This announcement from Sir Les himself has just been posted on YouTube:

Hi there my old mate the Australian taxpayer, Sir Les Patterson here.

Now if anybody should be the voice of Australia Day it should be bloody me, diplomat and mate of the Australian taxpayer. So this Australia Day I’m releasing something special, my new comedy CD and book, The Traveller’s Tool ENLARGED. It’s packed with practical advice for the modern man on the move and the woman who waits on him hand and foot.

Get yourself a load of Sir Les. Come on Australia!

Footage of Sir Les backstage at The Priority One Concert has surfaced on YouTube.

This shows our hero ‘shredding’ – as I believe the youngsters call it – on his ‘hot pink’ instrument. Strange that Sir Les chose that particular guitar to warm up on as he generally favours a Fender Stratocaster.

Another clip of Sir Les on Parkinson has been uploaded to YouTube. This time Sir Les is in a festive mood with fellow guests Martine McCutcheon, Tom Jones and Alistair McGowan. It appears that only Sir Les was appropriately dressed for the season.

As usual Sir Les is full of facts gleaned from years in the diplomatic community. Who would have known that Astrid was Scandinavian for astride!

But it’s Lady Gwen who becomes the main topic of conversation.

She’s nice but she’s boring. She could bore the arse-hole in a wooden horse my wife. I mean that lovingly.

Because she gets lonely Sir Les bought her a little dog. Over time the dog stopped responding to her whistle due to an excess of hair in it’s ears. Sir Les suggested buying some hair removal cream from the chemist. Before Gwen could explain the chemist said:

“If you’re using it on your legs, plenty of soap and water because it’s caustic. If it’s for the armpits more soap and water. And if you’re using it on your face Lady Patterson, really you better wash it off quick.” She said, “Actually it’s for my Schnauzer.” He said, “In that case don’t ride a bike for a fortnight.”

It’s only when Parky is winding things up that Martine glances over at our hero and cops an eyeful of his trouser snake. Are you with me?

Tom’s got a bit of competition tonight.

Yes, ‘Entertainment’ is the word on most of Sir Les Patterson’s cheque stubs. This is according to the man himself, announcing the 1984 BAFTA for Best Comedy Series, live from the Grosvenor Hotel in London.

Sir Les kept the celebrity audience entertained by telling a historic joke that had never been told in mixed company before. Thankfully it was suitable for primetime and concerned a little old lady in King’s Cross and three Australian drag queens.

Good old Terry ‘Woges’ Wogan managed to keep it together even when Sir Les announced that he was going to ‘open something up and whip something out’. That would be the winner of the BAFTA for Best Comedy Series, Paul Jackson for The Young Ones.

I’ve got a bit of a cold tonight so if I cough, put your hands over your mouths will you.

According to the BAFTA Awards Database is appears to be 1984 and not 1985 as titled by BlocksVideos on YouTube.

Sir Les sends a stirring and heartfelt message to fellow Australians via the Herald Sun.

Our hero discusses his position as Australian icon, a title that he’s resisted so as not to appear ‘up himself’. He has recently used his charm and a package from the Australian taxpayer to get Oprah Winfrey Down Under. She seemed to be amazed at the variation of muff munchers and shirtlifters but was not overwhelmed by the official gifts.

Sir Les is now busy grooming the current Prime Minister of Australia for the international stage. Les is an expert in this field as he once provided charisma coaching to John Major.

I am as proud as buggery to represent this magnificent land of ours overseas.

God Bless Australia – I only wish we owned it.

With news of Sir Les being practically non-existent, it’s thanks to YouTube user iano444 for uploading an interview with Mike Parkinson. Apart from ‘circa 1985’ in the title there’s no other description. It must have been a show that Mike did down-under as the other guests were: Barry Jones), Australian politician and Jackie Weaver, Australian actress.

Sir Les is impeccably dressed in a new ‘bag of fruit’ from a new tailor in Kowlo who supplies them a half dozen at a time. He is still championing Australia around the globe, always dipping into his slush fund whilst suffering from permanent jetlag.

Mike probes our hero and learns that Sir Les will indeed be attending the Royal Wedding at St. Paul’s Abbey, which seems to indicate the wedding of Andrew and Sarah in 1986.

Of course no interview is complete without a plug for The Australian Cheese Board. This time a fine Tasmanian Stilton had been in for a sniffing, the only way to appreciate fine cheese.

The best was saved until last and this beautiful:

Ode to Parky
by Sir Les

There’s a bloke who’s keenly watched and widely read
Who always hits the nail on the head
In the UK he started his career
Now he’s hit the jackpot over here

If he gets nervous, well it’s never showed
His face is like a mile of rugged road
His crows feet are the dried up beds of smiles
And his best friends are aware that he’s got piles…
of charm, pazazz and british spunk and phlegm

Of TV interviewers he’s the gem
He could interview a Zulu or Iraqi and make it interesting
His name is Parky

This bloke can conjure laughter and applause
In the wake of ratbags, puffs and crashing bores
And if he’s pushed for spicy dialog
He’ll ask you if you’ve ever nudged the grog

The TV critics here are chippy guys
They’ll try to chop old Parky down to size
A few might say, “Go back where you’ve come from"
"We won’t be taught charisma by a pom”

But he knows the average Aussie journalist
Is following orders, jealous or half pissed
He smiles, he does his job, he doesn’t care
When you’re the ace, where do you go from there

So whether you be Hun or Nip or Darkie
Raise your glass of lager, rum or Saki
And drink to my old cobber
Dear old Parky

Brings a tear to the eye doesn’t it.

Yes, the latest Sir Les news is that there is no news. Since the shows in Australia last December there have been no reported sightings of our hero. We can only assume that he is championing Australian culture, yartz and fillums around the globe.

