Great to see you here, Lizzie,
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I have written four detailed travelogues containing observations from our recent trip to the Caribbean, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, for…
I loved Spooner with Blackout Bowen wearing a Napoleon hat.
China’s investment in nuclear power construction has well-night tripled since 2019 In 2023 China had 10 nuclear reactor units either…
Ah Wally beat me to it.
There really is no comment that would encapsulate the entirety of Barry Humphries.
So the best that can be done is to return to his origins and to what his father said to him on many occasions:
“Barry, you’ll learn the hard way.”
As a tribute to Barry I’m going re-watch him, as Sir Les Patterson, gate crashing Bill Leak’s speech at the Centre for Independent Studies in 2017.
He was endlessly inventive and funny. These days comedy is neither, which is sad. Vale Dame Edna.
Like I suspect many others the first time I saw him in action was in The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, a character which he invented. Marvelous movie. I can even forgive Phillip Adams a little for his effort to bring it about.
“As a tribute to Barry I’m going re-watch him, as Sir Les Patterson, gate crashing Bill Leak’s speech at the Centre for Independent Studies in 2017.”
Yes BBS, and I’ll shed a tear because we lost Bill in 2017 and now we’ve lot Barry.
I hope both are laughing in heaven.
You know what I miss most about the old Australia? We laughed and laughed and laughed. Once upon a time both the left and right in this country laughed but not now, because cracking jokes and laughing is waaaacist, it’s transphobic, it’s Islamophobic, it’s white supremacist, and it’s “Nazi”. Now we vomit up singularly unfunny people such as Hannah Gadsby, Jim Jefferies, and Tom Ballard, who profess to be comedians, but who are far from it.
ABC describes him as ‘actor and screen icon’ Apparently not a comedian then.
Barry Humphries had no time for transgenderism, nor for the cancelling culture of it. He and Clive James spoke a lot of truth to leftist power, especially in their later years. Both were giants of the sixties scene in Melbourne, Sydney and then on to London. They influenced and changed a generation here at home as well as bringing a fresh new sort of larrikin Australian onto the world stage.
He was an impressionist, who did some wonderful caricatures of ‘types’, such as Sandy Stone, as well as Sir Les Patterson and the glorious Dame Edna. With Peter Cook he founded the Melbourne Comedy Festival and has the distinct honour of having been banned from it in recent years, so low has it fallen.
Vale to a fellow Octagenarian. It’s sad when those who were the best of us depart.
The content of this is likely to cause offence, outrage and umbrage | Bill Leak
It says everything you need to know about the state of comedy in this country that the Melbourne ‘Comedy’ Festival took his name off their highest award in 2019. Why? Because he openly resisted transgenderism, and to make it worse, he was an internationally famous female impersonator and comedian.
It makes me think of Lilliput, these pipsqueaks who are not fit to wash Dame Edna’s smalls getting all sniffy and superior.
Vale, Barry.
2013 R.V.P – Arrival of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles – National Anthem – Brief appearance of Dame Edna Average of Australia.
The 1938-1942 Australian generation is my generation: Robert Hughes (d. 2012), Clive James (d. 2018) and now Barry Humphries (d. 2023), with the marginally younger Richard Neville (d. 2016) also having departed this life. Only Germaine Greer survives from that quintet of enfants terribles born as war clouds gathered and then exploded. Greer is living quietly with family in Melbourne, last I heard. Women do tend to live longer. Perhaps in more recent years we drink and eat less, exercise more, gave up smoking, calmed down?
From 1963 on, I’d see various members of this quintet around and knew of them in my early years in Push pubs and at Sydney University and in Melbourne stays at group student houses back in those days as we hitched or drove old unfit cars between cities on a whim and turned from Sydney’s Folk Attic live to Dylan LP’s in real attics and share houses as the Beatles and Stones arrived. Hughes I’d met when I first moved to Sydney at seventeen and joined the Contemporary Art Society in 1960. I was influenced then by an artist lover whom I adored as he mused upon my youth (ten years older than me, he’s dead now too, d.2014). All a huge learning curve for a girl from Mt. Druitt with only three broken years of high school to her name.
Late to uni in 1964, I joined in with the boomer generation. We became overtly political by 1968, moving then into the 70’s Days of Wine and Rage, which Frank Morehouse wrote about, another of the ’38 generation (d. 2022). Another significant war baby in Sydney is Keith Windschuttle, editor of Quadrant, with whom I share a birth year (1942) and an occasional coffee. We’ve had some laughs about our past histories and unrecognised cross-overs, for he was surprised to find out that knew me under another name, as someone else’s wife, in the 70’s. I suspect more Cats here are baby boomers than war babies now though. Areff, for instance, whom I’ve met through Quadrant, is more of my present husband’s generation (ten years younger) so a categoric boomer.
