2 July 2017, Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, Australia
This eulogy was part of a 3 hour public celebration of John Clarke’s life, hosted by the Wheeler Centre.
John Clarke was a master of understatement, never better expressed than his description of golf, a game that he loved, and which sometimes loved him in return. And he once said of it, "That's the problem with golf, raise your left eyebrow and the ball's in the Yarra."
John had the keenest of eyes, but also the finest of hearing, and his hearing was finely tuned, not just to the cant of the powerful, but to the nuance of the punter. My favourite story about Australian barracking came from John, who was at a Collingwood-St. Kilda match years ago at the G when Plugger was still playing for St. Kilda and all the action was at the other end. And Plugger was on his own in the goal square, and someone in front of John stood up and called out loudly enough for Plugger to hear, "Tony, I'm going for a pie. Do you want one?" That was John. John would hear the little things that make sense of the big things.
I think it's undisputed that John was the finest satirist of our age, anywhere in the world, in my view. His ability over so many years to be both an X Ray machine and a moral compass was unrivalled, but it was the thinking behind that satire that set it apart. Years ago, I read an interview with John where he talked about satire as failing, unless it had some kind of positive aspect. He said you had to work out what the problem was, and at least try and offer some kind of an answer. And if you look back on John's work, that is there. He tried to cast light, not heat. Yes, there was anger in his work, but never malice. And to me, this was the most remarkable thing, that this man could, for so long, hold so close the red hot kernel of anger that lies at the heart of satire, but not be burned or bent out of shape by it. It was extraordinary.
Plutarch said that he who governs anger governs himself, and it's this I'd like to talk about tonight, about John in tribute to him. It's, of course, appropriate that we mark his brilliance as an artist in so many fields. But to me, his great brilliance was in the art simply of leading a life. I had the enormous pleasure of working with John's writing partner, Andrew Knight, many years ago, and every now and then we'd stop. And sometimes the conversation would turn to John with great affection. And I remember Andrew told me a story about when he was very early in his career, and anxious and was just starting to write with John. Andrew was also working at an advertising agency being run by Phillip Adams and John Singleton. Yes, that is as awful as it sounds.
Anyway, there was a crisis happening and Andrew's in the boardroom. This is in the days before mobile phones. And somebody comes in and says, "Andrew there's a Mr. Clarke on the phone for you." And Andrew says, "Look, I can't, could you tell him I'll call him back?" So the person goes off and comes back in a minute later and says, "Mr. Clarke says it's very important."
So Andrew excuses himself from this crisis meeting, goes to the phone and says, "John, what is it? This is not a good time." And John says, "Look, I'm just downstairs in the car. I need to talk to you. Can you come down?" And Andrew goes, "All right, I'll come down, but I'll have to be quick."
So he goes down in the lift, John's waiting in his car and Andrew leans in and says, "John, what is it?" And John holds up a Frisbee and says, "I reckon now would be a pretty good time to throw a Frisbee, don't you?"
So they go off to the park for an hour and throw a Frisbee. When Andrew gets back to the crisis meeting, it's still in crisis. It made no difference at all whether he was there or not. Of all the brilliant, talented people I've ever known or worked with, John is the only one to whom I would give the word ‘wise’. I can't tell you what I mean when I say wise. He didn't give a list of instructions.
John lived by example, not by declaration, but there was something about John which gave me enormous comfort because he was the person that I knew who seemed to most have worked out how to go about living life. And just to know that somebody had almost got there, was incredibly reassuring. He wasn't perfect. Of course, that was a very good idea. The last perfect person, we nailed to a piece of wood, but he was wise, and I deeply treasured that.
I would have to say that I have not felt the loss of a man so deeply since the passing of my own father. And when my father died, along with the many beautiful messages I got, came one from John. John always had the words, only in this case, they weren't his words. They were someone else's. It was just this poem by one of his favourite poets, A.J. Cronin, signed at the bottom, ‘from John’.
With the exact length and pace of his father’s stride
The son walks,
Echoes and intonations of his father’s speech
Are heard when he talks.
Once when the table was tall and the chair a wood
He absorbed his father’s smile
And carefully copied the way that he stood.
He grew into exile slowly
With pride and remorse,
In some way better than his begetters,
In others worse.
And now having chosen, with strangers,
Half glad of his choice
He smiles with his father’s hesitant smile
And speaks with his voice.
John Clarke knew. John Clarke knew human beings. John Clarke knew how to live a life. We've a bloody privilege to share his and we're privileged still. Cheers, John.
Andrew Denton discusses this speech in this beautiful episode of the podcast.