In my case, I like the impact of my sheer athleticism — the big entry, at full pelt off a high bank into the river, or the ball intercept at twice my height — and the subsequent acclamation from humans and dogs alike.
Although The Boss insists those feats are but a distant memory. Once a warrior, he says disparagingly.
In Barry Humphries’ case, taking people aback was a lifelong motivator, which hardly diminished as he grew older. “I love making an audience gasp. I don’t crave the sound of applause. I crave the sound of sharply indrawn breath. That’s a good sound,” he told an interviewer. My thoughts exactly.
And that’s the Barry Humphries The Boss has been remembering since he died on Saturday at the ripe age of 89. The Boss met him 50 years ago and Barry’s provocative and outrageous humour has been a part of his life ever since.
Barry used his alter egos, the outlandish Dame Edna Everage and the drooling yobbo diplomat, Sir Les Patterson, as well as the gentle Sandy Stone in his dressing gown, to draw that audience breath most often, but his wicked humour went with him in civvies as well — and sometimes got him into bother.
Invited by Rupert Murdoch to attend his fourth marriage in 2016 to Jerry Hall, Barry observed that an appropriate wedding gift for the media mogul, then approaching 86, might be “David Beckham and a pair of jumper leads”.
But he was always at his most withering about the wowser, whom 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”.
And political correctness was like a red rag to a bull with Barry. As Edna, he pointed out that, “when people laugh at me, they are not laughing in the way that they normally would at a comedian”.
“They are laughing with relief, because the truth has been spoken, and political correctness has not strangled this particular gigastar ... political correctness means nothing to me. Nothing. It’s the new Puritanism, darling. Preventing us from expressing ourselves.”
He was reportedly saddened after the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (which he supported and encouraged) changed the name of its top comedy award from The Barry, in 2019, after he described transgenderism as “a fashion” and some comedians objected to receiving an award with his name on it. Given his lifelong affection for theatre, he chose to die on the 2023 festival’s closing night.
Being the most famous cross-dresser Australia (and much of the world) has known, the irony of being cancelled was not lost on him. “My remarks were grossly interpreted,” he quipped. But as he said, “There is no more terrible fate for a comedian than to be taken seriously.” The festival board, having taken itself very seriously, is now squirming to recover — but the laughs have gone.
The last one left with Barry, who apparently had the nurses and visitors in stitches during his final weeks spent in a Sydney hospital, where he took a call from King Charles a few days before he died. We can only imagine the conversation.
He was, as always, irrepressible, mischievous, a performer. Mostly, aided by Dame Edna and Sir Les, he could prick and poke away at people’s greatest fears, habits and guilty prejudices, saying the kind of things people thought but could never say. The humans loved hearing it. It must be a bit like having a talking dog. Woof!
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