The (almost) Complete Gough

Book excerpt: The man can't help it. Self-parody, sending up other people's expectations, a love of the absurd... Gough's still going strong. To mark another birthday (and in response to popular demand) we've brought together Life With Gough and the best of Whitlam to Winston with some great newly minted Gough stories to present a bumper edition of The (almost) Complete Gough. So, once again, here's a larger-than-life Australian, infuriatingly high-falutin' and bizarrely prurient, inflating himself above politics, enjoying himself hugely at the expense of the mean-spirited, the pompous, the ingratiating, the serious and the dull. 'Here is an agreeable and welcome mix of irreverence, wit and absurdity. Here is captured some of the moods and interests that had tenancy in the Whitlam mind - the imperious, the classical, the historical, the rompish, the waggish and the outrageously provocative.' - James Killen 'Anyone who has ever struggled to suppress mirth during a church service understands the pleasure to be found in sharing Barry Cohen's witty, irreverent but affectionate anecdotes. Don't tell Gough.' - The Hon. Kim Beazley