Dame Edna Everage

[janbo1960]

ELEANOR HALL: Now to a superstar who has maintained her popularity over 50 years in show business.

To mark her half-century today, Dame Edna Everage is being feted in her hometown of Melbourne. Australia's favourite housewife and self-described icon, has been presented with the key to the city this morning by Melbourne Lord Mayor John So. Our reporter, Samantha Donovan was there.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, Dame Edna Everage.
(Sounds of applause and music)

JOHN SO: Today we are here to honour Melbourne's first lady. On behalf of the city of Melbourne, I present you with a key to the city.

EDNA EVERAGE: Isn't it (inaudible). If I was anyone else, I'd be lost for words.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Looking as glamorous as always - this time in fuchsia pink sequins - Dame Edna took to the stage outside the Melbourne Town Hall to receive the key to the city.

Dame Edna Everage, or Mrs Norm Everage as she was then, first took to the stage at the University of Melbourne in 1955 in a skit on housing for the Melbourne Olympics.

Her career took off and by the 1970's she was hosting her own TV specials. In 1973, she appeared on the ABC's PM program.

EDNA EVERAGE: How do you do everybody? This is Dame Edna Everage, housewife, superstar, talking to you on PM, a delightful little ABC program, which I believe, Tony, goes out to the country centres too.

HOST: Yes, Mrs Everage that...

EDNA EVERAGE: Dame Edna, if I may.

HOST: I beg your pardon.

EDNA EVERAGE: I think if you've been made a dame, it's nice to be addressed correctly, particularly by young men.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Formerly a mere megastar, the Moonee Ponds housewife has since risen to self-professed "gigastardom".

Her glittering theatrical and television career, taking her from her humble Melbourne origins to the theatres and studios of London and New York, gaudy glasses, glitter and gladioli always on show.

Dame Edna reminisced this morning.

EDNA EVERAGE: 50 years have passed, I've passed through many stages; I've been through denim, I've been through Thai silk.

I've pioneered so many styles and fashions, I've met pretty well everyone of importance in the world, I've been everywhere and I still feel so strongly about Melbourne.

I won't say I still call Australia home, that's a little bit of a cliche isn't it? And whoever thought that Peter Allen meant it for one minute?

(Sounds of laughing)

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Dame Edna often reminds us that she has been a trailblazer for other Australian entertainers including Kylie Minogue and Nicole Kidman.

And two Melbournians with similarly humble suburban beginnings were also there today to pay tribute to Dame Edna.

Fountain Lakes own Kath and Kim.

EDNA EVERAGE: Look at this media turnout.

KATH: Oh, well it's nice, isn't it? It's unusual isn't it?

EDNA EVERAGE: When you're successful, you will have a reception like this.

(Sounds of laughter)

KIM: You can only dream.

EDNA EVERAGE: Possums, I don't know quite what I have to do now, or...

KIM: Well, we don't know...

KATH: We'll go. Yes, we'll go.

EDNA EVERAGE: Why don't we meet later? I'll see you at the Buckingham.

KATH: That's right, we'll book a room; do you want a suite or a deluxe?

EDNA EVERAGE: No, I don't. I just want a comfortable room, if possible with television.

KIM: Oh, and a nice spa. That's right, they do very nice spas there. We'll hop in the spa together and have a flute of bubbly.

ELEANOR HALL: The ABC's Kath and Kim accompanying Dame Edna Everage at that ceremony in Melbourne.

[faceless]

cheers for that - if you see any specials on tv, any chance of capping them?

[janbo1960]

Will do... just watched a top sketch show..... Ronnie Johns...really funny - will cap it next week!!!

[eefanincan]

[faceless]

[faceless]

[eefanincan]

Ya gotta love someone who has the guts to wear purple hair Long Live Dame Edna!

[faceless]

haha yeah, a living leg end!

[faceless]

News Review interview: Barry Humphries
As Dame Edna he is outrageous: a hilariously accurate judge of suburban pretension. Offstage, and at 75, he remains irresistible to women, including his novelist friend and neighbour
March 1st 2009
timesonline.co.uk

I’ve always felt that Barry Humphries invented me. His alter ego, Dame Edna Everage, has a daughter named Valmai who married a man called Mervyn and moved to a blond-brick house in the suburbs. My mother’s name is Valmai, she’s married to my dad Mervyn and – you’ve guessed it – they live in a blond-brick house in Sylvania, a suburb of Sydney. As Dame Edna would say, “How spooky, possums!”

