The Wally Award.

For fifty years now we’ve been having an award ceremony at the pcbycp offices. It’s a special award. And it honours the man who’s made our revue (a popular event attended by other press luminaries) well renowned. We call it the ‘Wally Award’!

Wally is a real WAG!

Basically it was set up in honour of Wally Humphris. Wally is a wag. For years he used to dress up and pretend to do an an impersonation of Glady’s Meveridge, “typical Australian housewife”, and we’d be besides ourselves laughing. His speciality was taking the piss out of mainstream Australia. As far as he was concerned everyone and everything was ripe for a red hot go. And these past fifty years we’ve been laughing with him. He was very popular, a bit of an intellectual and we all thought that with his problem with drink and hanging onto a respectable lifestyle he’d be dead years ago. Artistic types are like that, liable to either go OFF or OFF! So it came as bit of a surprise when he took the plunge and went to the UK. For a while we’d hear reports that he’d been charged for doing lurid illustrations on dunny walls in tube stations. That he spent a bit of time in a psychiatric institution. And was reliant on his stock in trade on a grotesque characterisation of a typical Australian male. His metaphor, a rather hopeless, naive and delusional fellow called ‘Harry Tregenzie’. We all would have liked to read his comics which were popular in the UK, but over here they were banned. Unsuitable for public consumption and offensive. 

Oh how we laughed. If that was one thing Wally could do, it was to offend. The man was a genius for it.  And the more offensive he got, the more incisively witty he became, and  the more we laughed again. It was infectious!. .He’d have a go a toffs, wowsers,  old bastards, housewives. And even new Australians, and we’d piss ourselves laughing.  For Wally, it was money in the bank. That’s why he was always having divorces. Cos he could afford it. 

Wally’s alter ego Mitch Fifield.

After success in the UK he just got funnier and funnier. If the Poms loved him we just had to toe the line. He famously said he was ‘internationally famous in Australia’! That might have been a piss-take but if you’ve only got Rolf Harris and the Seekers, you hang onto any recognition you can get.  We’d see him on the telly and piss ourselves laughing. He did his routine with the housewife, the old Aussie battler and in all of em we saw a mirror of ourselves. That’s what made him so funny.  So it as only natural that the next time he came to Melbourne we’d book seats at the Odeon and see him perform. 

It was treat. We all loved  it, Well…… all of us except Les.

Les used to be called Bes, till he had a ‘gender reassignment’. Les hates people having goes at peoples sexuality. Wally reckons all of it is fair game. After the show we were all laughing and Les just walked out. Said he couldn’t understand how we could laugh at the serious issue of ‘gender reassignment’. WE all said, “ ah come off it, it’s all in good fun’, but Les wouldn’t have a bar of it. 

Reverend Curry, Unrecognised comic genius.

And then it was reported that Wally had said of gender reassignment “that knocking your old fella off was tantamount to mutilation”. Les took exception to that. Ever though his old fella had been surgically removed he said it was grotesque to call it “multilation”. When Germaine Greer said,”knocking your penis off doesn’t make you a woman”!, Les went BALLISTIC!

None of us found “Manette” terribly funny, made us feel real awkward.

This year we won’t see Wally anymore. We’re off to see a serious LGTBI comic, “Manette”. Who is more the reverend Curry, rather than humourous if you get our drift. She sort of sermonises. We all went along to support Les. And sat through it. And though we tried to laugh it was like being prosletysed. Wally would never have done that. He likes to prick sensibilities. Manette was just talking about herself, as the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT DEFINING EPOCH COMIC EVENT OF ALL TIME!!!

Sad thing though, none of the material was funny. 

“MANETTE” THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT DEFINING EPOCH MAKING COMIC GENIUS OF ALL TIME!!! (‘Manette’)

We’ll miss Wally, when asked if he minded being knocked off the Wally award” he laughed himself sick. 

Reckon he got the last laugh.