The day Barry Humphries took revenge on Malcolm Turnbull

‘Will Malcolm Turnbull be there?’ Barry Humphries asked me before the 2017 memorial service for cartoonist Bill Leak. ‘Would it be OK if I had a go at him in my speech?’

Barry Humphries speaks at the public memorial service for Bill Leak in Sydney in March 2017. Picture: Jane Dempster

“Will Malcolm Turnbull be there?” Barry Humphries asked me over the phone as we discussed the forthcoming memorial service for The Australian’s great cartoonist Bill Leak in March 2017.

As a close friend of Leak’s and a journalist at The Australian, I had been seconded to help organise the memorial.

I confirmed that Turnbull, who was prime minister at the time, was planning to attend.

“Would it be OK if I had a go at him in my speech?” he asked.

I had no idea why he was asking me, but if my friendship with Leak had meant anything I knew I had to give Humphries my most heartfelt approval.

The prime minister Malcolm Turnbull at memorial for Bill Leak. Picture: John Feder

It was a tough week for all of us preparing that memorial, but one thing that kept me going was this delectable secret: what on earth was Humphries going to say about the prime minister?

On the day, Turnbull delivered a beautiful tribute to Leak, who he first met as a struggling young artist in the 1980s, and lamented that a wonderful life had been cut cruelly short.

If that caused Humphries to have second thoughts about using the occasion to settle an old score, he dismissed them.

I learned that day that Humphries, despite being the funniest Australian who ever lived, sure knew how to hold a grudge.

The backstory is this: In the mid 1980s, Turnbull became ­famous as the ambitious young lawyer defending free speech in the famous Spycatcher trial, in which the British government tried to stop a former British spy’s memoir being published in Australia.

On a visit to London, he was asked by the press, in passing, what he thought of Humphries’ Sir Les Patterson character, who was enjoying enormous success in the West End at the time.

Turnbull said Sir Les was “an embarrassment”.

Lucy Turnbull, left, Paul Whittaker, Penny Fowler, Barry Humphries, wife Lizzie Spender and John Howard at the Bill Leak memorial. Picture: John Feder

At Leak’s memorial service, Humphries shot Turnbull, sitting in the front row, a menacing glance before amusingly recounting the incident in his speech, ­although he didn’t refer to Turnbull by name.

“Impugning a fellow Australian’s patriotism is, well, it’s a cowardly method of attack,” he said. “It leaves the onus on the victim and shows what a fine, patriotic fellow you are to spot and punish the ­enemies of … Australia.

Bill Leak

“But I’m sure this incident is now forgotten and even repented by the gentleman who made the mistake of …” his cheeky smile hardened, “f..king with me.”

Humphries, who of course was even better mates with Leak than Turnbull ever was, credited Leak with helping us “laugh and think at the same time”. We could now say the same about Humphries himself.

Turnbull leapt to his feet as Humphries walked off the stage and shook his hand. Score settled, then.

Humphries’ resentment for being seen as an “enemy of Australia”, and waiting more than 30 years to correct the record, reveals that, despite his wicked satirising of this country, he loved it as much as any of us do.

The paradox of Humphries’ characters – Dame Edna, Sir Les, Sandy Stone and Bazza McKenzie – is that he made them likeable. They were hilariously deplorable, but with redeeming virtues.

Sir Les had a full-blooded ­predilection for young Girl Fridays of exotic extraction but never missed an opportunity to express his devotion to his long-suffering wife, Lady Gwen Patterson; and Dame Edna was perfectly at ease in the most glamorous spotlight but never abandoned her love of being a suburban housewife.

There was only one Australian character for which Humphries was unreservedly vitriolic: the wowser, which he described as “a traditional Australian figure – ­humourless, ignorant and vindictive – he is still with us, disguised as a liberal-minded upholder of the politically correct”.