I have to con­fess that I had never heard of South African stand-up come­dian, Barry Hilton, “The Cousin”, prior to his recent Bris­bane performance—I now under­stand why he has such a following.

Play­ing to a packed audi­ence at Fitzy’s in Brisbane’s Logan­holme, his besot­ted fans made him feel right at home.

Hav­ing lived away from South Africa for 14 years, I began to won­der whether I would still some­how ‘get’ the humour after so many years Down Under. I am pleased to announce that if Barry is any­thing to go by, South African humour is timeless.

Barry Hilton, you are very, very funny and I think I get you.

His ‘peeps’ clearly got him too and if he was look­ing for a recep­tive crowd, this was it. And, I gather, so were his ‘peeps’ in Perth. In New Zealand he is expected to per­form in front of sell-out audi­ences from 17–29 August, with four of his ten per­for­mances already sold out.

It was not all Barry, however—the show curtain-raiser was  New Zealand born come­dian, Mike Ben­net who had the par­ents of the 12-year-old at our table cring­ing. Fresh off the boat, I gather they had no babysit­ter so brought their young daugh­ter along to see their hero, Barry. They were clearly ill-prepared for the bar­rage of some­times hilar­i­ous but rather below-the belt humour ema­nat­ing from Ben­net. Here’s hop­ing it all went way over the youngster’s head…

While the local come­dian drew plenty of laughs, the night clearly belonged to the expres­sive, goofy Port Eliz­a­beth funny man.

His ref­er­ence to ‘I can see your aura’ Capeto­ni­ans struck a chord with Bris­ban­ites who are con­stantly reminded that they reside in a cul­tural back­wa­ter com­pared to their far more sophis­ti­cated ‘Mel­bour­ni­ans’ (Barry’s word).

“Capeto­ni­ans say we have the mown­taaain and Jo’burgers  reply: ‘Ok well shame, we have the moneeey…we can buy a moun­tain…’ were among  his many quips.

His self-effacing humour went down well with the mostly South African audi­ence. One-liners such as: ”it must be very bor­ing liv­ing here—I’ve been here eight days and there’s only been one mur­der” or “the place is so clean—we need to get some peo­ple to dirty it up a bit” and “are tat­toos com­pul­sory here?” or “I was kak at school—I left Stan­dard Six in sec­ond break,” met their mark.

But there again, with this besot­ted crowd, Barry could have stood and pulled faces all night and they would have loved him anyway.

And the love, it seems, is rec­i­p­ro­cal. Judg­ing by his warm and fuzzy post per­for­mance tweets, Barry will be back…

(Photo cour­tesy www.barryhilton.co.za)