Character creations The satirical character creations of
Barry Humphries include housewife and "gigastar"
Dame Edna Everage; and "Australian cultural attaché to the
Court of St James's"
Sir Les Patterson, whose interests include boozing, chasing women and flatulence. Edna made her first appearance in a
Melbourne University's UTRC revue at the end of 1955, as the city prepared for the
1956 Olympic Games. Humphries says his creations "encourage people to look at Australia critically and with affection and humour". Humphries first performed the Edna character to a London audience in 1969 and after initial bewilderment, British audiences came to adore the antipodean house-wife parody. Humphries honed the character to satirise vices from snobbery to celebrity-worship and later succeeded in the United States. Impersonators of the famous with wide followings have included
Gerry Connolly,
Max Gillies and
Billy Birmingham (
The Twelfth Man). Conolly's best known impersonation is of the Queen, while Gillies has made a career out of political impersonations on programs such as
The Gillies Report and Birmingham has had success sending up well-known Australian sports commentators, notably
Richie Benaud and the
Channel Nine cricket commentary team. The flamboyant "
Bob Downe" character is a cheesy, safari-suit-wearing lounge singer and exponent of camp humour.
Elliot Goblet delivers quirky deadpan stand up. Representatives of the "bawdy" strain of Australian comedy include
Rodney Rude and
Austen Tayshus. Tayshus' first single "
Australiana" became the biggest selling single in Australian recording history. A spoken word piece, it is filled with Australian puns: :Sittin' at home last Sunday mornin' me mate Boomerrang. Said he was havin' a few people around for a barbie, Said he might Kookaburra or two. I said, "Sounds great, will Wallaby there?" He said "Yeah and Vegemite come too". So I said to the wife "Do you wanna Goanna?". She said "I'll go if Dingos". So I said "Wattle we do about Nulla?" He said "Nullabors me to tears, leave him at home."
Song , the Sheik of Scrubby Creek
Chad Morgan (
The Sheik of Scrubby Creek) has been a popular exponent of vaudeville
Australian country music for several decades. His songs are peppered with Australian slang: sheilas, drongos, dills and geezers. The breakthrough hits of leading Australian country music stars
Slim Dusty and
John Williamson might both be considered comic novelty songs: Dusty's "
Pub With No Beer" (1957) and Williamson's "
Old Man Emu" (1970). Dusty's hit was the first Australian single to reach the international pop charts. It begins with mock profundity: :It's a lonesome away, from your kindred and all :By the campfire at night, where the wild dingoes call – :But there's-a nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear, :Than to stand in the bar, of a pub with no beer Williamson was influenced by Australian folk-singer, artist and broadcaster
Rolf Harris and his novelty hit "
Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport". Harris built an extraordinarily successful career in Britain as a broadcaster and entertainer. "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport" is one of his many Australian themed comic hits and tells the sorry tale of a dying stockmen instructing his comrades on what to do upon his passing: :Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred, :tan me hide when I'm dead. :So we tanned his hide when he died Clyde, :(Spoken) And that's it hanging on the shed. :Altogether now! Popular novelty hits of recent decades have included
The Twelfth Man (Billy Birmingham)'s sports commentary parody "Marvellous"; the
Pauline Hanson send up "I Don't Like It" by
Pauline Pantsdown; and the "
bogan anthem" "Bloke" by tattooed, mulleted stand-up comic
Chris Franklin.
Cinema The
cinema of Australia has a long history and Australia was a pioneer in the production of feature films. Among early hits of Australian cinema were silent classics like
Raymond Longford's
The Sentimental Bloke (1919) and the
Cinesound series of films based on
Steele Rudd's
Dad and Dave characters of the 1930s. A century of Australian film was marked in 1995 with an homage remake of Steele Rudd's
On Our Selection featuring
Joan Sutherland and some of Australia's most acclaimed character actors:
Leo McKern,
Geoffrey Rush and
Noah Taylor. Australians have a strong tradition of self-mockery in their comedy, from the outlandish
Barry McKenzie expat-in-Europe movies of the 1970s, to the quirky outback characters of the
Crocodile Dundee films of the 1980s and the
Working Dog Productions' 1997 homage to suburbia
The Castle.
Paul Hogan's Aussie bushman-in-New York/fish-out-of-water comedy romance
Crocodile Dundee was a huge international hit – becoming the most successful foreign film ever released in the United States. Other successes at the Australian box office include: 1966's ''
They're a Weird Mob; the Alvin Purple'' and the
Barry Humphries–
Bruce Beresford Barry McKenzie movies of the 1970s (of the "
Ozploitation" genre); 1987's
Young Einstein; 1990's
The Big Steal, 1992's
Spotswood 1994's ''
Muriel's Wedding''; 1994's
The Sum of Us; 1999's
The Craic and
Nick Giannopoulos'
Wog Boy comedies.
Clayton Jacobson's successful 2006 comedy debut
Kenny, starring
Shane Jacobson followed the life of a Melbourne plumber working for a corporate bathroom rental company called Splashdown.
Crackerjack is a 2002 film starring
Mick Molloy and
Bill Hunter in which a wisecracking layabout (Molloy) joins a seniors lawn bowls club to be allowed to use a free parking space and discovers a villainous plot against the club. The 2009 clay-animation black comedy
Mary and Max brought together the voices of Australian comic character actors Barry Humphries,
Eric Bana and
Toni Collette. The 2006 comedy-drama
Ten Canoes, directed by
Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr, is notable for its setting in
pre-European Australia.
