Bryan Dawe’s emotional tribute to John Clarke

For 27 years Bryan Dawe and John Clarke were political and cultural satirists that everyone looked to.  They would take the biggest political issues of the week and make them something that we could laugh about.  Sadly, that laughter turned to sadness last week when John Clarke suddenly passed away of a heart attack while hiking. He was only 68 years old.

While the tributes to this comedic legend piled in, many were left wondering how Bryan Dawe was doing. Dawe has been on a self-imposed media blackout as he comes to terms with the death of his comedic partner and friend. Breaking his silence to The Sydney Morning Herald, Dawe said, “I couldn’t talk about it. The realisation that I was never going to speak with this man again. We’d talked all the time for all those years about all sorts of stuff. He’d never forget what was going on in your life.”

Sadly, for Dawe, this was familiar territory as he shared, “My father died the same way. A massive heart attack. I was 15. It left me a Legacy kid. Mr Burnie was our legatee (Bryan was one of four children). He saved our family. I’ll never, ever forget him and what he did.” He added, “They’re a huge part of your life and overnight they’re gone. I re-lived the day my father died”.

Dawe admits that he got angry when Clarke’s wife, Helen called to tell him the news.  He said, “I thought she was ringing about something else. She said ‘Are you sitting down?’ and I said, ‘I don’t want to hear this, I don’t want to hear the rest of it.’

“We didn’t talk very long. And then I got very, very angry.

“Here was one of the kindest, most generous, most brilliant people I was going to meet in my life, and a whole list of people who could have gone before him were still there.

“The injustice of it.

“And then you think about John’s family, Helen and the girls, Lucia and Lorin, their loss. It’s not your loss.”

Dawe speaks on their meeting and the success of their short form weekly show here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hP2M3AwFCg

What was your favourite work of John Clarke? Who will fill the hole left by Clarke & Dawe?