I don't know if Barry Humphries is well-known in America, but I'm reading his

[Joe Chi Minh]

hilarious autobiography: Barry Humphries - an autobiogrpahy.

For those who don't know him, he's an Aussie comedian best known for two creations: Dame Edna Everidge and Sir Les Patterson, the first an Aussie housewife, and the second the Australian Cultural Attache to the Court of St James, President of the Australian Cheese Board, and Ambassador to the United States - seemingly, a new honour. I didn't know that. But to get an idea of him, Google "Sir Les Patterson!" and watch the video clips. I haven't yet, but I intend to. Very gross humour, mind you.

Anyway, the following passage ticked me to bits. It was in the fifties in Sydney. He'd just starting out as a comedian, and had been signed up by a small-time agent called Ted James, to perform in a show at an ex-servicemen's club.

'But what exactly will I do, Ted'? I plaintively enquired after we had been drinking in that echoing, lavatorial bar for about three hours. Ted ruptured the cellophane on another packet of Cravens, tapped one into his mouth and extended towards me the cork-tipped pan-pipes with his freckled marsupial paw.

'Yiz act, Brian, just do yiz act!'

I wondered why so many people called me Brian. I later learned that getting people's names almost right was an Australian - and particularly a Sydney - courtesy.

When Laurence Olivier, not then knighted, and his wife Vivien Leigh were touring Australia in 1948 the Lord Mayor of Sydney, at an official reception, introduced them as 'Sir Oliver and Lady Leigh'. When told the actors had been slightly miffed by this imaginative transposition of their names, the Mayor had merely shrugged affably and said, 'Shit, you can't win 'em all.'

[Captain Hilts]

1. I would LOVE to see his routine of the Minister of Culture of australia!!!!

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. On the subject of his comic strip, Barry McKenzie, in Private Eye, Humphries writes:

'Barry's occasional expletives, which were never worse than 'shit', were none the less thought to be demeaning to Australia's international image as a nice country. The word, 'image', was just beginning to be bandied around, and in some prudish circles there was a fear, amounting to paranoia, that the closely-guarded secret of Australian vulgarity* might leak out.

But it had happened already. In 1946, a traumatic event had taken place. Debates and Question Time from the House of Representatives in the Australian capital, Canberra, were for the first time broadcast to the Nation. With shame and horror, Australians heard the voices and vocabularies of their governors.**

Initially, this was thought to be a radio hoax perpetrated by students or some antipodean Orson Welles, in order to frighten listeners into thinking their country was run by yahoos and guttersnipes, but slowly the truth dawned. This was what our elected politicians and their opposition really sounded like! This was us There were a few parliamentary pansies, it was true, who spoke in more expensive and grandiloquent tones, but they were a drop in the ocean. The enormous and prosperous middle class were appalled. What was the use of teaching the kiddies nice manners when our politicians carried on like that, squawking and braying like live-stock? It was a crime against Niceness.'

*Despite the best efforts of their womenfolk and the Church, I fear this proclivity is hard-wired into most males' psyches all over the globe. We revert to a kind of happy-go-lucky infantilism at the drop of a hat. But, like the Americans and Cockneys, the Aussies seem to have a particular flair for highly colourful and coarse imagery.

** The same thing, I believe, happened in the UK much more recently in terms of the TV. It was probably blown out of proportion by the tabloids (of all kites and crows), but personally, I found it rather reassuring to hear the politicians acting like schoolboys playing up in class. Though, of course, it wouldn't apply today, now that the viciousness propagated by three decades of economic liberalism had filtered down to the people the politicians have deprived of an over-arching, national ethos and moral sense, to counter the bedrock of avarice and war, and robbed and deprived them even of hope for the future.

[pscot]

4. Australia has culture?

Who knew.

[CTKA-Probe]

2. Comic Genius

Politics is'nt all about "Beer and lambingtons". In the immortal words of Mr Patterson.

For those of you not from Australia or New Zealand. Google Lambingtons.

[LuckyLib]

5. I've seen him twice as "Dame Edna" and laughed so hard and so much

that it made me vow to see her whenever I could. What also happens is that you begin laughing at the individuals laughing around you, as folks double over with laughter. Good for the soul.

[Captain Hilts]

6. Staggeringly funny, Dame Edna is....nt