Barry's Aunt Edna (later Dame Edna) Everage with Barry McKenzie (Barry Crocker)

Barry McKenzie The character of Barry McKenzie was the star of the first truly Australian feature for decades, the 1972 film, 'The Adventures of Barry McKenzie'. The critics hated it, but Aussie audiences turned up in droves to belly laugh their way through it. The $250,000 budget was recouped in the first few weeks of release. It was in fact the first Australian film to make a million dollars here. Audiences couldn't get enough of its mixture of slapstick larrikinism, beer-swilling ockers and the gentle art of chundering. Bazza was played by Barry Crocker. "The adventures are the fact that this colonial boy goes to England and creates chaos. And so along with his Aunty Edna, they decide to take off on this trek," recalls Crocker. "(Director Bruce)

Beresford wanted to have this underlying sort of softness to Barry McKenzie, a vulnerability, you know, that he would, that he would die alongside his mates. It was the old true ANZAC spirit in there which I loved sort of bringing to the screen that although he was a total ratbag, you know, a shocker, you know, he had this wonderful camaraderie for his mates. You know, and this came out beautifully in the picture. And, uh, he would fight anyone, you know, to uphold the Australian flag. "But also I went back into my own life and found this 17-year-old youth that was trying to impress his mates and trying to keep up with the grog and who'd always end up being sick at the end - but you'd never show that, there was always a certain bravado - so I tried to become 17 again. Barry McKenzie comes out of a long line of Australian films. I mean, you go back to 'Dad and Dave' and there's a lot of Dave in Bazza, you know. He's got the funny hat, he walks a bit funny.

The character was never seen again. The film was based on a comic strip written by Barry Humphries for the English satirical magazine Private Eye, from an original idea by comedian Peter Cook (who plays the BBC producer in the film). - Barry McKenzie's creator, Barry Humphries (above), was the son of a well-to-do builder. He was educated at Melbourne Grammar School, before studying Law at Melbourne University. However, he became more interested in performance art, and dropped out after two years. He soon became Australia ?s leading exponent of the deconstructive and absurd art movement, Dadaism. Humphries eventually went to London in his early twenties and became serious about acting. In London he wrote a comic strip about the adventures of an Australian bloke called Barry Mackenzie, which was made into a movie, also starring Mrs Edna Everage. His reputation as an actor and writer has grown ever since. He is most famous for his hilarious and confronting satirical characters that seem to have, over time, become as real as their creator. Whether it was Barry McKenzie, the grandfatherly Sandy Stone, rabid trade unionist Lance Boyle, the efferescent Dame Edna Everage or the stomach-turning Sir Les Patterson (a fictitious Australian cultural attaché, whose principal interests in life are boozing, sheilas and flatulence), Humphries' characters have gripped and challenged their audiences.