The Sir Les Patterson page on Wikipedia has been updated by a group of people who know more about him than I do. His origins, appearances on stage and screen, a biography, published works and an exhaustive list of his professional career. It’s well worth a read.

The full interview with Mike Parkinson has been added to YouTube by RettroKunk. Sir Les is deftly probed by Parky about his image, the Australian film industry and the strain of staying faithful to Lady Patterson. With thoughts of his wife being half a world away he sings a delicate pean to Gwen called ‘My Old Lady’. The only thing that spoils the video footage is the occasional glimpses of Brian Humphries sat in the audience.

The reviews for the Australian shows, in Sydney and Melbourne, seem to be positive compared to those of the U.K. Barry Humphries spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald before the concerts and said of our hero, “So far there has been no resistance to the idea of having Sir Les appear… but there is sure to be a whole body of resistance afterwards.”

In the second half the urbane intelligence of Humphries made way for the carefully honed repulsiveness of Sir Les Patterson, who led an audience rendition of O'Hagan’s Along the Road to Gundagai.

The Sydney Morning Herald

We sang along to the 1922 classic, the theme to the Dad and Dave radio show, Along the Road to Gundagai and cringed, ogled and applauded as Sir Les hammed up the Humphries’s original Chardonnay, a waltz cum drinking song in supremely bad taste.

Guest pianist Dejan Lazic, who was onstage for Sir Les’s act, was one of the few who looked bemused that such a repellent character was a star attraction.

Australian Stage

The Patterson song cycle paid tribute to Peter Dawson, Australian jazzman Graeme Bell (still going strong at 95) and Rod Stewart, with Sir Les’s seminal version of Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? finding the ACO in disco mode.

Mt Druitt Standard

The second half was given over to Sir Les and Dame Edna. Spitting profusely and groping his “trouser-snake”, Sir Les’s blue-streaked banter was more compelling than his Rex Harrison-like speech-singing in a bracket of classic popular songs.

The Australian

Then it was time for the gloriously repulsive Sir Les Patterson to take charge of the show. He was full of booze-fuelled enthusiasm and the front row probably wished they had been issued disposable ponchos to protect them from the shower of fragrant spittle that rained down.

Equally delightful were his renditions of songs including The Stockriders' Song and Along The Road To Gundagai, as well as fabulously cringe-worthy versions of Chardonnay and Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?.

Daily Telegraph

Amazon.co.uk has a double CD of The Last Night of the Poms listed on their web-site. The release date is 4th September 2009 so it can’t be an audio recording of the recent performances. Unfortunately there is very little information other than it’s a 2009 digital remaster that is labeled as being an ‘import’. It is also available as an MP3 download. The Sir Les related tracks are :–

• Fanfare For A Cultural Attache
• Sir Les Introduces Peter And The Shark
• Peter And The Shark

You could just buy those 3 Sir Les tracks for £7.37 but you may as well buy them all for just £8.69.

This audio is also available on iTunes for £9.99.

The first performance of the Last Night Of The Poms tour was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London yesterday. With the monologues, by both Sir Les and Dame Edna, being well received it seems that reviewers took a dislike to the musical passages.

A dishevelled Sir Les continually sprayed the front row with spittle as he swigged from a whiskey glass and remarked of the poor weather outside: "dampness is not always a bad thing is it fellas?" Claiming to have been as "busy as a Baghdad bricklayer" this gaudy buffoon gave The Secret Policeman's Ball a run for its money when it came to subjecting the regal surrounds of the Albert Hall to filth and puerility. It was joyous to behold but so sadly short.

The Independent

The first [half] opens with an irresistible 10 minutes from Sir Les, who refines slobbering into an artform: the laughs flow according to the height hit by his spittle as it arcs towards the front row. It isn't sophisticated, but it's brilliantly disrespectful – as are Sir Les's unreconstructed jokes about "little Thai sheilas" and Peter Mandelson's urologist. So it feels plain wrong when Patterson's patter cedes to his Prokofiev parody, Peter and the Shark. Neither the text, nor the music is funny – and the style of each is cramped by the other.

The Guardian

After a sweeping overture conducted by Carl Davis, Barry Humphries appeared in the guise of Sir Les Patterson, cultural attaché extraordinaire, dribbling more than a Roy Hattersley Spitting Image puppet. Patterson is a magnificent monster and his 75-year-old creator was on filthily fine form, insulting the stony-faced Sheilas in the front row and boorishly berating latecomers.

This is London

In support, Humphries’s cultural attaché Sir Les Patterson suffers the same problems. His musical piece is Peter And The Shark, an Australianised version of the Prokofiev piece, with various instruments illustrating various characters drawn from antipodean fauna in a tedious gag-light story, slowed to a wearying pace by the soloists’ interludes.

Yet again, when he’s left to his own devices, Patterson’s a delight. Sure, a lot of the comedy comes from Strine slang such as ‘budgie smugglers’ for Speedos or other cheap innuendo, but he does it excellently, with all the exaggerated flair of a pantomime grotesque.

But mostly, he’s funny for no more sophisticated reason that the arching waterfalls of phlegm that spew from his mouth and over the audience every time he hits a plosive ‘p’ sound, which seems to occur with undue frequency. If the front row had dipped into the Royal Albert Hall merely to avoid the downpour outside, they would have found themselves more drenched inside the building than out.

Chortle: The UK Comedy Guide

It started well with Les Patterson delivering 15 minutes of the kind of filth we have grown to love him for - but then it all went wrong. He then proceeded to deliver a rambling monologue, accompanied by a full orchestra, about a story called "Peter and the Shark". It wasn't funny, it wasn't memorable. In fact, it wasn't anything.

Iain Dale's Diary