CELESTE BARBER

Ask Celeste Barber to sum up 2020, and the comedian responds in her signature unapologetic style: “What. The. Actual.”

In a year where bushfires raged and a pandemic prevailed, the Instagram icon became a fundraising phenomenon when she managed to generate an incredible $51.3 million for bushfire relief. At a time when good-news stories were few and far between, the impact of Barber’s global influence left Aussies feeling proud as punch that she was one of us.

As blazes bore down on the NSW town of Eden, where her mother-inlaw lives, Barber felt compelled to call for action. She initially set out to raise $30,000 but made history when her fundraiser became the largest charity drive in Facebook’s history.

“It was so hard to watch my family so scared and so helpless, so I just did what I could and asked people for money,” she explains. “I can’t believe how much people donated – it was, and it still is, overwhelming. I mean, I’ve still got some crappy merchandise that I have been trying to sell for the past five years sitting in my garage because no-one wants to buy it. No-one was more shocked than me.”

Still, she didn’t stop there. After joining forces with Chris and Liam Hemsworth to front the Make It Rain fundraiser in Byron Bay, Barber hosted the Fire Fight concert in February, raising more than $10.7 million for bushfire-affected communities.

Just don’t call her a social activist: the princess of parody has no plans to cull her comedic chops, especially during a period when the world is longing for laughs more than ever.

“I have been getting a lot of messages from people saying that all they want to do at the moment is laugh because if they don’t, the gravity of what’s going on in the world is too much,” says Barber, who lists wine and her sons, Lou and Buddy, as her coping mechanisms. “We have to laugh; it’s so important. If you can’t find anything that makes you laugh at the moment, laugh at yourself. It helps, trust me.”