It was my mum who first alerted me to Barry’s work. I can vividly recall my parents coming home from the St George Leagues club in 1974, weak from hysteria. Dame Edna had satirised suburban life, with its wine-cork-sniffing husbands (the blokes who put the bore into bordeaux), with devastating accuracy. “She even described my duck-egg-blue bathroom with the multicoloured cotton balls,” Mum enthused, lapsing into Ednicity. “Tiles only halfway up the wall, darling? What went wrong, dear – did you run out of money?”

With his astute observational skills and keen cultural radar, Barry is really an anthropologist. As we’ve been neighbours in London for more than a decade (our houses back onto each other), I get to experience his wicked wit at first hand. “Dear Kathy,” he e-mailed a couple of weeks ago. “Back in London tomorrow when I’ll be poised at your rear entrance.”

“Your place or mine?” he electronically flirted upon his return. Followed by, “Why are we sitting in front of these infernal machines when we could just open the window and shout?”

We’ve shared many a raucous dinner in my kitchen and in Barry’s elegant dining room. (While I tend to use my smoke alarm as a timer, Barry’s wife, Lizzie Spender, is an excellent cook.) Nothing brightens up a grey London day quite like bumping into Barry in the local supermarket. It’s hard to believe he turned 75 the other week, although he insists this is a clerical error. “Don’t you know that I just played Hugh Jackman’s body double in the film Aus-tralia?” he says.

Barry has to be Australia’s most influen-tial and successful export. His comic creations – the irrepressible Dame Edna, the odious Sir Les Patterson and the reflective Sandy Stone (whom Barry describes as “Melbourne talking in its sleep”) – have helped shape a nation. With Edna about to celebrate her 52nd year on the stage – he’ll be touring Britain with his new show, Last Night of the Poms, later this year – it is timely to reflect on what shaped him.

Barry dropped in years ago to present me with his newly published autobiography, quipping, “My life is in your hands.” And what a life it’s been. He was born in 1934 and grew up in Camberwell, Melbourne. Legend has it that to alleviate the boredom of school football, he would sit on the field with his back to the game, knitting.

At university, Germaine Greer helped ladle custard into rubber wellingtons for an act Barry called Pus in Boots. He then captivated London with the stage show House-wife! Superstar! – the first of many sell-out West End runs, followed by a string of primetime chat shows. The icing on the fame pie came when Dame Edna finally conquered America, first through a Broad-way run that earned Barry a prestigious Tony award, then with her appearances on Ally McBeal, the legal comedy drama.

So much for the public Barry Humphries – what of the private man? What delighted me when first I got to know Barry was his warmth. Dame Edna has a venomous wit, but Barry is a compassionate and loyal friend. In times of personal crisis, how reassuring it is to see him slinking through the front garden in his fedora and box-pleated, tailored jacket, piquing the interest of pedestrians with his Sherlock Holmes demeanour.

Dame Edna would kill for Barry’s social circle. He rubs tiaras with Prince Charles and the Queen on a regular basis. He “gave away” Pamela Stephenson to Billy Connolly at the altar. Gough Whitlam, the former prime minister of Australia, was so enam-oured of Edna Everage, he gave her a dame-hood – “the only suitable recipient of an imperial honour at my hands”, he wrote.

An array of talented people were invited to Barry’s birthday bash, but most of all he likes the company of women. “Women are so much more broad-minded than men. They have a much more important role than men too. And are just much, much more interesting,” he confides over coffee at my kitchen table.

Even now, at 75, with his fringe flopping over one eye in a boyish manner, he still has women crowding around him at parties. “But you’re maritally incontinent,” I tease him. “Four marriages! Do your wedding vows say, ‘Till divorce us do part?’ Your friends must have thought they were developing tinnitus, but it was just the endless ringing of wedding bells as you kept getting hitched.”

“Most men have girlfriends between marriages. I usually have had wives between marriages,” he jests in reply. “I’m just not all that good at being a spouse.” When he flirts, his voice is low and mellifluous. He loves to linger over words, rolling the syllables around in his mouth, in lieu of the wine he no longer drinks.

