The most significant comedian since Chaplin?

They either become interior designers or mass murderers.

Luckily his mother became the former.

He reinvented his own mother in Edna Everage, both the epitome of kitsch, but also of a woman who dared to speak out and send up her hapless husband and her suburban life.

So, Barry sets out to be noticeably different.

He would grow his hair long and toss it to one side to give himself a groovy look.

He would dress impeccably but always with a flamboyant flair.

The white or red handkerchief's up-pointing triangle was always carefully raised over the top pocket of his jacket.

And the trousers and the coat needed to be of different and preferably of unusual colours, lest anyone could accuse Barry of sporting an average, unremarkable look.

His colourful character had to be always matched by the colourfulness of his appearance.

In the London golden age of comedy of the 1960s, the boozing comic genius Peter Cook together with the brilliant Aussie Spike Milligan took him under their wings as he immersed himself in the surreal and anarchist satirical theatre of the Dadaist performers.

Some classic examples of the absurdist Dadaist humour was the Peter Cook-Dudley Moore sketch in which Moore has only one leg, on which he keeps hopping while auditioning for the role of Tarzan and Edna Everage having her long suffering NZ bridesmaid sitting silently on the stage during her performances.

While his friend, Peter Cook, was prematurely cut down by alcoholism in spite of Humphries' desperate efforts to wean him off alcohol, Humphries went on to become arguably the longest performing and most original artist in the history of the Dadaist movement.