Okay, so Barry Humphries once described Australia as the Brisbane of the world. It was a funny line at the time. Still, don’t imagine that he didn’t like the city … or Queensland.

Because he loved the place.

I’m thinking of Barry, who passed away in Sydney on April 22 at the age of 89, because I should have been on my way to the State Memorial being held for him on Friday at the Sydney Opera House.

It was such an honour to be invited and were it not for a bout of Covid-19 – my first – I would be there with thousands of others to celebrate a man I got to know over a period of decades.

Barry Humphries was very fond of Brisbane and once told me that he considered our cultural complex to be Australia’s finest. Of course, he performed at QPAC many times and was a regular visitor here since the days when he used to tread the boards at the old Her Majesty’s Theatre.

He used to love painting while here, particularly watercolours he daubed from a vantage point at the café within Brisbane City Botanic Gardens.

I also remember a lovely painting he did of Castle Hill in Townsville, painted from Queens Gardens with a clear view of that distinctive bluff. That painting featured in an exhibition of paintings by Barry some years ago at Philip Bacon Galleries in Brisbane.

Barry, a keen art collector as well as a painter, exhibited there. He and Brisbane art dealer Philip Bacon were the closest of friends and Bacon remains close to Barry’s widow, Lizzie Spender.

In fact, Bacon will address the assembled throng at the Sydney Opera House along with other close friends of Barry’s. These include film director Bruce Beresford who directed the hilarious The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, which was a breakthrough film in Australian cinema.

Barry’s love of art sustained him and he was a fine painter who had close friendships with some of Australia’s greatest artists with whom he went on painting expeditions.

He and Bacon had a long and happy association. I last caught up with Barry at Bacon’s eponymous gallery in Fortitude Valley in 2019 when Barry exhibited some of his latest work while here as Edna – for the last time – in the Dame Edna: My Gorgeous Life tour. That show was an absolute hoot.

I first met Barry Humphries as a young reporter on the Gold Coast in the early 1980s. I interviewed him about his show at Twins Towns Services Club.

Always up with local news and issues, Barry had heard there was a controversy going on at that time about whether the Gold Coast could afford a new arts centre (it didn’t have one back then) or whether the money should be put towards better sewerage.

As Sir Les, Barry brilliantly suggested that the city build a sewage system that could be drained at times to also serve as an art gallery. Genius!

We next met a few years later when he was performing at what was then Jupiters Hotel and Casino at Broadbeach, catching up after his show.

Barry, who was teetotal and dedicated to helping others make that transition, gave me his two cents worth about that at the time, for which I have been forever grateful.

We next connected in 1987 on the publicity trail for the film Les Patterson Saves the World, written by Barry and his then wife, artist Diane Millstead.

At the time, I was working for that racy Brisbane tabloid The Daily Sun and was among a small media group summonsed to Brisbane’s Hilton Hotel for an audience with Barry and Millstead. After some pleasant chit-chat Barry suggested that he would go and get Sir Les himself to come and talk to us.

He left and returned soon afterwards completely transformed. To witness Sir Les close up was quite something. The shambolic cultural attaché with his bad teeth, his stained safari suit, a glass of scotch sloshing over the edge and onto the carpet – was gobsmackingly hilarious.

Of course, it wasn’t actually scotch because after his early battles with the booze Barry lived a long and incredibly productive sober life that inspired many.

It was difficult interviewing him as Sir Les because none of us could stop laughing and there was that fake appendage ever present running down the inside of his trouser leg! Hard not to notice.

Barry was always friendly and generous with his time. He was a dream to interview and the quotable quotes poured from his as Barry, Edna or Sir Les.

That last time he was here, just before Covid in 2019, he had us in stitches at QPAC and managed the usual local touches. Edna mentioned that her gay daughter, who identified as a comedian, had been performing at a small comedy club at Nundah. Nundah? We did laugh.

I met with Barry at Philip Bacon Galleries on that occasion to write a story about a small exhibition of his work there at that time.  He was such good company.

He was a dapper gentleman, something of a dandy in his way but never a snob. He was approachable and happy to talk to anyone and everyone. And his kindness to so many people is remembered and will always be cherished.

As will his genius. There is no doubting that. The man was a genius. His brilliant humour was only eclipsed by his erudition. He was a bibliophile and a fine writer and author of several memoirs.

And he was a great lover and supporter of the arts, even though he was not exactly enamoured of some of the woke trends emerging in recent years.

As I said, he loved Brisbane and Queensland. I think he felt relaxed here and never more so than when sitting in the morning sunshine under the trees at Brisbane City Botanic Gardens, painting the vision splendid.

A State Memorial for Barry Humphries AC CBE will be held in the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Friday December 15, from 11am (10am Qld time) and broadcast live on ABC-TV and ABC iView and Sky News Australia.

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