Dave Graney is joined by actor, playwright and director Greg Carroll to remember their friend and collaborator Barry Dickins, whose writing gave Melbourne’s pubs, forgotten corners and overlooked lives a strange, luminous beauty.

Dave and Greg share memories of the man himself: funny, tender, and capable of turning disaster into a fantastic story. Barry moved through the city at his own pace, stopping to talk, observe and consider people in a way that feels increasingly rare.

They reflect on the laughter he brought into rehearsal rooms, friendships and everyday life, as well as the sadness and vulnerability that sat alongside his wit. Even when writing about poverty, violence or loss, Barry found warmth without softening the truth, granting difficult lives the attention and care they deserved.

Their tribute remembers a singular writer who saw people in all their complexity, and whose work gave Melbourne’s outsiders, dreamers and ratbags a poetry of their own.

“I cannot tell you how fantastic it was when I arrived at the Pram Factory and met Barry Dickins,” Greg recalls. “It changed my life, it really did.”

Vale Barry Dickins.