John Wilkes

**John Wilkes** (unofficially known as **Karaoke King Father** between 2018 - 2022 due to Wilkes Sr. being the karaoke king) (1944 - 2022) was an Australian actor, best known for his role as Psycho Dad in all 8 Psycho Dad films and in the 2015 series The Life of TheBrisbaneKid and the 2020 series Island Life. He remains the only original actor to portray the same character throughout the era of The Life of TheBrisbaneKid, The Psycho Videos and Island Life as Austin Holahan only got in The Life of TheBrisbaneKid and the first five Psycho Dad films.

## Early Life and career (1944 - 1997)

He was born in a southwest Sydney suburb Bankstown. He had moved on to Queensland later on in life. He had lived in Townsville up until 1971 and relocated to Karumba. After the 1974 floods had receded, he went touring around the tropical suburbs across Queensland. By the 1990s, he was back in Southeast Queensland taking the job as a cab driver. Right up until he exited the taxi industry, he was with QCabs (now merged with Black & White Cabs), Black & White Cabs & Yellow Cab Co. (now 13cabs) before retiring from the taxi industry in 1994. He returned to recreational fishing afterwards. In 1998, he had a son named Sam (Sam renamed himself to Austin in 2018 and died a year later in 2019).

## Life with Sam in Brisbane (1998 - 2008)

He had settled family issues during the new Millennium. John and Lyn eventually started living with each other, with Sam and Sam's brother. Because of their divorce of their respective previous spouses, Wilkes and Tyler did not get married at all. They had remained as partners instead. These four then began a new chapter in their life until a family member departed from the family in February 2008. With Sam's brother moving out to live with his biological father, the remaining three moved up to North Queensland in 2008 (Lyn and Sam not approving this idea at the beginning), opening a new chapter of their lives.

## Living in North Queensland & Retirement Years (2008 - 2020)

He had lived in Karumba from 2008 to 2013. He had won about $600 from two Choy Sun Doa machines during his time up there and had participated in golf events on selected Sundays. He had previously visited up there in September 2007. After his son graduated from primary school, John got a professional fisherman license in 2012 for commercial fishing in the Gulf. John had retired from professional fishing in the later half of 2012. John was well aware of schooling laws and, as part of a last ditch effort to continue living up in the Gulf of Carpentaria, had decided to write to the Minister for Transport requesting a school bus services for the locals up at Karumba alongside a support letter from the then head mistress of Karumba Primary School but of course this failed, with the Minister stating that numbers would be too insufficient to warrant a bus service. John took his anger and made a "Once Upon a Time in Queensland" outlining everything that he knew about the inevitable decline and such negligence of the Government from both sides of Parliament. In 2013, after the school bus proposal failed, he, Sam and Lyn moved to Innisfail, where a family that used to live in Karumba until 2010 lived in Mourilyan. The family living there had relocated to Cooktown a year later and then, John, Sam and Lyn relocated again to Kurrimine Beach in 2014. Sam & Lyn lived there for a little over a year while John was there for a total time of six years (five years as the sole tenant). His partnership with Lyn suffered in the final few years prior and the final straw came on 14 June 2015, after he made a threat to her in retaliation for the clogged outhouse on the previous day. His 19 year partnership with Lyn ended on Sam's 17th Birthday.

In 2018, he was unofficially known as Karaoke King Father due to Wilkes Sr. being crowned as the new Karaoke King.

Anyways, by 2020, after Lyn's major stroke, Sam Wilkes Jr. got him to relocate to Russell Island.

## Island Life & Final Years (2020 - 2022)

In March 2020, he announced he will move away from the mainland of Queensland to a Moreton Bay island on 1 May 2020. Wilkes Sr. (Wilkes Jr. died in April 2020) moved in with him a month later on 4 June. Up until February 2022, he has done numerous amounts of wrongdoing. Sam Wilkes Sr. has described the situation as "driving self or others to an early grave". On July 1 and several times afterwards, he has verbally threatened, used, blackmailed and other means to his substitute son, leading to an early grave. Sam Wilkes Sr. really wants to escape Psycho Dad's but cannot rent, buy or otherwise move elsewhere because he has NO credit, NO referees and cannot afford accommodation. In 2021, Psycho Dad's driver door on his AU Falcon had been partially destroyed in the Russell Island IGA parking lot and investigated in to finding a replacement door and eventually accepted an AU III door and he somehow installed the replacement door, while fixing his partially broken front bumper pillar, which suffered minor damage. Wilkes had decided to re-paint the door white but the promise to re-paint the white door was short lived as the wagon ended service on September 7 in a car crash, he and his son Wilkes Sr. luckily survived but John suffered cracked ribs with Wilkes Sr. lucky to still live having been in terrible health since as far back as 2016. Wilkes also found out he was diagnosed with cancer during his stay in hospital (it had become terminal since it had spread to his lungs and other organs) and was given 3-6 months to live. In November 2021, in the midst of John's EOL, Wilkes Sr. announced that John's final scenes in Island Life will be on January 25, 2022. John left the Island Life series at age 77, making him the oldest actor to depart from the series. His final public appearance was on 5 December 2021 at an Open Mic event at Russell Island RSL. Despite departing Island Life, he continued living day-to-day at Russell Island until mid-February, where he would leave Russell Island for the final time.

### Death

In mid-February, he was transported to hospital in an attempt to have the pain in his left leg fixed. He was transferred to palliative care a couple days later and had stayed there for the rest of his life. By this point, the cancer had already spread to his left leg despite stating earlier that month that he was in remission. He died from cancer in a palliative care facility at age 77 on March 1, 2022. Episode 635 of Island Life (recorded 28 February 2022) was broadcasted the night before his death in dedication to him. Wilkes Sr.'s last words to him were "I'll see you up there in 48 years time."

## Filmography

The final two months of Sam and Lyn's stay in Kurrimine Beach was added in to Psycho Dad: The Movie (2015 film) later in 2015, delaying the release later in 2017 after experiencing rendering problems. As of 2020, some of the film archives of Psycho Dad: The Movie and Psycho Dad: The Movie 2 still exists (some original footage only) while the remaining footage is lost forever. Sam would return multiple times in 2016, 2017 and 2018 to film the Psycho Dad movies. After Sam's death in 2019, Sam Wilkes Jr. took the helm of the cameraman in Psycho Dad: The Movie 6 (and died 3 months later) before Sam Wilkes Sr. took over and filmed Psycho Dad: The Movie 7 & 8. By 2020, John was the only original actor remaining in the films.