Barry Humphries was a comedy’s artistic disrupter before the term was even invented. His comic creations – Dame Edna Everage, Sir Les Patterson and Sandy Stone – were all experiments in how far he could push a larger-than-life character comedically, each one as finely drawn as one of Barry's own prized artworks. Dame Edna, the Melbourne suburban housewife superstar with a garish taste in fashion began as a joke but soon morphed into a real-life megastar, rubbing shoulder pads with the world’s richest and most famous. Sir Les was the Australian Cultural Attaché (and Chairman of the Australian Cheese Board), a grotesque whose boozy indiscreet stories both appalled and delighted in equal measure. And Sandy Stone, “Australia’s most boring man”, tested his audience’s capacity for melancholic tedium to its limit.

Humphries was a comic genius whose talent was simply too big be confined to his native Australia. Though perhaps few would recognise him out of costume, his characters became world famous and his colossal, inventive talent marked him out as a genuine one-off.

In this special edition of Funny But Dead devoted solely to Barry Humphries, John Marley and Mark Wells assess the extraordinary work and career of Australia' greatest comedy star of all time.

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Tommy Cooper is regularly cited as every comedian’s favourite comedian. He had a unique act as bungling fez-wearing magician unable to perform tricks while appearing entirely undeterred, but this masked a master craftsman whose every chaotic mishap was meticulously planned. Cooper had only to walk onto a stage to make an audience laugh. He was an innately funny performer, a towering presence on the British comedy and variety scene for over three decades before his untimely death on a live television variety show in 1984. His legacy lives on today in regular reruns of his popular shows and documentaries charting his phenomenal success.

Foster Brooks established himself as “the best drunk act in America” in the late 1960’s with a performance made all the more extraordinary by Brooks’ status as a committed teetotaller. No one in American comedy gave a more convincing, or more hilarious, portrayal of extreme inebriation. Brooks found national fame after Dean Martin first showcased his work on network television and he became a semi-regular on the Hollywood celebrity roasts hosted by his champion. On British television, Brooks was introduced to the UK audience by his great fan, Bob Monkhouse.

John Marley and Mark Wells discuss the work of the peerless Tommy Cooper and the comedy of the great Foster Brooks.

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Spike Milligan was a force of nature in British comedy in the second half of the twentieth century – a comedian, writer, poet, musician and actor whose influence is still felt today. As one of the writers and stars of BBC Radio’s legendary The Goon Show in the 1950’s he was instrumental in creating a new kind of nonsensical comedy embracing both surrealism and silliness. His work with fellow Goons Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, along with his later solo television shows, are cited as key influences by the Monty Python team. Milligan was a mercurial character who gloried in outlandish, unpredictable humour loved by his army of devoted fans – which famously included King Charles III.

Garry Shandling was a comedian, writer and comic actor whose work dazzled both audiences and the American comedy community in the Eighties, Nineties and into the new century. After a stunning television debut with a stand up performance on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson in 1981 his finest work came a decade later as the creator and star of The Larry Sanders Show, a no-holds-barred takedown of the production process on a nightly talk show. Shandling was a complex man who never seemed truly at ease in the limelight, but the sheer quality of his work broke new ground for what would be possible in comedy for uninhibited cable networks and streamers in the years ahead.

John Marley and Mark Wells discuss their professional encounter with Spike Milligan and assess his contribution to British comedy and look back at the career and fine work of Garry Shandling.

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