I ask him whether knowing Edna so intimately for all these years has made him more sympathetic to the female psyche. “Oh yes,” he says. “Dame Edna doesn’t want Les in the show. Most women wake up next to a Les on their pillow every morning, and Edna feels sure that they don’t want to spend an evening with him as well. And I think women find Dame Edna empowering because she’s saying there’s a way out. You can tiptoe through the broken kids’ toys in the backyard and escape over the fence to a new life.”

This is a sentiment that would not have gone down well with Barry’s mother, a beacon of suburban respectability, who was always slightly disapproving. Barry told me that he once asked her if she loved him. “Naturally I love your father most of all, then my mother and father, and after that you and your sister, just the same,” came her painfully matter-of-fact reply.

I ask Barry if Edna is based on her in any way. “My mother had very good taste. And was very amusing in an extremely sardonic way. But Edna is nothing like my mother. She’s much more extrovert. Edna is really quite bright. Sometimes I hear her say something and I think, ‘That was quite a clever thing to say. I wish I’d said that’.”

I suggest perhaps women adore Edna because of her black belt in tongue fu: women are generally more verbally dexterous than blokes, but Edna is the Martina Navratilova of the backhanded compliment. She can elevate then annihilate in the same breath. Talking to Michael Bol-ton, the singer, on her most recent talk show in Britain, she purred, “You’ve had nine hits this year.” Just when the singer was preening himself, Edna added, “On your website.”

“I think women like Edna because she’s evolved along with them,” Barry continues, over our second coffee. “She began life wearing cast-off clothes and housecoats. Then she became smarter. She was a pioneer of Thai silk, you know. In the late Seventies she showcased the denim tennis outfit,” he adds with facetious pride.

After the success of Barry’s “frock-athon” – an exhibition of Dame Edna’s frocks in Melbourne – he encouraged Kylie Minogue to do the same. KM’s exhibition was a huge hit at the Victoria & Albert museum. “Yes,” sighs Barry with faint disgust, “Sir Les broke his nose at the Kylie exhibition. He didn’t realise those hot pants were behind glass.”

Most successful artists become so vain, they should install spotlights in their bedrooms, but Barry is disarmingly self-deprecating. Dame Edna often observes she was “born with a priceless gift: the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others”. Barry laughs most heartily at himself.

For The South Bank Show, Barry gave Melvyn Bragg, the arts programme’s presenter, two interviews, one as the intellectual Barry, surrounded by his books and paintings, and then as Dame Edna, who savaged Barry as pathetic, pitiful and pretentious.

Her put-downs of her “manager” Mr Humphries were hilariously hurtful. However, while Barry is generous, he’s no pushover. He tells me about being stalked by an obnoxious paparazzo. “I was in Sydney having coffee with a friend. This photographer approached, reeking of alcohol, shoving his camera at us. I saw a knuckle moving past my face. Much to my surprise, I realised it was attached to my own hand. I just watched as my fist moved in slow motion.”

A Sir Les moment, I suggest, and out of character for the refined and highly intellectual Humphries. Whereas Les Patterson probably thinks “erudite” is a kind of glue, Barry paints landscapes and wears only bespoke clothes. He once mortgaged his flat to buy a painting he adored, with no obvious means of paying off the debt.

He collects paintings and rare books, including volumes of surrealist poetry. His library of 18,000 books, most of which are first editions, takes up an entire floor of his West Hampstead home. And yet there is nothing elitist about him. The fact we’re friends (I left school at 16 – the only examination I’ve ever passed is my cervical smear test) proves he relates to the everyman.

“But,” he ruminates, “Edna quickly developed amazing cultural power. Everything Edna liked, people banished. I was invited to dinner after the show by some nice Adelaidians once. Anyway, the food was lovely, the people were really nice . . . the only unusual thing was the rectangular shapes on the walls where the pictures used to be. They’d obviously taken down their paintings before I arrived.” We laugh. Then he adds, thoughtful once more, “But I felt quite upset that people thought I was sneering and snobby.”

Happy birthday, Bazza.

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Here's a recording of Dame Edna on talkSPORT last night, along with Cleo Roccas.

