Barry Humphries’s assault on Australian suburban mores began in Melbourne in the 1950s, an era when the possession of a pair of suede shoes signified sexual ambiguity and the Galleon Coffee Lounge was “continental”. He would kick, abuse and smash the glasses of a helpless blind man (a friend in disguise) on a busy train, and then leap off while the friend murmured endlessly, “Forgive him”. It is not exactly a surprise, then, for Humphries to admit, “I had discovered that there was a special pleasure to be had in shocking people.”

What is unexpected is this stately autobiography – less crazy than we might imagine, supported by bits and bobs of memorabilia, including an old school report and a baby record. Childhood is idyllic, interrupted only briefly by the arrival of a sibling, but the fine dusting of sarcasm in these first few chapters makes them remote and bloodless. Implicit in this bloodlessness is the fact that Humphries’s mother, with her relentless suburban banality, represents the roots of “little Barry’s” horror of euphemism and respectability. But, determined not to exhibit too much emotion, Humphries is only sardonic when recollecting the absence of approval or affection in the family home. As we discover, his mother disapproved of her son for the rest of her life.

Dadaism gave the youthful Humphries a legitimate excuse to play the antic, and he took up the opportunity with enthusiasm, producing “art works” with gruelling titles: My Foetus Killing Me (of nailed up shoes); Pus in Boots (of shoes filled with custard); Creche-bang (a pram draped with raw meat). In the end, he was to use less crude tactics to discompose an audience – a formula inspired by the cultural hostesses of outback Australian towns, from whom sprang the then younger and less sophisticated Edna Everage.

Humphries struggled to gain an international audience for his characters, and the roles he adopted in his twenty-year middle period proved the most gripping sections of the book. That he is multi-talented, with a feverish energy and wit beyond the characterizations he is now famous for, shines through the self-deprecating anecdotes and tales of near-failure. He has been a stand-up comedian, West End musical star (Fagin, Long John Silver), script-writer, cartoonist, columnist, film-producer and author of numerous books. Yet there was (and maybe still is) a destructiveness and guilty self-absorption, an abhorrence of denial in any form. This insistence on having it both ways – fidelity and affairs, security and freedom – is perhaps why there are so many references to “growing up”.

Interspersed with the “in those days” recollections – intimate pubs, Portobello Market bargains, a stage show at the Metropolitan Music Hall – are stories of peccadilloes that are both funny and sad. Challenged to pull his trousers down in an expensive French restaurant, he does so, but after his expulsion watches through the window while his wife and friends finish their meal.

His entanglement in and eventual escape from alcoholism are portrayed in rich detail, though with the same surreal, detachment that characterizes the entire book. Periods in a psychiatric hospital end somewhat mystifyingly in a pseudo-fictionalized version of the calamitous events that lead to “the last drink”. And the decisive role his second wife, Rosalind, plays in pulling him out of his own quagmire could have been fleshed out a little more. Still, she fares better than the first wife, reduced to a single-line description, “she was an exquisite little dancer”. There is no salacious gossip (the affairs are too numerous to be interesting), but important names – Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Sir John Betjeman, the Private Eye crew – all appear, especially Spike Milligan who is given affectionate space.

More Please is a cosy reckoning-up which repeats almost verbatim the stories tossed to John Lahr two years ago for an authorized and rather sycophantic biography. Being stuck, unjustly, in a classroom corner with a placard saying “I am a bully” seems to have caused Humphries infinite anguish, judging by the spleen with which it is recollected in both books. This autobiography reveals a man who, without the protection of his bawdy personas, is rather more thin-skinned than he would have us believe.

First published in the TLS.