A Bit of a Dagg (Fred Dagg Live)

You're wanted on the phone mate. Yeah, I'll take over here. Could do with a touch of class.

– Fred Dagg relieves expert yodeller John Grenell and gives it a 'crack' himself

...let's not take any credit from Fred Dagg. Everything he did was funny, typical and a cut above, even if one of the sketches was first performed in 1971 at a Victoria University revue. So if it's Fred Dagg you want to see, and you don't mind an awful lot of window-dressing, take in the show. If you miss it, the SIS will want to know why.

– Excerpt from Paul Dykes' review of a 1976 Bit of a Dagg concert in Palmerston North, The Manawatu Standard, reprinted 10 April 2017

The Māori guys in the crew had a big pot of soup which was always full. They’d stop on the side of the road to get some puha or we’d shout them a few pork bones … In Nelson, John and I almost got caught because hotels had those smorgasbord lunches. John and I would go in and fill our plates for about $15 a head and then pass the food out the window to the Māori boys.

– Concert promoter Ian Magan remembers the 1976 A Bit of a Dagg tour, AudioCulture, 10 April 2017

Just before I go, a rugby joke: the All Black selectors.

– Fred Dagg closes his comic monologue

Gumboots they are wonderful, gumboots they are swell / 'Cause they keep out the water, and they keep in the smell / And when you're sittin' round at home, you can always tell / When one of the Trevs has taken off his gumboots

– The iconic first verse of Fred Dagg's 'The Gumboot Song'

Hello, it's gone red. The Prime Minister's not going to like that.

– Fred Dagg (John Clarke) reacts to a sudden lighting change on stage

They whipped me down to sick bay ... and Bruce Bayliss was lyin' in the next pit. That's the day I met him. I said "what's the matter with you, mate?" and he said "I've got measles". I said "oh yeah? How long you had them?" He said "oh, off and on for about a year and a half now". And the nurse came in. She said "hello Bruce it looks like your measles are clearing up" and he pulled out a red felt pen and gave himself a relapse.

– Fred Dagg (John Clarke) describes meeting best mate Bruce Bayliss in sick bay at school

The role of the black-singleted satirist comes easy, he [John Clarke] says. It's just a matter of doing what he enjoys doing most. 'It's called job satisfaction,' the man said as he signed autographs at a city shopping mall yesterday. 'Employee participation - at board level.' He seemed to be uncomfortable as the endless wall of faces thrust scraps of paper into his hand, with a request for a certain greeting. 'Get in behind,' he would write, and then, for a change, 'kick it in the guts, Trev'.

– John Clarke, interviewed after the 1976 Bit of a Dagg tour hit his hometown of Palmerston North, The Manawatu Standard, 10 April 2017

The songs came about partly because songs are fun, and I came from a generation that used to sing all the time. That's what we used to do at parties — you'd sing.

– John Clarke on Fred Dagg's musical side, in 2006 documentary The Dagg Sea Scrolls