In 2000, he sued the search engine Yahoo! for using his name. He lost.

Yahoo Serious - his legal name - grew out a shock of wild orange hair and cast himself as Albert Einstein, reimagined as the son of a Tasmanian apple farmer who splits the beer atom while trying to put the bubbles back in the family brew.

Serious wrote, produced, directed, edited, and did his own stunts for YOUNG EINSTEIN (1988), a one-man act of joyful nonsense.

This Einstein carves the first surfboard, invents rock and roll by wiring up his violin, works out relativity from a falling box of apples, romances Marie Curie on the train to Sydney, and pauses a jailbreak to rescue a pie full of live kittens.

The film was a colossal hit in Australia, and for a moment the whole world seemed ready to embrace it - and him: Serious landed on the cover of Time and got his own slot on MTV.

Warner Bros. spent eight million dollars selling Young Einstein to America, where critics tore it apart and audiences shrugged. Roger Ebert called Young Einstein a one-joke movie and gave it a single star.

Thus ended the brief, would-be glorious Australian comedy invasion that began with Crocodile Dundee.