A new bronze statue of Barry Humphries in Adelaide is a sign of cultural health

Barry Humphries exposes the absurdities in our society by satirizing national ego, bureaucratic bloat and moral posturing, he writes Vince Hooper.

THEATER MANAGERS will be treated to a new bronze medal as they pass Adelaide’s Her Majesty’s Theater – the stage where Barry Humphries made his theater debut as a 19-year-old in 1953 and was later dubbed his favorite theater in the world. statue in his honor.

In December 2025, Adelaide City Council approved a $313,083 sculpture by renowned South Australian artist Robert Hannaford AM. The price tag sparked debate in council chambers, headlines and social media threads. For some, this is a pointless waste; for others, it’s a fitting tribute to a cultural provocateur whose legacy is both hilarious and disturbing.

We can almost hear Sir Les Patterson himself shouting over it: “Finally! A fucking statue with enough room to park my ego!”

To the uninitiated, Patterson was Humphries’s ugliest creation: a drooling, impulsive, infinitely self-confident cultural attaché; Her attributes included sexism, unfiltered appetites, and an uncanny ability to offend diplomats and the public alike. In today’s “woke” environment, where hashtags regulate morality and algorithms distribute outrage, one would be canceled before finishing the first mushroomed sentence.

But it is precisely this unpublishable courage that makes Patterson enduringly brilliant. Humor, especially the disturbing one, is a social mirror. Through Sir Les, Humphries disdained national ego, bureaucratic bloat and moral posturing. He never asked us to admire aggressive behavior; It demanded thinking through laughter. It took the local – Australia’s attitudes, politics and cultural shame – and made it universal, revealing the absurdities shared by all societies.

Patterson’s strange diplomacy even resonates internationally. Every culture has its own floundering, carefree, self-indulgent, dazzlingly oblivious public figure, and every society uses laughter to its advantage. Humphries’ other iconic work, Dame Edna Everage, proved she understood both sides of human absurdity, navigating progressive culture with charm and wit. Patterson, on the contrary, forced us to confront and laugh at the disorderly, unhealthy, unmanageable aspects of our own societies.

Imagine Patterson speaking at a gender sensitivity seminar today: “I define love as what gets me through customs effortlessly.”

Anger would erupt, hashtags would flare, and social media courts would convene. But the brilliance lies not in the chaos, but in what it illuminates: comedy serves as cultural lubrication. If you neuter it with kindness, you sacrifice perspective for common sense.

The Adelaide statue itself becomes a metaphor: societies often do not value culture and humor because they are uncomfortable or “unsafe.” Spending a few hundred thousand dollars on bronze might spark controversy, but it’s far less costly than the cultural barrenness that results when we try to sanitize every joke, joke, or grotesque caricature. Money well spent!

And then there’s the fantasy scenario in which Patterson somehow confronts the modern political circus while still alive, such as Donald Trump. News that he might be appointed US Ambassador would, in Les’ eyes, be both confirmation and nonsense.

“Ambassador?” he would shout. “My love, I’m already the ambassador of St. James’s Palace and probably your mother-in-law’s dining room! Do you think I have time to negotiate business deals between my gold toilets and my tie collection?”

Patterson will recognize a similar spirit in Trump—brand as ego, spectacle, politics—but without the careful phrasing, performance virtue, or patience for social media outrage. “Look, love, diplomacy is about knowing how to take offense politely.” Patterson would growl. “It’s not just tweeting insults at the other guy while wearing a red beret!”

Had he somehow been appointed Ambassador, Washington may never have recovered. He gave press briefings in hotel ballrooms, addressed Congress waving cocktail napkins and published treaties in verse. But beneath the chaos lies the sharpest lesson: Patterson instinctively exposed the theatricality, ego and self-interest in politics. Just as it satirised Australian public life, it also mirrored global pomp, ambition and pageantry; leaving a trail of scandal and laughter in his wake.

Even today, Patterson’s irreverence offers a recipe for cultural health. Humor is not frivolity; It is a democratic tool, a mirror, a pressure valve. It allows societies to question themselves, confront vanity, and get rid of their own bullshit. In a world curated by the virtue of anger and performance, we forget how important laughter is to perspective, resilience, and civic intelligence.

We must also consider the controversies in Patterson’s later life. Humphries has been criticized for his remarks about transgender people, including describing gender confirmation surgery as “self-mutilation” in 2016; It was a reminder that even geniuses can make missteps. In response, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival removed his name from its top prize in 2019. But a careful reading of his works reminds us that satire is never about comfort; It is about frictions, reflections and exaggerated facts. Patterson’s genius was not in seeking admiration, but in forcing discomfort, self-awareness, and laughter all at once.

If Sir Les didn’t survive after waking up, perhaps that says less about him and more about how fragile our collective sense of humor has become. Adelaide statue, budget row, imaginary embassy chaos; they remind us that satire, irreverence, and occasional moral discomfort are indispensable to cultural life.

We need Les Patterson now more than ever. We may not deserve it. But when Robert Hannaford’s statue takes its place outside Her Majesty’s Theatre, it will spark outrage, laughter and reflection across generations, and perhaps remind us to take our culture a little less seriously, and our laughter a little more seriously. Rest in peace Barry Humphries. MYTH!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg3BVPro1Cc

Vince Hooper is a proud Australian/British citizen and professor of finance and discipline at the SP Jain School of Global Management, which has campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.

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