Word games, wit and the pleasure of annoying people: a daughter's memoir sheds new light on the notoriously private John Clarke
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Wednesday, August 30, 2023
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I love him!” Trying to go along with it, Lorin replied, “I love him too”.
Key Points:
- I love him!” Trying to go along with it, Lorin replied, “I love him too”.
- The woman looked at her sharply and Lorin thought she was about to be admonished for her dark humour.
- Growing up with John Clarke – Lorin Clarke (Text) I know what she means.
- He then discovered numerous well-known poets had mythical antipodean counterparts such as Fifteen Bobsworth Longfellow, Sylvia Blath and R.A.C.V.
- More importantly, though, the decision not to impersonate the subjects prompted the audience to focus on what they were actually saying.
- “Dad knew the names of the woman at the next counter’s kids” and asked about them every time he went in.
Letters and leckies
- They had a father whose work meant he was around a lot and was every bit as funny as you might imagine.
- A “leckie” was “the process whereby a (usually male parental) person holds court on a topic for an extended period” while “the Abe” was the ABC.
- No one in the family ever said the sea was cold, opting instead for James Joyce’s “snotgreen” or “scrotum tightening sea”.
- They wrote each other letters deploying a range of argots.
- The council explained that since he could not prove that he did not receive the letters, there was nothing the council could do about that.
- The council explained that since he could not prove that he did not receive the letters, there was nothing the council could do about that.
Father and son
- What Lorin also sheds light on is the unhappiness her father experienced as a young child after his parents’ acrimonious divorce.
- John’s father, Ted, appeared for no good reason to blame his elder child (John had a younger sister, Anna) for his unhappy marriage and tormented him psychologically as he grew up.
- Ted’s politics were deeply conservative and he presented himself as a “posh British gentleman” even though his son later discovered he was actually “the bastard son of a socialist single mother in Ulster”, Ireland.
- Her “conflict-avoidant” father didn’t think he’d invented the character to annoy his father, but John did admit, once, that he liked annoying certain people, “because if they didn’t like it, it was a sure sign it was working”.
- Late in life, though, father and son reconciled.