The Doug Anthony Allstars

Tim Ferguson and Paul McDermott were sans nice guy Richard Fidler for their comeback show at the Enmore Theatre, but this just made the performance more sharp-tongued and edgy as ever, as they provided an evening of outrageous and confronting jokes where nothing was off-limits.

Paul ‘Flacco’ Livingston accompanied the pair and played acoustic guitar. The trio reworked songs like ‘Lola’ to be about ‘Ebola’ and the ‘Y.M.C.A.’ turned into a recruitment tune for ISIS. Ferguson offered up a cheeky feminist poem while McDermott lashed out at the “sad” and “desperate” reunion acts with their “worthless” merch, tongue pressed firmly in cheek.

McDermott described his lot the best when he said he was “working with a pensioner and a cripple”. Ferguson is wheelchair-bound these days due to his multiple sclerosis, and it offered lots of fodder for comedy, with the former Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush star laughing about his debilitating disease. He told us about how he speeds through customs thanks to some choice moves like the tilt, the paws, the shoulder and the teeth, while McDermott admitted he’d been suffering too on account of his dandruff.

The latest incarnation of The Doug Anthony Allstars may well be even wilder and more aggressive and provocative than ever before – perhaps because the group’s members have reach an advanced stage of grumpy old man in their approach to the universe. Either way, their Sydney return was very funny and cheeky as they picked on themselves as well as new, topical items and life in general. They asked to be remembered as the brilliant young men who took on the world over three decades earlier before closing with a particularly rousing rendition of ‘I Fuck Dogs’. Their angry, almost punk-style comedy and Python-esque cheek are still alive and well, and prove they remain one unholy trinity of misfits.

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