starring Max Gillies. Among the highlights of this successful satire were his straight-faced reports on the fictional sport of 'Farnarkeling'. His work as a screenwriter was highlighted when he was nominated in 1982 for an Australian Film Institute 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). This was followed by roles in the movies Blood Oath (1989) and Death in Brunswick (1990).

It was in this period that he began to delve into Australian political satire. Along with collaborator Bryan Dawe, he introduced weekly mock interviews to television. During the Nine Network current affairs programme, A Current Affair, and later on the ABC's The 7.30pm Report, he would assume the persona of a prominent figure—without attempting to mimic their voice—and was interviewed by Mr Dawe. Mr Clarke had another commercial success in 1998, when he co-wrote and starred in The Games, a mockumentary about the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games.

In 2002, he appeared in the hit movie, Crackerjack, and as a comedy club owner in the award-winning television movie Roy Hollsdotter Live. He then began work on adapting Melbourne author Shane Maloney's Murray Whelan series for television. This franchise resulted in two films for television, Stiff (2003) and The Brush-Off (2004), both starring David Wenham and Mick Molloy. He won the Australian Film Institute's Byron Kennedy Award for Outstanding Creative Enterprise in 2004—an accolade bestowed upon someone whose work is marked by innovation, vision and the pursuit of excellence.

He is the author of more than 20 books, notably mock compilations of Australian poetry, The Complete Book of Australian Verse (1989) and The Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse (1994 and 2003), and The Tournament, a book describing a fictional tennis tournament involving many philosophical and literary figures of the twentieth century.

Mr Clarke has also supported a variety of community causes. He is a former member of the Board of Film Victoria (1983-86) and the Victorian Schools Innovation Programme (2001-5) and is a member of the Board of the Western Port Seagrass Partnership and the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria.
Issued by Victoria University of Wellington Public Affairs

ENDS

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