John Pinder pioneered clubs and festivals

Leading Australian live comedy producer John Pinder has died at the age of 70, after contracting cancer.

He was a pioneer of the Melbourne scene, setting up Australia’s first comedy cabaret, The Flying Trapeze cafe, in the early 1970s, and later that decade opened The Last Laugh. In 1987, Pinder sold the club to become the co-ordinator to he first Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Fourteen years lated he would go on to found the the Big Laugh Comedy Festival – which in its seven-year stint reunited the Goodies for an Australian tour. After that he went on to help devise The World’s Funniest Island comedy event on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour.

Known for his brightly coloured spectacles, Pinder also co-produced the first live shows of The 3rd Degree, the comedy troupe which went on to become television sketch show The Ronnie Johns Half Hour; helped bankroll Circus Oz in its early days, and in 1988 put together a package of 50 Australian performers to appear under the banner Oznost in the Assembly Rooms at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Susan Provan, the Melbourne festival’s long-serving chief, paid tribute today, saying on Facebook: ‘Without John and his pal Roger Evans fearlessly and crazily doing what they did, the path for so many extraordinary artists would have been unthinkably more difficult. And without them creating the opportunity for Melbourne audiences in particular to develop and stretch their taste in comedy back then, we wouldn’t have the environment that feeds such a huge community now.

‘John and Roger gave me my first job in comedy and introduced me to Circus Oz and my life would have been very different without them. I am sad but also very grateful and we must celebrate John today and never forget his work and his contribution and his vision (and wacky glasses for seeing that vision more clearly).’

Comedian Felicity Ward, who started UN Comedy throughThe Ronnie Johns Half Hour, told Australian website ArtsHub the news was ‘ very sad. He was very important. Flamboyant. Deeply missed. Champion.’

Writer Dom Knight added via Twitter: ‘Farewell John Pinder, who was an incredible supporter of The Chaser, as he was so much else in comedy. This island is less funny without him.’

Published: 27 May 2015