Sensibly, the late Barry Humphries allowed the political leanings of himself and his alter-egos to remain camouflaged within their biting satire and lewd jokes. For sure, in the early days the uncouth brashness of Sir Les Patterson, the Minister for the Yarts, perhaps suggested a strong unionised, Labor background. Many saw certain similarities between the roguish behaviour of Sir Les and that of the hugely popular Bob Hawke. Indeed, it is plausible that Sir Les was modelled on a whole raft of Labor heroes, from Graham ‘Richo’ Richardson to Gough himself. Who knows? Dame Edna, meanwhile, had strong Thatcherite overtones, and with her fondness for rubbing shoulders with the royals one can assume she voted No in the 1999 Australian republican referendum – unless, of course, she herself secretly harboured presidential ambitions.

Barry Humphries once described himself as a ‘conservative contrarian’, a label many of our readers may find appealing. Contrarians historically, and certainly back in the Sixties and Seventies, were more likely to be left-leaning, in their eagerness to challenge the orthodoxy. As Bruce Beresford points out in his excellent piece this week, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie as a comic strip was banned by the Holt government, but the funding for the film version came only a year later under the more ‘progressive’ Gorton administration, largely thanks to the work of Labor stalwart Phillip Adams. Conservatives tend to preserve the old order, whereas contrarians might seek to overturn it. Thus, Mr Humphries’ label contains the very tensions and contradictions that define many of today’s disgruntled voters, who feel abandoned by the modern left and alienated by woke ideology on everything from gender to race, but who also struggled to feel any great affinity for the priorities of the Turnbull/Morrison Liberals.

Barry Humphries was a man of similar contradictions; a man of strong traditional values with a keen political intellect who did not suffer fools gladly. The great irony that a man who had made a career out of creating a world-famous female character should be cancelled by the comedy festival he himself founded because of his unexceptional view that men are men and women are women is fitting for the absurd times we now live in.

Barry Humphries was an avid reader of The Spectator both here and in the UK, and indeed a popular contributor in London. His son, Oscar Humphries, was the first editor of The Spectator Australia some fifteen years ago.

In this issue, we are delighted to celebrate the extraordinary career  – genius is not hyperbole – and friendships of this much-loved Australian, including the tale behind this amazing portrait by his dear friend Tim Storrier.

A quiet tear

The only person who would not be grieving at the tragic death of Barry Humphries is of course his nemesis , who also happens to be his most successful client, the insufferably self-obsessed Dame Edna Everage.

If Dame Edna was noted for one thing apart from her wicked sense of humour and love of gladioli, it was her scathing disdain for the man who single-handedly dragged her out of dreary suburban Melbourne and magically transformed her into a household name and a global superstar, beloved of kings and queens and commoners alike.

Yet despite her endless put-downs and lack of gratitude for his impresario talents, it’s a safe bet that somewhere on an oligarch’s yacht in the Mediterranean, behind those flamboyant, diamond-encrusted cats-eyes glasses, the girl from Moonee Ponds is shedding a quite tear for Mr Humphries.