Barry Humphries

 Sad to hear that Barry Humphries, that man of many parts (some of them rather revolting), has died. He had achieved a good age (89), but even so, as well as grieving his family and friends, his death subtracts from the gaiety of nations. And we can be absolutely sure that he will have no comic successor: his comedy teetered perilously close to the edge even in the more relaxed climate of his peak decades; it would have plunged straight over the edge of the permissible today. The creation that first brought him to notice in this country, the archetypal 'ocker' Barry Mackenzie (in a strip cartoon in Private Eye, drawn by the excellent Nicholas Garland), was a man of unreconstructed attitudes, to put it very mildly, with an endlessly inventive way with Australian profanities. Humphries was so steeped in the murkier byways of Australian slang that he could effortlessly coin new expressions that fitted perfectly into the lexicon. Indeed, there's surely a potential thesis for someone in identifying Humphries' contributions to the Australian language – it must be vast. Maybe it's already been written...
  While Humphries achieved his comic apotheosis in the rise and rise of Dame Edna Everage, housewife superstar, his love of inventive profanity found new expression in the character of Sir Les Patterson, Australian cultural attaché, whose sole professional remit seemed to be the promotion of Tasmanian Blue cheese, a large portion of which was often secreted hygienically down the front of his trousers. With his hideous leer, stained (with God knows what) suit , bulging belly and florid complexion, he was every bit as appalling as our home-grown grotesque, the long forgotten Frank Randle – but, unlike Frank (who had only catchphrases and a drunk act), he had a wonderfully inventive way with language, managing to plumb depths unknown even to Barry Mackenzie. Some of this is preserved in Sir Les's indispensable (to drunken satyromaniacs abroad) book, The Traveller's Tool (1985). I had a copy, which I lost long ago, but I certainly remember it as being quite hair-raisingly, eye-wateringly filthy, and displaying, shall we say, a less than respectful attitude to the legions of oriental ladies who attended to Sir Les's urgent priapic needs. The Traveller's Tool was never reprinted, and is now only available at an exorbitant price. It hardly needs saying that such a book today would not even have made it over the publisher's threshold, let alone found its way into print. The publisher, by the way, was the perfectly respectable Michael O'Mara, and there was no outcry when the book came out. We recognised what comedy was in those days, i.e. something whose business was only to make you laugh – and The Traveller's Tool certainly did that, turning the initial gasp of horror into genuine laughter by the sheer inventiveness of the language and the utter shamelessness of the leering Sir Les's depravity. 
  Humphries created many other characters too, and the most interesting of them, I think, is the one that was Peter Cook's favourite, Sandy Stone, a decent, quiet man living a solitary, rather sad life in a Melbourne suburb. The polar opposite of Sir Les, Stone was a character Humphries worked on over the years: 'Slowly the character has deepened,' he said in interview in 2016, 'so I began to understand and appreciate him, and finally feel myself turning into him.' Indeed, Humphries began to play him without make-up and wearing his own dressing gown. Clearly he could identify with both Sandy Stone and Sir Les; no doubt (says the amateur psychologist) they represented opposite poles of his divided personality. The complete Sandy Stone soliloquies, published in 1990 as The Life and Death of Sandy Stone, might even prove to be Humphries's most lasting work. 
  And there was more: Humphries was fascinated from boyhood by the Aesthetic movement, and became a major collector of 1890s art and books. Like his friend John Betjeman, he had a particular interest in his near-compatriot, the artist Charles Conder (who is mentioned here), and at one time owned the largest collection of Conder's works in private hands. 
  Like many people of huge talent and strong drive, Humphries kept performing for rather too long after his wit had lost its razor-sharp edge – but what a talent it was, what a wit, and what a man. There will never be another. RIP.