To my mind, Barry Humphries’ greatest attribute is not just that he was a genius as a satirist, but that, as Rowan Dean says, he made us laugh and think at the same time — a mind-changing combination.
I have fond memories of waving my gladdie (the whole audience got one!) in Melbourne in 1973, and happily I saw Dame Edna again in Canberra in 2016 (I think). Our Aussie humour is diminished with his passing, but hopefully will remain around the barbeque in the lives of real people.
I’ve recounted this here before, but it is so apt it is worth repeating. calli in the OT mentioned Barry’s mother disdainfully describing a cake as ‘bought.’ Here is another example of how far apart their mentalities were.
When Barry was a young man, he kept his books at his parents’ place as he peripatated (!) about. One day, he came home to find that his mother had got rid of all of his books. In response to his protests:
“But Barry,” she said, “you’ve read them.”
She really couldn’t understand what the problem was.
That became the core of a lot of his work – the gap between people who ‘get it’ and those who don’t and never will.
Oma was disgusted with this character…repulsed. I was to young at the time as to grasp why.
Legend.
Sir Les Patterson (Barry Humphries) 1982. Pt. 1.
Lizzie manages to make the death of a giant of Australian culture all about her, as usual.
It will be difficult to look at a gladiolus again.
ABC: ‘His legacy was tarnished in recent years when his name was removed blah blah… controversial comments blah blah blah’ God they are despicable.
When Barry was a young man, he kept his books at his parents’ place as he peripatated (!) about. One day, he came home to find that his mother had got rid of all of his books. In response to his protests:
“But Barry,” she said, “you’ve read them.”
I probably read it wrong, but I thought that happened when he was quite young, say 10 or 11.
Barry Humphries: The satirist and comedian whose life was dominated by Dame Edna Everage
After leaving university, he joined the Melbourne Theatre Company where he wrote and performed songs and sketches.
It was in the theatre company’s tour bus that, according to his autobiography, Humphries first came up with the idea of a suburban housewife called Mrs Norm Everage, the character making her first stage appearance in a sketch Humphries performed in 1955.
It was supposed to be a one-off performance but, after Humphries had moved to the Philip Street Revue Theatre in Sydney in 1957, he decided to give Norm, rechristened Edna, another outing and she became something of a hit.
…
In 1959, Humphries moved to London where he quickly became part of the new wave of satirical comedy featuring artists such as Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller.
Barry Humphries: A life in pictures
A picture in the abovementioned link brought back memories:
Actress Emily Perry was among several who played Dame Edna’s long-suffering companion (and former bridesmaid) Madge Allsop.
So many times I saw and loved his shows. I’ve watched a re-watched so many clips online. I loved Les Patterson so much that I wore a green polyester safari suit as a going away outfit from our wedding in 1990 as a tribute.
A friend this morning directed me to a clip of Edna with Jane Seymour that I had not seen before.
Edna complimenting Jane’s hair says “What colour is it?” Then, “Well, what colour did it say on the packet?”. Rapier wit. Vale, Barry. Thanks for the joy.
Edna live was not that satirical just pissingly funny as she monstered audience members or made phone calls to their relatives.
Acching sides and cheeks.
Now Lance Boyle of the ACUNT that was satirical.
A very fine observer of the human condition, as was Billy Connolly. (That’s “Sir William” to the rest of us).
I did “tech” work on shows by both; including a tour with Barry to north Queensland.
Once Barry was in costume for a character, he WAS that character. The crew no longer spoke to “Barry” they were dealing with a full-blown Dame Edna, Sir Les or Sandy, in FULL character. Unnerving at first, but how else can a performer do such work.
His autobiography, “My Life as Me”, is an interesting ride.
Not unlike the late Clive James’ autobiography, “Unreliable Memoirs”.
Vale Barry, Edna, Les and Sandy.
As one would expect, every one of Barry’s fans has a favourite character or skit.
We always have a good laugh when we have a minor accident and recall his character Sandy Stone’s warning for those getting older:
“Just don’t fall down..’cause they’ll put you in a home!”
God bless him. He saw all our foibles.
Thanks for the story about the books Joanna, the mother from hell, but she went to all his shows.
