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.

Lorin Clarke remembers her father as a fun and mischievous presence during her childhood, and an influence and sounding board in her own writing career. She is coming to the Auckland Writers Festival for a session honouring her father, and to perform a reading of her hilariously whimsical 2017 kids’ book, Our (Last) Trip to the Market. Clarke has written, script-edited and directed for television, radio and theatre, and she also writes a, yes, hilariously whimsical magazine column about the small joys of life entitled “Public Service Announcement” for the Australian edition of The Big Issue. When a posthumous collection of her father’s writing,