When someone drops an astounding revelation over lunch, we tend to seek comfort in cliches.
A jaw-dropping bombshell left us gobsmacked in stunned silence.
Such moments can be awkward, but also unexpectedly life-affirming and prompt a rethink about our preconceptions (prejudices) of old people.
And so it was when Peter Clemenger, 98, the legendary advertising executive and arts benefactor once described as a charming parcel of contradictions, ordered his second cappuccino and said: “Now, I’m just thinking, one of the parts of my life that we haven’t touched on is my golf.”
Interviewing someone born in 1927 is different. The time frame stretches; it is hard to maintain your footing.
I am puzzled when the lifelong Melburnian says he is a Sydney Swans fan – that happened because (Swans predecessor) South Melbourne defeated Richmond in the 1933 grand final. When Clemenger says he has lived in his three-bedroom house in Toorak for 45 years, you think about downsizing. But he did downsize 45 years ago, after he and Joan (whom he married in 1956) were done raising their four boys.
Life is enjoyable, Clemenger says.
“Well, I sleep well. And my health is pretty good. And I’m lucky to be alive. That’s the truth. I’m 98, coming on 99, in November. And I enjoy each day for what it brings me.”
He takes about three tablets a day.
The world with the Middle East and Trump is “a bit topsy-turvy at the moment”.
“I don’t lie awake worrying about the world. The problems that the world faces is beyond me. I don’t try to fix that.”
Truth in advertising regulations would dictate that the NGV Garden Restaurant be renamed the NGV Construction Site Restaurant, as the windows survey a vast development zone soon to be The Fox: NGV Contemporary. Directly out of our window a metal fountain in the shape of a man is pissing a water jet into the pool. Why? Because modern art.
Clemenger, who has spent millions as an arts benefactor and whose family art collection included works by Smart, Olsen, Whiteley, is ridiculously sharp for his age. He is a prime example of what The New York Times calls “super-agers”, people over 70 who often possess brains that resist typical ageing, blessed by both genetic factors and a youthful mindset.
Clemenger sits down and looks puzzled. “What prompted all this?” he wants to know of our lunch.
As an executive, he had a reputation for straight talking, once asking Fletcher Jones in a business pitch if the retailer was ashamed of its shops, “because if you’re not, you should be”. He is polite and direct, his voice is broadly Australian, his left eye permanently closed. He is done with suits and ties, dressed for comfort in a shapeless blue jumper over a collared shirt and clad in thickened soled sneakers for stability, although he walks unaided. It doesn’t seem enough for a Melbourne autumn, but apart from the year and a half in the 1950s living in London, Clemenger has never lived anywhere else.
I tell him there was a segment on radio 3AW about an ad agency turning 80 this year and its founder was 98, and that it could only be him.
“I’m surprised that I would be the subject of an article, I guess,” he says later.
He was four years old and playing in a sandpit when his younger brother John, then two, struck him in the eye with a spade. “And I’ve been blind in it ever since. Which hasn’t helped.”
A famous local eye surgeon pronounced nothing could be done. “I didn’t think about it much. It didn’t help me playing tennis with the backhand shot because I couldn’t see.”
Despite this, Clemenger became a legend of the industry whose revenue kept Australian newspapers and television stations alive for decades, and his list of public-spirited achievements helped make Melbourne Melbourne.
He was central to the failed Melbourne 1996 Olympic bid, which helped Sydney’s triumphant bid for 2000. He founded the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, had the idea for the Melbourne Marathon, funded new plays at the Melbourne Theatre Company, funded research at the Centre of Eye Research Australia, was on the board of the NGV Foundation and created the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award with Joan, who died in 2022 after 56 years of marriage.
Advertising executives, like their best output, are engaging, interesting and fun. Less than five minutes in and Clemenger is talking about Sir Robert Menzies, which is not name-dropping, he just lived on the same street as the Clemenger family home. Prince Charles came to visit the former prime minister. The four Clemenger boys were quick to get over there.
His father, Jack Clemenger, founded the agency in 1946 in the basement of a Bourke Street hat shop with son Peter as the first employee. Peter and his brother John built the agency at 416 St Kilda Road into a powerhouse.
“It was like pitching for an account in Rome when the other agency was the Vatican,” adman turned broadcaster Phillip Adams once said. Employees included Seekers Athol Guy and Bruce Woodley and a young Jeff Kennett. “We didn’t pay him enough, so he left.”
He doubts anyone at the time thought Kennett would go on to become Victorian premier. “He helped the state. He made a lot of good decisions. He made a few mistakes. We all make mistakes, don’t we?”
The agency was famous for its riotous fancy dress Christmas parties. A sense of fun is important, Clemenger believes. “Oh, I think it adds the whole interest of being alive.”
Nowadays, life is centred on his four sons and seven grandchildren. His third son, Michael, “brings me a coffee on a Sunday morning and fixes my computer problems”.
I anticipate a boozy advertising lunch, but I am decades too late. Nonagenarians don’t eat much, and Clemenger doesn’t want to drink alcohol as he drove himself here, after his licence was renewed for three years.
