John Pinder (6 January 1945 26 May 2015) was a New Zealand-born Australian comedy producer and festival director who produced band performances, ran live venues and co-founded three Australian comedy festivals, including Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Circus Oz. Early life Pinder was born in Timaru on the South Island of New Zealand and raised further south in Oamaru, North Otago. His greatest influences while growing up were the circus and comedy. Pinder lived next door to a "circus lot" as a child, where Bullens Circus and Ashtons Circus regularly performed. Although his household didn’t have a television set, they used to sit down to listen to the radio as a family; when The Goon Show began being broadcast in New Zealand as Pinder hit puberty, he was the perfect age to enjoy the new form of comedy that his parents loathed. His subsequent career has included a great deal of work with comedians and circus performers. 1960s Pinder was working for the ABC when he produced his first concert/show and the first Lightshow Concert in Melbourne "The Electric Blues Thing" featuring Doug Parkinson in Focus, The Semblence of Dignity and the Ellis D Fogg Lightshow at the Carlton Cinema, 1968. During the late 1960s Pinder was a partner in a band management company called Let It Be inspired by the Beatles' song of the same name. This "rather hippie-esque business", as Pinder referred to it, managed Australian bands like Daddy Cool and Spectrum. His role was largely producing live shows, which led to the establishment of the T. F. Much Ballroom as a live venue. It was so successful that it established a brand that was taken on the road as The T. F. Much Rock Circus, touring with Ashtons Circus as part of the Aquarius Festival in Canberra. 1970s In the early 1970s Pinder established The Flying Trapeze Cafe, Australia's first comedy cabaret venue, in Melbourne. By 1977 he had opened The Last Laugh Theatre, Restaurant and Zoo (it had been built the year before). The Last Laugh is famous for discovering and featuring many comedians including Wendy Harmer, Mary-Anne Fahey, Brian Nankervis, Ian McFadyen, Peter Moon, Jane Turner, Richard Stubbs and many more who later appeared in such television comedy shows as The Comedy Company, The Big Gig, Fast Forward and The Late Show. Pinder was closely associated with Circus Oz – a contemporary circus founded in