DOWNLOAD - thanks to www.mickynwa.com

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Shock star ... Barry Humphries with his hamster coat
People get fed up of seeing those little creatures on wheels
Pictures: LEE THOMPSON
By SHARON HENDRY
thesun.co.uk
9th April 2009

BARRY HUMPHRIES is one of Australia’s greatest cultural exports – but the reclusive comic genius says he is now resigned to living in Britain. The reason... Aussie men have become POOFTERS.

In a rare interview, the Melbourne-born legend and creator of Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson says: 'The Aussie male has become feminine. Poofterism has taken over in a big way. Masculinity is under threat. People are being nice to women and inviting them to parties. It’s shocking.'

Barry, 75, clearly still loves to shock and today he is in fine, politically incorrect fettle. Swinging open a beautifully tailored green, tweed coat, he reveals a lining made of real hamster fur. And asked if he feels nervous wearing it in such an animal-loving society, he grins and says 'Darling, people get sooooo fed up seeing those little creatures spinning around on wheels.'

Barry is not for modernising but his unique ability to keep Edna abreast of popular culture has helped the character endure. It is more than 50 years since he slipped on a sequined dress, bouffant wig and wacky glasses to breathe life into the most acid housewife the world has ever seen. Dame Edna has delighted in deconstructing the egos of celebrities and politicians with waspish interviews. But which are the moments Barry has delighted in the most?

His face lights up as he responds: 'Ah — Jeffrey Archer. We actually succeeded in firing him out of a cannon. Edna said, ‘Jeffrey, darling, tell me the plot of your latest novel’. Of course, being Jeffrey, he did and Edna simply fell asleep. Martin Sheen was another one. He insisted on coming on the show in Edna costume. Edna said, ‘I hear you are in the West Wing’. He responded, ‘I play the President’, to which Edna replied, ‘Is that a major role?’

Then there was Edna’s gesture to Fergie, from pop’s Black Eyed Peas, who once confessed to suffering incontinence on stage. Barry grins as he recalls: 'Dame Edna thought she was from Black Eyed Pee and politely put a plastic sheet on the chair.'

TV fave ... Dame Edna Everage

Edna has more global appeal than many of the celebrities she interviews. But Barry says the inspiration behind her is the humble Aussie housewife. In the summer of 1955 Barry began doing his Edna monologue on a bus as he and a troupe of actors toured the Aussie Outback performing Shakespeare.

Barry, who lives in Hampstead, north London, with fourth wife Lizzie Spender, recalls: 'Edna was the cultured housewife, the lady mayoress who would greet us in various towns. She is still interested in life and very current'

Barry’s father was a builder and his mother put on a 'distressingly genteel'; voice in front of visitors — living in a state of 'permanent anxiety' As a teenager, Barry’s theatrical nature received a mixed reception from his peers. He hated sports and was nicknamed Grannie, while his school housemaster once shouted at him: 'I hope you’re not turning pansy.'

Perhaps Barry draws on these more old-school Aussie figures for his other alter ego, Sir Les Patterson — Chairman of the Australian Cheese Board. Clearly a character Barry enjoys, he explains: 'Les is pretty rude. He is happily married but likes a drink and is sometimes a bit naughty with his research assistants. He is overweight but his heart and other vital organs are in the right place. He once appeared on stage with Kylie Minogue and the zip on his trousers came undone. His appendage came out like a heat-seeking missile' Questions about the character were even fielded in the Australian parliament. Barry says: 'They felt Les was a bad cultural export but, at the time, the real ambassador was even worse than Les.'

Barry is touring Britain with Les and Edna in September, with a show called Last Night Of The Poms. It is his first stand-up tour for ten years. He says he loves British audiences. He explains: 'It’s because there is a tradition of Vaudeville in Britain, which has produced some fabulous comedians and a cultural acceptance of challenging comedy.'

Barry points to Rory Bremner and David Walliams as some of the strongest talent. He and Walliams have struck up a friendship. Barry says: 'If it was a leap year Edna would propose to him — he could swim her channel any day!'

Barry is a keen artist and his friends are a high-brow lot including fashion guru Vivienne Westwood and artist Tracey Emin. Like many intellectuals touched with comic genius, he once succumbed to addiction. He was a drunk, a terrible early-morning boozer whose off-stage life was plagued by homesickness. He came close to death and had several spells in psychiatric hospitals in London and Australia. He finally emerged sober on December 31 1971, the day he discovered 'life was more stimulating without stimulants'. Barry, a father of four grown-up children, says: My alcoholism was a gradual progression during the Sixties. I was the last to know. One day I just stopped. It wasn’t fun but you cross the line one day. You won’t get any other new experience from addiction apart from death.'

