Editing Fred Dagg (section)

==Works==
John Clarke slowly refined the character of Fred Dagg in short comedic interview segments that screened occasionally on the New Zealand current affairs show ''Nationwide'' throughout 1974. In December of that year the character was the subject of a satirical [[mockumentary]] spoof episode on the [[NZBC]] farming show, ''[[Country Calendar]]''. Fred Dagg went on to become a household name in New Zealand in 1975 with further comedy skit appearances on the Television One news programme ''Tonight at Nine'' and with the release by Clarke (as Dagg) of two singles with [[EMI]], "Traditional Air"/"Unlabelled", and "We Don't Know How Lucky We Are"/"Larry Loves Barry", with the latter making it to number 17 on the national music single charts.

An album called ''Fred Dagg's Greatest Hits'' followed and was a massive seller.<ref>{{Citation | author1=Clarke, John | title=Fred Dagg's greatest hits | publication-date=1976 | publisher=EMI | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/18376022 | access-date=11 February 2020 }}</ref> Thirty years after its release this album remains one of New Zealand's all-time biggest selling records.

Another single recorded with [[Diamond Lil (band)|Diamond Lil]] was an even bigger hit in 1976. "Gumboots"/"Save The Last Dance For Me" climbed to number 6 on the charts. "Gumboots" was a modified version of [[Billy Connolly]]'s "If It Wasna For Your Wellies", itself an adaptation of the old song "The Work Of The Weavers".<ref>"Gumboots" ''New Zealand Geographic'' No85 May–June 2007</ref>

A second album, ''Fred Dagg Live'' was released in 1976.<ref>{{Citation | author1=Clarke, John | title=Fred Dagg live | publication-date=1976 | publisher=EMI Records | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/21074679 | access-date=11 February 2020 }}</ref> Following on in the style of the first, it was also a huge seller.

1977 saw the release of the film ''[[Dagg Day Afternoon]]'', co-directed and co-written by John Clarke and [[Geoff Murphy]], and starring Fred Dagg. The film, under 45 minutes long, is essentially a series of sketches tied together with a loose narrative about Dagg's secret mission to find a "bionic sheep" (or 6 million dollar ram) which has been lost by the government.

By 1978 John Clarke and his young family had settled in Australia but he briefly commuted back to New Zealand during that year to create a Fred Dagg television series for South Pacific Television (TV2). ''The Fred Dagg Lectures on Leisure'' consisted of 20 five-minute long episodes which screened Sunday nights from September 1978 through to February 1979. The programmes featured Fred holding forth on a variety of diverse subjects such as golf, photography, how to write an autobiography, UFO spotting, saving whales and tree-felling. The original master tapes of all these episodes no longer exist and are thought to have either been wiped or lost by SPTV when the company was dissolved and amalgamated with Television One in 1980.<ref>{{cite journal|title=First steps: an overview of John Clarke's television work in New Zealand before 1980|url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2040610X.2019.1592370|journal=Comedy Studies|year=2019 |doi=10.1080/2040610X.2019.1592370 |access-date=16 June 2021|last1=Horan |first1=Paul |last2=Hutchings |first2=Mark |volume=10 |pages=119–126 |s2cid=194640769 }}</ref>

A third and final album was released in 1979 called ''The Fred Dagg Tapes''.<ref>{{Citation | author1=Clarke, John | title=The Fred Dagg tapes | publication-date=1979 | publisher=Festival | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/18182384 | access-date=11 February 2020 }}</ref>

In 1998 the ''Fred Dagg Anthology'' CD was released by [[Columbia Records|Columbia]].<ref>{{Citation | author1=Clarke, John | author2=Rayner, Eddie | title=Fred Dagg anthology | publication-date=1998 | publisher=Columbia | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/28188668 | access-date=11 February 2020 }}</ref> It contained most of Dagg's best-known material. A lot of the second half of the ''Anthology'' isn't genuine "Fred Dagg" material, having been created by Clarke after he'd retired Fred Dagg and moved to Australia. A number of [[John Clarke (satirist)#Mock interviews|mock interviews]] were first broadcast on Australian current affairs television, and lampoon prominent people (such as businessman [[Alan Bond (businessman)|Alan Bond]]) who would not be familiar to a New Zealand audience. There are also six "farnarkeling" reports, which parody sports news and were first performed by Clarke on the [[Australian Broadcasting Corporation|ABC]]'s ''[[The Gillies Report]]''.

"We Don't Know How Lucky We Are!" was re-released in 1998 with revised lyrics. This re-recording was driven by Graeme Hill, and Sky TV's ''[[SportsCafe]]''.