Clemenger chose the NGV, where he is an honorary life benefactor, because the food is good. He just wants an entree, ordering the twice-baked gruyere souffle with asparagus, peas and truffle sauce. It arrives in the middle of a large plate nestled on a bed of peas and salad leaves.
I order the John Dory, which arrives artfully arranged, two generous slabs of seared fish atop celeriac and mushroom chanterelles.
There was a time (no longer) when advertising was at the confluence of business, media, politics, culture and money. The big advertising agencies not only organised the creative ads, but also bought the ad slots from TV, radio, newspapers and cinema on behalf of their clients, and thus funnelled vast amounts of money from brands to media owners (for a commission). Thus, everyone wanted to know the ad guys.
Those of us who lived through the 1980s know, thanks to Clemenger, that Yoplait is “French for yoghurt”. And two decades later, again thanks to Clemenger, that the consequence of forgetting to book your listing in the Yellow Pages would be your monstrous boss telling you, “Not happy, Jan.” Further back, the agency created the famous ICPOTA cartoon figure for The Age, which stood for “In (the) classified pages of The Age”.
For a series of client dinners, Clemenger interviewed four prominent businessmen. Such was his sway he landed Alan Bond, John Elliott, Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer, who really didn’t want to do it.
The Age
Bond was “fantastic”: “He hadn’t gone downhill, and he was just his whole life story of how he painted the railway stations across Western Australia.”
Elliott underperformed. “He arrived late, which was typical.”
But star billing went to Packer. “I really didn’t know him, and I was scared. He’d been staying in Corsica at some health farm, and he looked unbelievable. He looked like Charlton Heston.
“He went for 45 minutes and he was remarkably brilliant. I loved every minute of Kerry Packer.”
Clemenger still has the tape.
When Murdoch was conquering New York in the 1980s he took Clemenger and Joan to dinner.
It was the time of the Los Angeles Olympics and car marker John DeLorean was on trial for cocaine smuggling. The Clemengers went along with Lachlan and James. “We took the two Murdoch kids with us to listen to the court case, which was fabulous,” says Clemenger.
Were they well behaved? “Yes, they were. They were about 11 and 13 at the time.”
Lachlan, he says, has “gone on from strength to strength”.
“But it’s a sad thing. I mean, the battle between the two boys is not a very impressive thing to have happen.”
Clemenger, who banned his own sons from entering the family business, notes that Rupert ultimately got his own way. “So he’s happy … And he’s married for the fifth time, isn’t he?”
He orders another cappuccino, and it is then that Clemenger wants to talk about golf.
A change comes over him. I don’t yet know why, but this story matters to him. So I shall let him tell you as he told me.
“Well, I wasn’t a very good golfer, but I was an able golfer. And Peter Thomson invited me to play with him in America. I’d only played with him twice in Melbourne, and I played like a billy goat.
“Anyhow, for reasons that I don’t know to this day, he invites me to join him in 1985, playing in the tournament in Dallas. And I thought, ‘God, no, I don’t think I can do it.’ Because I don’t wish to make a billy goat of myself in front of the audience.
“He was the best golfer in the world at the time. But then I thought, my friends would all give their eye teeth for this. So I’ve got to do it. So I went and played with him in a four-day tournament, and it was so successful. He won the tournament. And we played for four years. It was a remarkable thing to do.
“I enjoyed every moment of it. Now, he’s dead. He won the British Open five times, if you know a bit about golf. And his wife is now living with me.”
A full two seconds pass before I am able to stammer out a single word response: “Right!”
Clemenger says his life with Mary Thomson “works very well. I mean, she does most of the cooking.” At this, he is laughing, between a chuckle and a giggle, at describing her in such terms.
The first date a few years ago was to the pictures. “We went to Cinema Nova. And it sort of started from there.”
“Who asked whom?”
“I don’t remember. ”
This is awkward but also thrillingly life-affirming. I am inordinately happy for him all at once.
I find myself asking the 98-year-old if he introduces Mary as a partner or girlfriend.
“Oh, just a friend. She’s got a few more health problems than I’ve got, so. She takes more tablets than I ever wish to take. It provides me with company. Which is very valuable.”
Happiness for Peter Clemenger at 98 is going to a good movie or good play or good exhibition. “Having dinner out with Mary. And keeping in touch with my children.”
After lunch, Clemenger is heading home to Toorak to watch Tipping Point. He has driven himself here in his old and trusty E-class Mercedes (a long time Clemenger client).
He offers me a lift as my home is on the way. Whether this is out of friendliness, old-fashioned courtesy or an ad executive’s instincts for keeping the media happy I cannot tell. Would refusal be a kind way of saving him the trouble or a rude ageist rejection?
If Peter Clemenger has taught me anything today, it is that life is about seeking out new adventures. So I gladly accept.
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CORRECTION
An earlier version of this story incorrectly said South Melbourne won the 1935 grand final. It’s been updated to say the 1933 grand final.
Stephen Brook is a special correspondent for The Age and CBD columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously deputy editor of The Sunday Age. He is a former media editor of The Australian and spent six years in London working for The Guardian.Connect via X or email.
