THERE are several shows going on at once in a Barry Humphries performance on this farewell tour by the bard of bad taste.

One is the raucous show as it happens, the veteran Australian humorist and caricaturist playing a blizzard of lewd Oz characters through the Humphries years, kicking off with the cartoon buffoonery and belching bigotry of that slobbering cultural attaché, politically incorrect Sir Les Patterson, and ending with a second half devoted entirely to Melbourne housewife Dame Edna Everage.

Another is the show as you wait for Edna the headliner, given that the dismissive Dame is the real reason everyone has gathered to say goodbye and wave their gladioli one last time.

The decibels of laughter that greet Sir Les, and his newly created dodgy brother Gerard, a dog-collared, electronic-tagged paedo priest, seem born out of the thrill of being in the presence of Mr Humphries one last time, whoever he is playing, rather than a proportionate response to what either is saying.

Admittedly on a different scale to the outsized Humphries creations, but nevertheless the experience is like waiting for Graham Fellows to do one of his other fellows, Brian Appleton and Dave Tordoff, before he turns into John Shuttleworth.

Show number three within Eat, Pray, Laugh! is the audience one that depends on where you are sat, the one where you wish you were not near the front of the stalls, unless you are a glutton for verbal abuse from Dame Edna or a stray plume of phlegm from Sir Les every time he pronounces the letter P with particular panache.

Those out of range count their blessings from above, watching from smug safety in the “paupers’ seats”, like the Roman rabble in the Colosseum surveying charioteers or gladiators. Those in stalls-range of Sir Les’s spiralling spittle cannot relax and the pervasive feeling of nervousness tightens further when Dame Edna starts scanning the first three rows for prey.

Humphries has talked of the Dame being separate from him, a character unto herself, but she comes across more as puppeteer and naughty puppet rolled into one, scolding herself for being so rude after mocking a choice of clothes, hairstyle or bedroom design when engaging in one-sided conversations with her victims.

“It’s like getting blood from a stone,” Edna said to one taciturn woman, trapped in his gaze. Her discomfort, so very English, was palpable. The laughter only grew.

What of the Eat, Pray, Laugh! title, riffing on that briefly in vogue Eat, Pray, Love novel about self-exploration in foreign lands? The “Eat” part could be Les Gets Cookin, as Sir Les bids for a celebrity chef TV contract with a pilot edition involving audience participation and rissoles with lashings of saliva: the essence of bad taste.

The “Pray” could apply to those praying not to be prey for Humphries. And “Laugh”? Yes, the savage social satire still bites, but there could have been more topical observation to go with the routines, slickly directed Simon Phillips with a servile accompanying ensemble for Humphries and a garden set design by Brian Thomson.

Strangely, the one character devoid of outrage and laughs is the most striking: Sandy Stone, a Sydney old boy speaking sagely from beyond the grave. He could now be Humphries saying farewell to his career, but is the curtain falling for the final time?

Here is another Humphries show within the show. The Sinatra one. The BB King one. The Tina Turner one. Is this really the end for Edna? “Please promise one thing,” says Humphries, by now dressed in a smoking jacket. “Do promise to come to my next farewell tour.”

Ooh, the teasing. Eat, Pray, Leave? Maybe not, after all.

Eat, Pray, Laugh!, Barry Humphries Farewell Tour, Leeds Grand Theatre, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 848 2700 or leedsgrandtheatre.com