The Wit of Whitlam

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.