He said his wife Margaret was his ‘best appointment’, called Malcolm Fraser ‘Kerr’s cur’ after the Dismissal and when Sir Winton Turnbull called out in parliament ‘I am a country member’, Gough interjected ‘I remember’.

When it was suggested he was funny, Gough responded: ‘Funny!  Funny? Witty, yes. Epigrammatic perhaps, but not funny. You make me sound like a clown.’

James Carleton, Radio National presenter and founder of the university club ‘The Dewy-Eyed Whitlamites’ presents a keepsake of Goughisms that prove the great man’s words: ‘I never said I was immortal, merely eternal.