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Barry Humphries

Wednesday, 12th December 2007

Barry Humphries on battling BT and Australia's new Prime Minister

Australians are a paradoxical race in a paradoxical land so it is not too much of a surprise that we have decided at the time of our greatest prosperity and success, with full employment and a strong dollar, to snatch failure from the jaws of success. It’s an Irish thing. Mr Rudd is supported by a woman who may well become his nemesis, called Julia Gillard. My mother employed several variations on the epithet ‘common’. Not seldom, and sotto voce, she spelt out the world C-O-M-M-O-N and sometimes — an exquisitely subtle variant — she might describe a person of our acquaintance as ‘a bit ordinary’. Ms Gillard could have inspired my mother to new expressions of genteel opprobrium. Mr Rudd, probably to the Queen’s relief, will drag out the old Republican warhorse, but it is to be hoped he restores the correct spelling to the name of his own party. At some point in the last 40 years, the Australian Labor party decided to be ‘with it’, and adopt the eccentric American spelling, but if we are not going to support America in Iraq, we don’t have to emulate their spelling mistakes. Bring back the Labour party, please, Mr Rudd.

A friend of mine works in an open-plan office for an agency handling alternative stand-up comedians of the fokkenfokkoffyoufokker variety. Last Tuesday one of the pretty girls in the office announced she was going out with Jeff, the runner. My friend said, ‘You mean that fat little guy from downstairs?’ This caused huge offence to his sensitive, politically correct co-workers. My friend was forced to apologise to the whole office for, well, stating the obvious. Good thing Jeff was Caucasian.

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D Brennock

January 3rd, 2008 5:11pm

Mr Humphries, the correct amount to tip a tradesman is £20 and has been for so long now, that it will surely be inflated to a 'nifty' before the end of this year. Had you offered the correct gratuity to your BT engineer it would have been accepted and trousered faster then the speed of a digital telephone exchange, followed, most importantly of all, by the words "Thank you very much Sir, before I leave I had better just check that all your internal extensions are working" This, as I am sure your esteemed colleague, Mary Killen, can confirm, would have saved you many hours on hold to BT and would have proved cost effective in the long run.

David Page

January 8th, 2008 2:01am

I've just caught up with this. From Barry Humphries account inflation in Brown's Britain must be well under control.The BT bill for GBP 346 plus VAT is about what Barry's alter ego Bazza McKenzie had to pay for a taxi ride from London airport in the 1960s.

Rex Mutton

April 16th, 2008 3:48am

The spelling of "Labor" in the Australian political sphere derives from one King O'Malley, American, teetotaller, orator and foundation Member of the Australian Parliament.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_O'Malley

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