It was probably a very valuable collection, he was a discriminating book buyer as a uni student and his father funded it, what a credit to his tolerance, he was such a bogan and so hen-pecked by his wife.
Barry described him furtively drinking beer with a colleague in his own home, because his wife did not approve:)
I only saw him the once, in Adelaide, some time and laughed and was a little bit shocked at Les Boyle sending the airlines out on strike so his wife wouldn’t catch him with his mistress … surely not … aren’t unions meant to help people?
A layer was peeled back and they just kept on peeling.
Thank you Barry
“I hope both are laughing in heaven”
I don’t know whether they knew each other, or ever met, but they’d have a lot to chuckle over.
Mrs D, then 17 and several years before I met her, worked as a receptionist at a record importer, and her boss was a friend of Barry Humphries.
One day he rocks up unannounced and asks to speak to her boss. “Do you have an appointment?”. “No, but I am sure he will see me.” Followed by … Drumroll please … “Don’t you know who I am?” “Sorry no, may I please have your name?” “Barry Humphries”. She buzzes the boss “Mr X, there is a Mr Humphreys here to see you”
One of the older employees came over and told Mrs D who Barry Humphries was. Didn’t help much as up to this point Mrs D had never heard of Dame Edna etc.
My favourite Barry Humphries moment was watching him being interviewed, and he said he was doing a show in Washington, and about half way through the first half, he hears a a woman say to her partner, “if I didn’t know better I would say that is a man wearing a dress”
Teh Paywallian obit is a cracker. Presumably in the dead tree version on Monday if you don’t have a subscription. Or find a cafe with one and treat yourself to a decent coffee.
Spent a bit of time re-watching classic clips of Dame Edna, Sir Les etc etc – and laughing my head off.
A national treasure . . . but whose ?
I always reckoned he was far more enjoyed and appreciated in the UK than in Australia . . . which I reckon says a lot about the sense of humour and character of both countries.
So Mrs Humphries tried to wear the pants and she liked to twist the knife too?
Rafe, I just noticed that you spelled “Humphries” as “Humpries”.
Barry would have loved that!
Here’s a treat.
Three Amigos.
I always reckoned he was far more enjoyed and appreciated in the UK than in Australia . . . which I reckon says a lot about the sense of humour and character of both countries.
I dunno.
Australia wasn’t big enough to make a living out of being an actor then, but England was.
What he was saying is that Australia has a massive Woman Problem, the problem being that Australian women wear the pants and that that reality dominates every part of Australian life.
No ones going to Upset The Applecart by pointing that out, though.
My opinion, he’ll be cancelled soon.
Did he ever say anything that could be construed as AntiSemitic?
I’ll bet he did.
OR
Go to Google and type in “Barry Humphries obituary” and up it will come.
Article will only come up once.
If you need to view it again later then you will have to clear your history.
Being a bogan who’s easily pleased, I can watch and re-watch Les Patterson interviews from the 1980s and roar laughing every time.
Now that we’re ruled by language fascists and policed by their useful idiots in the news media, we’ll probably not see that freedom again for centuries, if at all.
I wet myself once watching Sir Les in Adelaide and nearly did again at one of Humphries’ shows in Darwin, after which I met the great man and chatted to him as an anonymous fan.
We’ve lost a comedy genius responsible in no small way for Australia’s reputation as a nation that doesn’t bow to bullshit, even if that reputation is no longer warranted.
Seeya, Baz. You’re already missed. I wish I could think with the clarity you could summon at will.
My favourite Ozzie comedian. His ability to “extract the urine” will never be surpassed in any of our lifetimes.
Never really enjoyed the Dame, but Sir Les Patterson – an even more larger than life character just crying out to be realised.
Yes, the Seventies really were that hideous.
“The Yartz“. 🙂
The ALPBC’s obits today have conspicuously failed to mention Sir Les.
Or Lance Boyle.
As a matter of fact, I can’t find Lance Boyle on YouTube at all.
It’s like he got memoryholed.
The Bazza McKenzie movies were an almighty backlash against the cultural cringe.
The poms were portrayed as sexually repressed cross dressing poofters.
Not far from the truth. It’s why English Roses love Ozzies. The latter are real men.
Or at least they used to be, before ending up even more parodic queens than the poms.
Gladioli, surely. Who would buy just one?
A legend from a time when humour. in the form of satire, was used to punch up against the powers that be, political or cultural or national. Sadly humour is mostly now done to punch down and reinforce dictates of the cultural elite.
