No more chunder from down under

 Before Dame Edna waved her gladioli on BBC TV, Barry Humphries burst upon my consciousness in the pages of Private Eye. Barry McKenzie was the hero of a cartoon strip written by Humphries and drawn by Nicholas Garland, London-born but brought up in New Zealand, who went on to become the Daily Telegraph's first political cartoonist. McKenzie was the archetypal innocent young colonial seeking to make his fortune in swinging London. The strip satirised current London trends as well as the provincialism of an older Australian generation. It also introduced British readers to colourful Aussie expressions (e.g. "don't come the raw prawn with me"), augmented by a few of Humphries' own. Along with such fellow Aussies as Bruce Beresford, who was to make a very successful film of the adventures of Barry McKenzie, Humphries spearheaded a movement showing the Poms that Australia had a unique cultural identity, independent of the mother country. She was more than an exporter of con artists, cricketers, dentists and newspaper magnates.  

Dame Edna was clearly close to Humphries' heart. She had been fully formed on Australian TV before he brought her to England. She was what he will always be remembered for, but I will treasure more his "cultural attaché", Sir Les Patterson, a more biting satire on conservative populism. Even without those sacred monsters, Humphries could have successfully plied his trade as a writer or as a character actor, as his supporting role in The Getting of Wisdom (another Bruce Beresford movie) showed. Bazza McKenzie would no doubt dismiss the term as "poncey", but "renaissance man" fits Barry Humphries, a unique talent who will be much missed.