What a great entertainer! He has enabled us to enjoy such mirth! Such talent! He will be missed.
Years ago, when my daughter Katy was a teenager, we were having a day at the Brisbane Exhibition. We had not long passed through the gates when I almost bumped into this large, rather gaudily, but oddly dressed chap.
‘Having a day out at the Ekka?’ he asked me through awful, protruding teeth, lisping, spitting and dribbling as he did so. He stopped to chat and I could not fail to notice his unkempt appearance, his untidy hair, his food spattered tie and his wild, tatty look.
I knew who it was, but Katy did not. Embarrassed to be seen with such an apparition, she was thinking, ‘Now Mum’s met up with one of her weird former friends...shrink, shrink...!’ And her mother was beaming at this rough looking fellow, even giving him that winsome smile of hers as they chatted away. What’s more, he seemed to be half-drunk! At last he moved on as her mother trilled gleefully, ‘Happy to have met you Sir Les! Thank you Barry!’
And the reply, ‘Who’sh Barry? Hic...’ identified this character to my daughter. Of course it was Sir Les Patterson, also known as Barry Humphries, and remains one of my most cherished memories. And Katy’s.