A broadcaster of renown: John Cargher

The SMH ran a good, solid run-down on John Cargher's life on Saturday which is worth a read.

Pinchas Cargher was born in London, the only child of an English father, Jacob, a rabbinical student, and a German mother. When he was only two, his mother developed tuberculosis and he went with her to a sanatorium on the German island of Foehr, in the North Sea. She died not long after they arrived and his father sent him to a boarding school in Germany, then to his aunt in Madrid. In Madrid he started to educate himself by reading in the local library. This multinational background - he could be prickly if asked about it - explained his slightly unusual accent.

I'm scratching my head over the last sentence. I interviewed Cargher seven or eight years ago and he happily explained all of this, and more. He told me he had been "fobbed off" on the Spanish relatives and that he'd even been signed up to a trial Kibbutz (in Germany of all places!) by his father.

He also listed many of the thirty 'careers' he had in his life: from toolmaker to diamond merchant. His longest full-time job in Melbourne was manager of the National Theatre, though his first dealings with Australia date back to the late 40s, when -- as an agent in London -- he booked talent for "The Firm" -- J C Williamson Productions Ltd.


Sadly, the SMH obit gives little sense of Cargher's self-deprecating wit and his sly sense of humour. He was a big kid. Even at 81, when I met him. 190 cm tall, he was a very big kid.

Off air, he was an irreverent joker, more likely to put himself down ("I'm a complete coward," he told me in all seriousness, explaining that he enlisted in the Royal Air Force rather than risk being drafted into the army!) than any of the opera singers that he commented on.

Still, he couldn't resist the occasional cutting remark. This is a classic Cargher left-right combination: "Leona Mitchell sang a magnificent Turandot. What a pity that the opera was Suor Angelica." Another singer, a real Turandot this time, was praised, backhandedly, as "the mouse that roared."

To his death, Cargher was more than a little miffed that one of his best lines has become such a part of our culture it is rarely attributed to him. It usually begins "as they saying goes..." or "as they say..." Writing about the "Great Australian Opera House" in 1983, Cargher quipped: what a pity they built the outside in Sydney and the inside in Melbourne.

Lest we forget... Cargher said it!


See also the ABC's page on Singers of Renown where the image was nicked from.