IS BIGGER necessarily better? Aussie comic Barry Humphries had the massed ranks of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and its huge choir filling the arena stage for his musical parody Last Night of the Poms.

Conducted by the now Dickensian-looking Carl Davis, the orchestra backed both of Humphries’s alter egos, Australian cultural ambassador Sir Les Patterson and the glorious Dame Edna Everage.

The drunken slob Sir Les recited the Peter and the Wolf-inspired Peter and the Shark to Davis's quirky score while Dame Edna "sung" her cantata tribute to the creation of her home country, Australia.

It was a performance 75-year-old Humphries last gave 28 years ago and really it should have been left in the history books.

Its main fault was that it is not funny, at least not laugh-out loud funny, worthy of just an occasional smile.

The Peter recitation involved some Australian animals and the aforementioned shark in a beach-set fantasy while the Australian epic covered Australia's entire history from creation to Mel Gibson.

Reading from scores, both characters mugged merrily to words and music to some effect but it was away from the music that both collected the biggest laughs.

Here they did what they did best – worked with the audience.

Sir Les was neater than I remember him (no open flies or vomit-covered jacket) but he did have something shoved down his trousers which he flaunted at the ladies, directed saliva to the front row and told some off-colour anecdotes.