Rowan Dean: Barry Humphries invented political incorrectness, and we’re all the richer for it

Several days ago, famed comedian Barry Humphries made plans with an old friend for a catchup on Monday morning outside St Vincents Hospital. Sadly, the famed comedian didn’t make it there.

Barry Humphries had invited me to pop in today, Monday, to visit him in hospital.

We had much to discuss. As usual, when we made the arrangement only a couple of days ago, most of the conversation was Barry cracking jokes and me hopelessly trying (and failing) to think of anything even comparably witty to respond with.

But that of course was the nature of any conversation with Barry Humphries, Australia’s - and arguably the world’s - greatest comedian for over 70 years.

As a young Aussie ex-pat I moved to London at exactly the perfect time. In the early eighties Australia was suddenly cool, very, very cool, and it was thanks entirely to the bawdy wit and eye-watering witticisms of Dame Edna Everage, our very own housewife superstar.

‘Syphon the python’, ‘point Percy at the porcelain, ‘speak to God on the big white telephone’; these were the catch cries of every anarchic, rebellious young man - ex-pat and Pommy alike - hell bent on overturning the pomposities of the British establishment with irreverent Ockerisms and outrageous double-entrendres.

Australian comedian, actor and author Barry Humphries, dressed as his alter ego Dame Edna Everagein 2013. Picture: Arthur Edwards

Arguably, Barry Humphries invented political IN-correctness - creating an entire genre of comedy that relied on breaking the ‘fourth wall’, (ie involving the audience as part of the act even on the biggest and grandest stages in the world,) mocking the powerful and the famous relentlessly and all the while cracking bawdy bar room gags of the basest and crudest kind, leaving no sexual peccadillo or unsavoury bodily function unprobed.

It was a lethal combination, and by the end of the 1990s Dame Edna had literally conquered the world’s stages from Hollywood to Broadway to the West End of London.

Yet… yet here at home, in Australia, although immensely popular Barry was never as universally and uncritically adored as he was abroad, which is probably why he chose to mainly live in London.

That ghastly wowser trait that has plagued the Australian national character since the first prison officer stepped ashore at Sydney Cove, the tut-tutting tone of disapproval and the incredibly thin skin that we now call ‘being woke’ and which has found a home in the insidious ‘cancel culture’ mentality, sneered its disapproval at the Moonee Ponds housewife almost from the very beginning.

Many Australians couldn’t understand how Barry could send up his homeland so mercilessly, failing to understand, of course, that like the greatest comics throughout the ages he was mocking the foibles and vanities of human nature.
Australian suburban life was the palette Barry drew his inspiration from because it was what he knew, much like Monty Python drew their inspiration from the equivalent dreary middle-class suburbs of post-war Britain.

Barry Humphries - Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2015 - Photo by Claudio Raschella

But the appeal was universal because the characteristics were, and are, universal. Barry Humphries taught the world about our most eccentric characteristics, but did so with love and affection in equal parts to the humour and satire. His obvious targets may have been Australian, but the pretensions and pomposities he pricked were universal to mankind.

It is a disgrace and a stain on the name of this country that the Melbourne International Comedy Festival - founded by Barry Humphries and Peter Cook - removed Humphries name from their awards, the Barry’s. But of course, isn’t that always the way, that the pygmies try to tear down the giant? Decades and possibly centuries from now, the name of Barry Humphries and his alter-egos will be up there in the pantheon of creative geniuses along with Shakespeare, Swift, Chaplin, Monty Python and so many others.

Barry Humphries has died aged 89.

It is unlikely anyone will remember Melbourne’s current crop of “comedians” for even a few weeks or months.

I was privileged to have known Barry Humphries personally and, indeed, to be his final editor for a piece of ‘doggerel’ he wrote for the magazine I edit, The Spectator Australia.
Like all of us, I was blessed to have lived in the time of Barry Humphries.
Sadly, my planned Monday morning meeting at Saint Vinnies has been cancelled.

Rowan Dean is the host of Outsiders on Sky News Australia.

Originally published as Rowan Dean: Barry Humphries invented political incorrectness, and we’re all the richer for it