Will be missed … I will be waving some gladioli on his funeral date.
Rabz- hmmm – your 2 contribution – yep – but go above the midlands in Europe and they are’nt poofta’s – it’s scary.
The cultural cringe – what do you put that down to.
HH was witty – Joan Collins interview is a treat.
From what I understand BH was not far removed from. sir Paterson. Ask the women who mingled with him.
Small minded, purse lipped neo-Stalinists.
If they could photoshop his life & opinions from history they would.
He was a conservative.
It is a difficult, if not almost impossible concept for collectivists to comprehend. That anyone among their milieu would dare to depart from the Groupthink.
There will not be any of that.
Lizzie, funny you should mention Humphries and Hughes in the same sentence, as the former detested Hughes. He is scathing in his bio — a terrific read — about the arts wanker scuttling about London in motorcycle leathers. And the hate didn’t ease with the years, as he made a similar reference, without actually naming him, at Bill Leak’s memorial.
I expect there are more than a few people who wouldn’t piss on Hughes if he was on fire. He didn’t make many friends in the West after nearly killing himself and some poor mongrel near Broome.
Glad to say I saw him live once. My SIL got picked on and loved it.
He was a conservative.
He wasn’t a conservative at all.
It is a difficult, if not almost impossible concept for collectivists to comprehend. That anyone among their milieu would dare to depart from the Groupthink.
Humphries never had ideological issues with any of his contemporaries.
Bringing up nonentities as Strawmen to pigeonhole Humphries is pretty sneaky, particularly the day after he died.
headcase appears, like most rusted-on leftoids, unable to conceive of a “conservative” political stance beyond membership of certain political party and adherence to the “wrong” side of cultural wedge issues of the day.
Showing ignorance, again. Try reading a little and learning how many types of “conservative” there are before proclaiming what people are or are not.
Sometime in the early 60’s, Dad was driving us south on Queen St Melbourne, as we were crossing Little Bourke St Dad pointed out a man on the NE corner wearing a cape. He said never trust a man who wears a cape or his jumper over his shoulders and knotted around his neck. Of course it was Barry Humphries. Many years later I was at the Vic Footlights Ball, on the same table as BH. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what my Dad said about him.
Try reading a little and learning how many types of “conservative” there are …
How many types of “conservatives” there are?
Is there a special subset of “conservatives” in Alimak World who entertain people by dressing up in Drag?
… before proclaiming what people are or are not
Have a natter to Rabz, then.
He’s the one who pigeonholed Barry Humphries, not me.
Duh, its only considered a pigeon hole by people who simply know nothing about non-lefty politics at all. How about just keeping your inane verbiage to yourself for the next few days while Humphries is remembered by people who actually know something of his roots and culture.
Of course the ABC wouldn’t mention Sir Les. Never forget that he started life as a parody of the intellectual and artistic pretensions of the Whitlam government. I think he was modelled on Arts Minister Doug McClelland. I can’t find it on the web, but I remember Les posing with a copy of ‘Venomous Toads of Northern Australia’ to demonstrate his Labor mates’ interest in literature.
The knighthood was a take on the egregious Sir Jack Egerton: ‘I said to Her Majesty, you know, Yer Majesty, you can stuff socialism.’
As I said at CL’s blog, full marks to that old leftist lesbian Miriam Margoyles for speaking up for Barry and deploring his treatment by the talentless pissants at the Melbourne ‘Comedy’ Festival.
Bazz turned up at the Leak’s farewell gig as Sir Les.
He also ran afoul of the ALPBC some time before for some transgression, which I can’t remember – an appearance on Q&ALPBC?
He may have stated the bleeding obvious about something, Eddles.
You’re the grate detective, get to it.
Composite of McClelland and Victorian Liberal Cabinet Minister John Rossiter is what I read.
Barry Humphries at a book launch at Berkelouw Books in Newtown a couple of decades back.
“First of all, I’d like to acknowledge the original owners of this site …
(pause)
the Berkelouws.”
God rest his soul.
Alamak!
A gladiolus is correct…the singular form. Gladioli is plural.
Rowan Dean’s tribute to Barry Humphries on Outsiders was outstanding.
I said goodbye to Barry in sadness and review at 8.50am here. Many will say his passing is like the end of an era. I certainly felt that. In reflection, and sadly, at 10.05am I reminisced about his era of Australians born just before or during the Second World War, an era of my own birth and which I lived through in the general ambit of those days. It was another time and place. It’s gone now.
