Long live Barry, wicked scourge of the dull and humourless

Barry Humphries’ character Les Patterson as depicted by Bill Leak.

Some deaths are very disputable. Plenty of Rastafarians believe Haile Selassie never died. A few eccentric Englishmen think King Arthur is just sleeping. I myself am never entirely confident of the apotheosis of my father’s confronting Aunt Velma: Elvis-loving, Liberace-lusting and studded with costume jewellery.

So it is clear to me that Barry Humphries has faked his own death. How else to explain this last great skit, where the possums of political correctness turn on their own rotisserie of rectitude, alternately excoriating him as a gender thought criminal, then spurting crocodile tears over his lost comedic genius.

This characteristically flatulent spoof opened some time ago, when the Melbourne International Comedy Festival pompously de-named its main prize, The Barry, for various betises committed by Humphries through the years.

Barry Humphries pictured at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2015.

In general terms, this was a Good Thing. There has been nothing remotely funny about the festival for years, so a foray into self-satire was at least a start.

But it was pretty sad for Humphries. For someone genuinely witty to be dragged down by a pack of humourless gender Gila monsters and correct theory pit bulls was as grotesque as the front of Sir Les Patterson’s shirt.

The claim that it was entirely for ideological purity does not ring true. Humphries was always a dreadful reproach to the local Foucault fan club, with his appalling national caricatures who actually were funny.

He less outraged our aesthetic absolutists than made them feel – I blush – Australian. In the name of Hugo Chavez! Along the designer lanes of Fitzroy, it is bad enough to actually be Australian, but to be reminded of the fact is a reactionary assault.

Worse, peeping between the plush fingers of outrage, even sound thinkers glimpse terrible flickers of truth. Dame Edna is Auntie Velma. Les Patterson is my father – and me – after a few too many drinks and an ill-aimed spaghetti bolognaise. You will end up a tediously progressive Sandy Stone unless you get a life and stop reading books by John Pilger.

The other point about Humphries’ impermissible caricatures was that they all followed the great comedic tradition. No matter how awful, they each carried a germ of sympathy, like Shakespeare’s drunken, brawling Falstaff with his buried yearning for affection. Or Paul Keating, desperate to be a clock.

Les Patterson pictured in 1999

Poor Barry. It was his fate to preach humour to the humourless and subtlety to the unsubtle. He was like a lone slapstick prophet in the Old Testament, probably stoned for snide puns by some antediluvian version of Lisa Wilkinson. But empathy is not the strong suit of the flatiron-faced, gender-concrete-coiffured, dead-eyed commissars of the Melbourne comedy festival. You are either with them or with them, and Humphries just wasn’t.

The ostensible sin for which he was crucified was transphobia. Characteristically, he less addressed issues of transgender than assailed them and, as usual, sensitivity was not a strong consideration.

But debate over transgender will not go away just because Humphries has been strangled in his own prose or JK Rowling boiled in Hollywood bile. Apart from anything else, vast numbers of people worldwide – Muslims, traditional Christians, Germaine Greer and other conservative cultures – have yet to submit to the hegemony of the Melbourne comedy festival.

Cancelled is the word of the decade but is a little soft. Cancelling Humphries concedes that he did at least once exist. The desired outcome here is obliteration, like the Damnatio applied to careless Roman emperors. His name should never again be spoken, his statues (if any) pulled down and his corpse (if available) be dragged by the heels to the Yarra. There is a sulfurous whiff of envy in all this.

The Melbourne Town Hall is light up for the 2021 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

One can only imagine the bitterness of some utterly unfunny apparatchik, spouting correct-line irony to a listless handful of bereted comrades, to understand the venom aroused by Humphries disseminating his conservative bile to vast, uproarious and, above all, paying audiences.

Of course, with cancelling, it used to be amusing to posit ridiculous examples of “What’s next?” Will Hamlet become a New Zealander, Jane Austen’s world declassed and orcs protected from vilification in The Lord of the Rings?

But as Humphries himself recognised, nothing any longer is beyond risible. To paraphrase Martin Niemoller, first they came for Rowling, then for Enid Blyton, and now for Barry. Next will be ourselves and Bluey the dog (always a suspicious revisionist).

Barry must without doubt be alive, given the climactic comedic explosion as the Melbourne festival and allies flee in the face of popular criticism.

At first, the festival was loftily dismissive, merely noting Humphries’ longstanding comic degeneracy.

Then there was the inspired line that the Barry was not actually named for him but for Barrys everywhere. Remarkable, and discriminatory. Why not another random bogan first name? What about the Gregs? We’ve had a very hard time lately.

Finally, there came the strategic grovelling. Humphries was a splendid chap, and we are just looking for a suitable way to commemorate him (like forgetting all about him once the fuss has died down).

You know you are in trouble as a syndicalist comedy collective when even Spartacist-chic Premier Daniel Andrews starts exploring a state funeral, though his efforts are likely to wane faced by a correctitude of ideological criticism.

All in all, Humphries has done very well. He has had a very funny life and a hilarious faked death, thanks largely to his miserable, mirthless critics. He must be mightily amused.

Greg Craven has never met Barry Humphries but would have liked to.