For a while long enough for it to be considered part of the cultural furniture of Australia, Sean Micallef's satirical news comedy p(r)ogr(o)am(me) 'Mad As Hell', has thrown tomatoes, bananas, and gherkins of comedy at the establishment and the rich and powerful from a position elsewhere in the establishment. A comedy news comedy p(r)ogr(o)am(me) is about as establishment as you can possibly get without becoming a mindless cackledrone on Sky News.
Mad As Hell is most likely principally written by Micallef and I suspect that the reason why he has made a string of these surrealist kinds of semi-newsy kind of comedy shows is a product of both his legal background and of the comedy that he absorbed. Not only does Mad As Hell lay out its comedy influences blatantly by giving its characters names that wouldn't be out of place on Monty Python's Flying Circus or The Goon Show, but it lays down the necessary visual language of comedy by employing roughly the same sorts of weapons against its comedy targets on both an audio and visual front.
One of the staple characters (as played by Francis Greenslade) is Vice Rear Cabin Boy, Sir Bobo Gargle.
Comedy works by taking an expected structural narrative and then subverting that narrative in some way. The prime methods of doing this are by the use of sarcasm, vanity, satire, punnery and wordplay, substitution of meaning generally, direct parody as well as exaggeration. Surrealist comedy, of which Mad As Hell very heavily leans into, likes to play with the forms of meaning through exaggeration quite frequently; which is what the character of Vice Rear Cabin Boy Sir Bobo Gargle very obviously is. He is very broad parody of type as well as by mannerisms and catchphrase (which itself has also become the subject of meta-comedy through playing with the very form of the thing itself).
One only needs to look at Vice Rear Cabin Boy Sir Bobo Gargle to see that the visual language being employed to make fun of rigid authority systems, is one of exaggeration.
On the most obvious visual reading of Sir Bobo Gargle, it is apparent that he has way too many medals to be sensible and I think that that is as far as the visual joke is supposed to go because nobody would seriously analyse him any further, would they? Well I would. I would because that also is itself a form of meta-comedy through exaggeration.
Probably without any attention to detail, Mad As Hell just asked the ABC props department to provide the character with some kind of navy uniform and didn't care much beyond that. Sir Bobo Gargle isn't actually wearing an Australian Navy uniform but an American one, and a Naval Commander's uniform at that.
Also without attention to detail, those far too many medal ribbons aren't just some random affair but actually can be read and matched with the accompanying medals. Admittedly I haven't yet been able to crack all of the codes yet but I have had a red hot go at it.
I think that some of them are as follows:
Right Side: 9 Rows
Row 1: US Vietnam Gallantry Cross - US Bronze Star Medal - US Purple Heart
Row 2: X - Air Force Organizational Excellence Award (1969) - The Most Noble Order of the Garter
Row 3: X - X - X
Row 4: X - X - X
Row 5: X - X - X
Row 6: X - X - Victoria Cross
Row 7: X - X - X
Row 8: X - X - US Armed Forces Service Medal (1996)
Row 9: US China Service Medal (1942) - France & Germany Star (1945) - Navy Cross
Left Side: 4 Rows
Row 1: X - US Vietnam Service Medal (1965)
Row 2: X - X - X
Row 3: X - X - US Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal (1961)
Row 4: X - X - UN Medal (UNTSO, Middle East) (1948)
I suspect that whoever originally made this fake uniform up, had some references to play with because my suspicion is that the entire medal group on both sides is completely genuine. I have no idea who exactly would have been that decorated but the fact that there are so many medals for gallantry, indicates to me that whoever this was was a career naval officer who would have been otherwise useless in civilian life.
The other major point of noteworthiness here is that this medal group is likely to have ended in the 1960s/70s which indicates that this is taken from a colour photograph but one that is swiftly running away into the past. I think that this person would have been a World War II/Korean War/Vietnam War veteran.
How this relates to the character of Vice Rear Cabin Boy Sir Bobo Gargle is that his rank is blatantly an act of stupidity, his title of 'Sir' is impossible if he is an American, and he is also not working for the Royal Australian Navy if he is dressed in an American Naval Commander's uniform. There is literally nothing believable about Vice Rear Cabin Boy Sir Bobo Gargle and yet, the character type of a gloriously incompetent naval officer of great (?) authority is possibly more real than the actual characters who inhabit the news cycle.
A common feature of good writing generally and of comedy in particular is that it essentially builds a stripped down model of some aspect of the human condition and plays with that.
The fundamental problem with Vice Rear Cabin Boy Sir Bobo Gargle is that because the underlying writing is very good, and because Francis Greenslade is also a very good character actor, Sir Bobo Gargle is able to inhabit a larger space than the unreality in which the model should allow him to inhabit. Especially in the twenty-first century where actual people in authority and power try to stay on script, they end up being far smaller than the position in reality that they occupy.
Our Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) tries to project an image of being a daggy dad; which might very well be true but not necessarily as the premier of a parliamentary cabinet. There's a really strange kind of dynamic at work where characters like Sir Bobo Gargle, Vomitoria Catchment, spokesborg Darius Horsham and Brion Pegmatite, end up being more real and more believable than the character types that they are trying to satirise.
Of course the very real danger for society is what happens if they decide to vote for and install a character from unreality into positions of power. Instead of someone like Sir Bobo Gargle who is trying to smuggle truth in with the blatant lies that he is selling us, we get someone incompetent, awful, or nefarious, trying to put just enough truth in with the lies that they are trying to make us swallow.
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