Barry McKenzie (full name: Barrington Bradman Bing McKenzie)[1] is a fictional character created in 1964 by the Australian comedian Barry Humphries, suggested by Peter Cook, for a comic strip, written by Humphries and drawn by New Zealand artist Nicholas Garland in the British satirical magazine Private Eye.
One of Humphries' early stage characters was a surfer named "Buster Thompson", who served as a prototype for Barry McKenzie.
Humphries has noted that after Peter Cook heard a recording of Thompson in New York in 1962, he invited him to devise a similar character for Private Eye.
(1971), and later, Bazza Comes Into His Own: The Final Fescennine Farago of Barry McKenzie, Australia's First Working-Class Hero—With Learned and Scholarly Appendices and a New Enlarged Glossary (1979).
The first two books were published in London and initially banned in Australia with the Minister for Customs and Excise stating the comic "relied on indecency for its humour".