AFTER two brain operations following a fall off a balcony on the NSW central coast almost three weeks ago, there’s one thing everyone wants to know: is Bill Leak still himself?

The evidence would suggest yes, most definitely.

Released from hospital on Wednesday, he’s rather upset that some bloke over in the US won an election on the same day, and he wasn’t there to record a moment in history.

“It seems a bit unjust to me — you’ve been watching an American election for two years, suddenly it culminates, and what am I doing? Lying on my back,” Leak says.

While in remarkably good humour, happy to be at home with his much-loved dog, Gus, and surrounded by his family, Leak still appears pale and a little fragile, and complains repeatedly of a headache.

As he might. The scars where a section of his skull has been lifted out are clearly visible. “I have a feeling I am in a constant snowstorm; it’s all foggy in there,” he says.

But he also recognises one thing: “I’m very lucky to be alive, incredibly lucky. I’ve had a miraculous recovery, that’s what the doctors said.”

Leak expresses an increasingly urgent desire to get back to his cartoons, the work he loves so much. “I’m champing at the bit,” he says. “Anyone hoping I wasn’t coming back will be disappointed.”

He quips constantly over the incident. “As an attention-seeking device, falling head-first off a balcony was second to none,” he says.

Leak retells with some hilarity how his stocks went way up among the nurses at Royal North Shore Hospital when Dame Edna Everage, aka Barry Humphries, rang to wish him well. “I was the darling of the ward,” he says.

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>> Watch Leak talk

about his recovery at www.theaustralian.com.au

Credit: John Stapleton