Everyone has their memories and on this thread many are recounted. Please allow me mine without rancorous comment.
Just part of the era of Australians asserting themselves o/s, areff. They didn’t all like each other even though they all came from the same Sydney-Melbourne pond and knew it.
I heard Hughes speak informally over drinks at the CAS occasionally in 1961 and thought he made good sense of something I didn’t understand, contemporary art, which I had personal reasons for wanting to comprehend. I had Mt. Druitt ways of assessing people in those days. I put him down as a ‘rich stuck-up beatnik’. Probably not too far off the mark. 🙂
Rabz says:
April 23, 2023 at 5:54 pm
Same here, Dame Edna? Nah.
But everything else he has done resonated.
Barry Humphries and Quadrant
Watched the fillum about a Bonza Boy from the Antipodes, last night.
The eye flick to the camera when Edna read about Princess Anne climbing trees
while her brother looked on was pure Barry.
Just an anecdote which I thought summed him up well.
Apparently his stage trick to get a genuine disgusted reaction from interviewers as Sir les was to smear a bit of Vaseline on the palm of his hand..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nULFMp4jKBo
“if I didn’t know better I would say that is a man wearing a dress”
Thats a keeper.
Probably more time-and-place than small-world, but both my Mum and Dad encountered Barry Humphries well before they encountered each other. Both had negative impressions, however, with Mum noting he was restless on a flight from NZ to Melbourne and constantly roaming the aisle (she didn’t know who he was until she saw an article in the newspaper a day or so later remarking on his return from NZ), while my late Dad had the privilege of filling his car while working at a service station. I can only assume BH was trying out material in both cases which likely left them both non-plussed. 🙂
In 1970, at the height of the Vietnam War,Quadrant was being funded by theAACF, an anticommunist front organisation for U.S. Central Intelligence.
Humphries woulda been aware of that, it wasn’t secret squirrel, so that association isn’t evidence of his being a “political” conservative.
Edna was on a Parky show many years ago. Some young smarty pants English actress was trying to outwit the Dame. Edna mentioned some show business issue and said ‘and darling, you’ll probably come across this in your own career, if you ever have one.’
Ed, it’s logically and metaphysically possible that Quadrant and BH wrote conservative articles on principle even though the journal was being partially funded by the admittedly heinous CIA (seemingly murderers of Kennedy, and stand-byers and tacit approvers of Vietnamese Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem having his heart ripped out and eaten by crazed commies).
Heck, every now and then, even an ABC reporter says something sensible! (Can’t remember when, but I’m sure there was one in the past decade.)
I was privileged to be invited to a CIA-funded (via a shell “company”, the United States Information Agency) four week seminar on US political interests and foreign policy in the early 1980s. Being a confirmed Rothbardian libertarian, I was sniffing about. All I picked up was adulation for Lincoln, (totally unjustified in my opinion), Leo Strauss and his disciple Harry Jaffa (OK, so many people won’t know of these) – Jaffa was there, BTW, and rather disgraced himself by irrationally rounding on some sceptical Aussie (mostly left wing, but thoroughly congenial and perceptive) journalists. Overall, though, it was the best intellectual experience on a tertiary level I’ve had in my life. Gracious and generous Americans, open debate (Jaffa excepted) high principles discussed (Plato, the Romans, the American Constitution, foreign policy) and there were deep but respectful disagreements between the presenters. CIA? Give me more of that! (Though maybe not now.) Australian debate is a heap of sh*t compared to that. Jacinta Price excepted.
Humphries’ comments were NOT controversial. They are and have been commonsense since forever.
It is the dictates of this new trans lobby that is controversial, suddenly attempting to overturn facts that every lefty prophet ever. None of them across centuries, prior to perhaps 10 years ago, thought a persons sex swivelled about like a pointer on the pin of whim like a game of gender Twister. The controversy (if it can be called that – it is really just a political power play, not an idea) comes from the freaks.
…suddenly attempting to overturn facts that even every lefty prophet ever took as not even needing to be discussed.
The politburo of the Melbourne ‘Comedy’ Festival insist that they didn’t cancel Humphries.
And I just saw a formation of pigs doing advanced aerial acrobatics outside my window
we can muster some hope for the future in the absolute pasting the Comedy Festival is currently receiving on twitter.
https://twitter.com/micomfestival/status/1650417186639609857
Humphries himself admits that he is a political conservative on Q&A (5.10 min. in).
Deal with that Mr. Knows-It-All, Ed Case:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQdiZwRB-2k&t=128s