Not so long ago, the phrase "Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce" seemed unthinkably crazy. Nowadays, the Nationals leader is a beacon of carp - sorry, calm - stability in an ocean of political chaos.
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White nationalists have a foothold in the White House; China champions free trade as America retreats into protectionist isolation; Europe is crumbling; Pauline Hanson's One Nation is a juggernaut; Malcolm Turnbull is so unpopular, people wonder whether Tony Abbott might return.
On this league table of lunacy, Joyce - carp-slaying, Depp-destroying, barnstorming Barnaby - doesn't even rate a mention.
In the 12 months since he took over from the more, shall we say, sedate Warren Truss, Joyce has proven many of his doubters wrong. Far from a gaffe-prone disaster, he's been exactly what his party needed.
He has reinvigorated his parliamentary colleagues, all of whom held their seats at an election that was otherwise catastrophic for the Coalition. They even picked up another seat, the first time the Nationals or its Country Party forebears had done so while in government since the 1920s.
In New England, he fended off what many thought would be a fatal challenge from Tony Windsor without breaking a sweat; in the cabinet room, he has expanded his party's numbers and influence.
Where Turnbull's grip on his party room is tenuous, Barnaby's appears ironclad.
"In a job like this, you never think you'll last a day, or a week. It's a bit cricket. But I'm still at the crease," he says.
While he's toned down some of schoolboy antics since ascending to high office, he hasn't lost his flair for retail politics. Ably assisted by his deputy, Fiona Nash - described as a stabilising force on her more impetuous boss - Joyce has been the sort of tireless advocate the regions need.
Bob Carr says Joyce has an "element of Trump" about him. That's uncharitable, but true in the sense that he speaks to the sort of people most politicians just can't reach with their carefully rehearsed lines.
Which is no small asset in an age where people are brandishing pitchforks for the ruling class and turning in droves to outsiders like Hanson.
Joyce is no longer a maverick outsider; he's the ultimate insider. But he can still speak his mind: just witness his attack this week on the West Australian Liberals for their preference deal with One Nation.
Asked about the threat posed to the Nationals by Hanson's rise, he defers to Nash: "I believe in sharing questions," he says with a laugh.
He's been good for his party then, but what has he actually achieved for real people?
You would never accuse the Deputy Prime Minister of modesty: "Someone was saying to me the other day: 'Well, what have you done' and I was starting to go through the list but then I started to run out of paper."
He points to country-of-origin labelling laws; the Register of Foreign Ownership of Agricultural Land; a major new regional investment push; the new Rural Health Commissioner; a major compromise on the government's backpacker tax; progress on roads, railways, bridges and phone towers.
More controversially, he nominates his decentralisation push.
His decision to move the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority from Canberra to his own electorate hasn't won many rave reviews. At best it's seen as a populist pork-barrel; at worst a deeply misguided move that will decimate the agency and waste millions in taxpayers' dollars.
So what's in store for the next 12 months?
"First we take London, then we take Paris," he says with a chuckle. This "sweaty, big-gutted man from Australia" - as Johnny Depp so memorably described him - has lost none of this ambition then.