Television The vaudeville talents of
Graham Kennedy,
Don Lane and
Bert Newton earned popular success during the early years of Australian television. Kennedy hosted the groundbreaking
In Melbourne Tonight (IMT) from 1957 to 1970, becoming known as "The King of Australian Comedy". He also hosted the popular innuendo-laden 1970s game show
Blankety Blanks. His quick witted IMT offsider Bert Newton remains one of the most enduring comic talents of Australian television, presenting a string of programs and hosting the
Logie Awards more often than any other presenter. The variety show ''
Hey Hey It's Saturday'', hosted by
Daryl Somers screened for three decades and featured the ever-popular amateur comedian segment: "
Red Faces" in which often bizarre and occasionally skilled acts would perform before celebrity judges. ''
My Name's McGooley, What's Yours? was a popular sitcom of the 1960s. Among the best loved Australian sitcoms was Mother & Son, about a divorcee (played by Garry McDonald) who had moved back into the suburban home of his mother (Ruth Cracknell). Sitcom Kingswood Country depicted the shifting face of Australia in the 1980s with bigoted patriarch "Ted" Bullpitt (Ross Higgins) having to come to terms with his migrant son-in-law. Acropolis Now'' further reflected the ongoing demographic changes, set amongst the inner working of a Greek Cafe with a cast of exaggerated "Aussie-Greeks":
Nick Giannopoulos as "Jim" and
Mary Coustas as the memorable "
Effie". Ethnic humour also formed a central plank of the comedy in SBS television's offbeat
Pizza TV series, which included regular Arab and Asian characters and presented pizza delivery in the suburbs of Sydney as "one of the most dangerous jobs in the world". Nevertheless, sketch comedy rather than the sitcom formula has been a popular stalwart of Australian television.
The Mavis Bramston Show and later
The Naked Vicar Show and
The Paul Hogan Show achieved great popularity in the 1970s. Notable programs of recent decades have included
The Comedy Company in the 1980s, which featured the comic talents of
Mary-Anne Fahey,
Ian McFadyen,
Mark Mitchell,
Glenn Robbins,
Kym Gyngell and others. The show focussed on suburban life with regular characters: the Greek fruit shop owner
Con, the inarticulate and unemployed
Col'n Carpenter, school girl
Kylie Mole and elderly
Uncle Arthur became household names. The shows catchphrases such as Con's "coupla days" and "bewdiful" entered the Australian vernacular. In August 1989, then Prime Minister
Bob Hawke appeared in a
The Comedy Company sketch with Mitchell on the premise of presenting Con with Australian citizenship. In reply to Con's question as to when Hawke was going to fix up the country, Hawke took delight in responding "a coupla days". Growing out of
Melbourne University and
The D-Generation came
The Late Show (1992–1993), starring the influential talents
Santo Cilauro,
Tom Gleisner,
Jane Kennedy,
Tony Martin,
Mick Molloy and
Rob Sitch; and during the 1980s and 1990s
Fast forward (
Steve Vizard,
Magda Szubanski,
Marg Downey,
Michael Veitch,
Peter Moon and others) and successor
Full Frontal – which launched the career of
Eric Bana and featured
Shaun Micallef. The D-Gen team formed
Working Dog Productions who have produced a string of hit films and television series, including the talk show
The Panel, the mockumentary series ''
Russell Coight's All Aussie Adventures and the improvisation comedy show Thank God You're Here''.
Rove McManus is a three-time winner of the
Gold Logie award as comedic host of his self-titled chat-variety show. The cerebral wit of such as
Clive James,
Clive Robertson and
Andrew Denton has been employed to great acclaim in the talk-show interview style. The Australian tradition of self-mockery runs thick in television comedy. The dysfunctional suburban mother–daughter sitcom
Kath & Kim pokes fun at the accents and attitudes of Australian suburbia.
Roy and HG provide an affectionate but irreverent parody of Australia's obsession with sport.
The Dream with Roy and HG has been a regular feature of Olympic television coverage in Australia since the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Actor/writer
Chris Lilley has produced a series of award-winning "mockumentary" style television series about ordinary Australian characters since 2005. Cynical satire has had enduring popularity in Australian comedy.
Rubbery Figures was a satirical rubber puppet series that screened in Australia in various forms from 1984 to 1990 and featured puppet caricatures of leading politicians and businesspeople. The
Doug Anthony All Stars musical comedy group featured
Paul McDermott, who later hosted the satirical news-based quiz show
Good News Week. The television series
Frontline lampooned the inner workings of Australia's "news and current affairs" TV journalism;
The Hollowmen (2008) was set in the office of the Prime Minister's political advisory (spin) department. ''
The Chaser's War on Everything'' cynically examines domestic and international politics.
Australian stand-up (left) Australian stand-up comedy is an important aspect of contemporary Australian comedy. Show-piecing the art is the
Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which began in 1987 with Barry Humphries as patron and British comic
Peter Cook as guest of honour and has grown to attract over 350,000 visitors annually. Political cartoons began appearing in Australian newspapers in the 1830s and
The Bulletin magazine used political cartoons to great effect from the 1880s.
Will Dyson took the Australian style of satirical cartooning to London before the First World War. Later internationally influential Australian cartoonists included
Pat Oliphant and
Paul Rigby.
Ginger Meggs, a popular long-run Australian comic strip, was created in the early 1920s by
Jimmy Bancks. The strip follows the escapades of a red-haired prepubescent mischief-maker who lives in an inner suburban working-class household.
Stan Cross is famous for his iconic 1933 "For gorsake, stop laughing: this is serious!" cartoon. Cartoons are today an integral part of political commentary and analysis in Australia. The lyrical cartoons of
Michael Leunig provide a quirky take on social issues.
Patrick Cook,
Alan Moir,
Warren Brown and
Cathy Wilcox are prominent contemporary political cartoonists. ==Awards and festivals==