In the annals of joy—a very small book indeed—Dame Edna has a large chapter. Dame Edna lived the fame that she satirized. In her sensational Dadaist passage through time, Edna has called the audience up for a barbecue, only to leave them alone onstage while she exited to change costumes, been elevated on a cherry picker to sing her finale to the balcony, and infantalized adult viewers, asking them to raise and tremble the thrown gladiolas.
Dame Edna is that rarest sighting in our time of the absolute comic, an inspired personification of caprice whose comedy answered the primal call to take the audience for a tumble. What did Edna say? Did you get a gladdy? Despite living in Melbourne, the family were little Englanders.
We had nice churches, English gardens with nice lawns, crumpets for tea, teapots in the form of thatched cottages, pictures of Winston Churchill on the back of the kitchen door, and we subscribed to the Church of England. As Germaine Greer has brutally expressed it, it was a very boring life. And you either submerged yourself in it or left.
Humphries was one of a group of Australian contemporaries, including Greer, Clive James and Rupert Murdoch, who left — ironically, for the mother country, England. He remains friendly with all of them, and refers to them frequently. He giggles. Has he shown it to James? By the time he left Melbourne in , he had enjoyed some success with Edna. His comedy verged on performance art, and often seemed as much for his amusement as that of others.
On plane journeys, he would sneak a can of vegetable soup onboard, drink a mouthful, then vomit it into the sick bag. He would then get out a spoon and eat the contents. In England, he struggled. He befriended his hero Peter Cook and created the cartoon character Barry McKenzie for Private Eye McKenzie was another debauched womaniser , but struggled as a jobbing stage actor. He started to drink heavily.
Over 15 years, he almost drank himself to death. He went through women as rapidly as booze. He has four children — two daughters with his second wife and two sons with his third.
He reached his nadir in , when he was found beaten unconscious in a gutter. He was admitted to hospital to dry out, and he turned his life around. He has been sober for 45 years. What made him stop? Perhaps Sir Les is a warning to himself of what he could have become. Would any part of him want to be Les? I do rather admire him, though.
I have the lights up, and can see the old ladies on the front row. And they love it, as they used to love Max Miller. Humphries is a clever man. Within one sentence he can segue from the ironic to the heartfelt and back again. On such occasions, his conversation can be hard to unpick. At other times, he talks with a simple, if scabrous, warmth. I mention that the Australian actor Geoffrey Rush said he thought Dame Edna should have a full celebrity breakdown. You know something is coming — and this is when I see Edna in Humphries.
You know. Have the rules of behaviour changed? He drinks for me, too. Humphries says he adores women. I really do like women. Women know more. The show began on Saturday 17 March , with the set-up being that Edna runs a health spa where various famous guests come for treatment.
In , Vanity Fair magazine invited Dame Edna to write a satirical advice column; a piece published in the February issue created a storm of controversy when Dame Edna, in a reply to a reader who asked if she should learn Spanish , wrote:. Forget Spanish. There's nothing in that language worth reading except Don Quixote , and a quick listen to the CD of Man of La Mancha will take care of that Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to?
The help? Your leaf blower? The satirical intent—poking fun at the haughty attitudes of wealthy Americans who hire low-waged Hispanic domestic workers—evidently went over the heads of some readers. Many who subsequently complained appeared not to realise that Dame Edna is a character and that she is not really a woman. Some members of the Hispanic community read the joke as a deliberately racist remark, and complaints flooded in to the magazine.
Hollywood actress Salma Hayek responded angrily, penning a furious letter in which she denounced Dame Edna. Death threats were even received and Vanity Fair was eventually forced to publish a full-page apology to the Hispanic community.
Humphries commented later: "If you have to explain satire to someone, you might as well give up. When I was offered the part of Frida I turned it down, and she was the second choice. I said 'I'm not playing the role of a woman with a moustache and a monobrow, and I'm not having same-sex relations on the screen' I'm not racist. I love all races, particularly white people. You know, I even like Roman Catholics. Good Job! LGBT People. LGBT Fiction. LGBT Films.
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