So what is left for Barry and his collection of comic characters? 'Oh, there are still victims on Edna’s wish-list,� he confesses. Suddenly slipping into Edna speak, he adds enthusiastically: 'Michelle Obama would like my fashion advice, ‘Just avoid the red dresses, darling’. And, of course, Sarah Palin thinks she might be heading for the White House eventually. So Edna has been advising her on moose rugs. 'Edna once gave George Bush an atlas for Christmas, you know. He opened it at the index but couldn’t find ‘Overseas’'

Back in Barry mode, he also confesses to having Posh and Becks in his sights. He says: 'Edna would simply say to them, ‘What DO you talk about when you’re alone together?’ '

A good question — but in Barry’s company there would always be plenty to say.

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Barry Humphries cast as Goblin King in The Hobbit
The Australian actor behind the outrageous character Dame Edna Everage has been cast in The Hobbit, now being shot in New Zealand.
Paul Chapman
20 Jun 2011

Barry Humphries, 77, whose lilac-haired alter ego has stormed her way around the world sporting bejewelled horned spectacles, carrying gladioli, and greeting audiences with the boisterous cry "Hello, Possums", is to star as the Goblin King.

In what is being hailed by fans as an inspired piece of casting even for him, Sir Peter Jackson, the director, said: "Barry is perhaps best known for his business and social connections as the long-time manager of Dame Edna Everage."

Sir Peter, alluding to another of Humphries' on-screen personas, went on: "He has also been an ardent supporter of the rather misunderstood and unfairly maligned Australian politician, Sir Les Patterson. "However, in his spare time, Barry is also a fine actor, and we're looking forward to seeing him invest the Goblin King with the delicate sensitivity and emotional depth this character deserves."

Writing on his Facebook page, Sir Peter said Humphries will be playing the Goblin King in much the same way as Andy Serkis created the character Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Dame Edna, who has evolved by her own definition from "Housewife and Superstar" to "Megastar" and now "Gigastar", has delighted audiences with television chat shows, stage appearances, and film roles since Humphries first created her in the 1970s.

[eefanincan]

Interesting bit of casting.... I doubt most people will know who he is without the wig and glasses.

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Goodbye possums: Dame Edna finally bowing out
stuff.co.nz
20/03/2012

Sydney - With arms full of gladioli, and no doubt a tear in her eye, Dame Edna Everage, the straight-talking housewife from Moonee Ponds in Melbourne turned international superstar, is to retire from live shows after six decades. Australian comedian Barry Humphries announced yesterday that at age 78, he is ready to move on - and so his most famous creation will hang up her sequin dresses. She will make a farewell tour of Australia and New Zealand in Eat Pray Laugh this year.

"Look, the fact of the matter is that I'm beginning to feel a bit senior," Humphries said. "I love it and it's healthy for me . . . but it's gruelling when there are other things to do," he said. "I've got a contract to write another book, there are places I want to go, things I want to do."

Humphries' other creations - Sir Les Patterson, the foul- mouthed, beer-swilling Australian "cultural attache", and Sandy Stone - are also preparing to perform their last. "Les has become a celebrity chef . . . Edna of course will be discussing her spiritual journey," Humphries said. "She's on a spiritual journey to find herself, to lose the trappings of mega-stardom and become a real person."

Conceived when Humphries toured country towns in Victoria as a young actor in the 1950s, Dame Edna started out as Mrs Norm Everage from the Melbourne suburb of Moonee Ponds. From there, she evolved into a self-proclaimed "gigastar" parody of celebrity, and moved on to superstardom, performing on Broadway and at the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002, when she introduced the Queen with a distinctly lese- majeste "Jubilee Girl". Humphries said that "Edna will crop up on television, I guess, but not in a live show".

Preparing herself for retirement, perhaps in the same "maximum-security twilight home for the bewildered" where her own mother lodged, Dame Edna will have plenty of time to reflect on her life and her many words of wisdom. Some of her best came in an interview with comedian Joan Rivers: "Never be afraid to laugh at yourself. After all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century."

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