Q: In my teens, in the early '90s, I used to sneak a peek at my big brother's Australian Penthouse magazines. When I read the Les Norton stories I found the "lovable larrikin" frighteningly brutal, upsettingly misogynist and ignorantly intolerant of difference. When I saw the ABC was making a series from those stories I thought I'd reread them from an adult perspective, but still found them vile. The TV version has been toned down, but it still glorifies a toxic form of masculinity. Is the Australian national broadcaster a Sydneycentric boys club that favours this retrograde rubbish?

A: I had a similar experience. I was a Les Norton virgin when I saw the TV trailers, so I decided to find out more about this previously unmined seam of iconic Aussie Lit. I read Barrett's first collection, You Wouldn't Be Dead For Quids, and felt sickened. First, came graphic descriptions of extreme violence told with wry relish, including details such as the light gleaming from the white of exposed bone. There was the account of Les smashing a woman in the face because she annoyed him, and beating up a hippy. Beating up an annoying household of Kiwis was par for the course, but when he told the girl of the house he was going to rape her I was aghast. Luckily, he only kicked her. This gratuitous "arse kicking for fun and profit" was bad enough. Worse was the story about Les letting a brutalised Staffordshire bull terrier into the Greek neighbour's yard and watching over the fence as it literally tore a German shepherd to pieces. How gleefully Les described its fear and death agony. Incredibly, the story got worse.

Storytellers have always glorified and romanticised periods in history that were actually pretty terrible – the pirates of the Carribean, the Wild West and Al Capone's gangsters. In Australia, we have bushrangers and Melbourne's "Underbelly" gang wars.

Les Norton operates in the deeply corrupt, pre-ICAC era of 20th century Sydney, when illegal casinos and brothels thrived, winked at by bent coppers and pollies. There is still some nostalgia for the era, before the lockout laws, when King's Cross was a "colourful" nest of vice, intoxication and violence. The stories appealed to those who missed a bit of biffo at the footy, down gallons of beer and grade women by their looks.