John Morrison Clarke (29 July 1948 – 9 April 2017) was a New Zealand comedian, writer and satirist who lived and worked in Australia from the late 1970s. He was a highly regarded actor and writer whose work appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in both radio and television and also in print. He is principally known for his character Fred Dagg and his long-running collaboration with fellow satirist Bryan Dawe, which lasted from 1989 to his death in 2017, as well as for his success as a comic actor in Australian and New Zealand film and television. Early life and career Clarke was born on 29 July 1948 in Palmerston North, New Zealand, the son of Ted Clarke and Neva Clarke-McKenna. He moved to Wellington and attended Scots College before studying at Victoria University of Wellington between 1967 and 1970. Clarke first became known during the mid to late 1970s for portraying a laconic farmer called Fred Dagg on stage, film and television. Gumboot and singlet-clad, Dagg had seven sons all named "Trev". Clarke also recorded a series of records and cassettes and published several books as Dagg. Over forty years after its release, the first Fred Dagg album, Fred Dagg's Greatest Hits (1976), remains one of New Zealand's biggest selling records. Some of his earliest appearances as Fred Dagg in the Australian media were on the ABC's The Science Show and Dagg later made regular radio appearances on 2JJ until the station moved to FM and was renamed 2JJJ in 1980. An LP of some 2JJ sketches, The Fred Dagg Tapes, was released in 1979. He relocated to Australia in 1977. In 1984 Clarke was part of the Australian ABC TV series The Gillies Report, starring Max Gillies. Among the highlights of this satire were Clarke's straight-faced reports on the fictional sport of "farnarkeling" and the exploits of Australia's farnarkeling champion, Dave Sorenson. Films In 1972, he made his first film appearance in The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, a film about an expatriate Australian in London. Although Clarke was only an extra, the film's makers, Bruce Beresford and Barry Humphries, instantly recognised his talent; "he was terribly funny and terribly real". In 1974 he wrote and appeared (as Ken) in Buck House, a New Zealand comedy TV series set in a student flat. In 1982, he was nominated for an AFI award for co-writing the acclaimed Paul