[News] Barry Humphries, Australian comedian and creator of Dame Edna Everage, dies aged 89

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Barry Humphries, the Australian comedian and actor best known for his creations Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, has died aged 89.

 

In a seven-decade career spanning theatre, television, books and film, Humphries was famed for his absurdist, discomfiting and transgressive humour, poking fun at Australian culture with his cast of personas, some of which would rank among the best-loved comedic creations of all time: Dame Edna Everage, the gaudy, waspish housewife from Moonee Ponds; Sir Les Patterson, the vulgar and boozy Australian cultural attaché; the fundamentally decent and senile Sandy Stone; and archetypal Aussie bloke Barry McKenzie.

 

Everage, in particular, took on a life of her own, landing several talkshows, an appearance on Saturday Night Live and a recurring role on the 1990s drama Ally McBeal. Humphries described Everage and Patterson in particular as “wonderful outlets. I’m very careful myself about what I might say. Edna and Sir Les, on the other hand, can point to the nudity of the emperor.”

 

A statement from his family read: “He was completely himself until the very end, never losing his brilliant mind, his unique wit and generosity of spirit.

 

“With over 70 years on the stage, he was an entertainer to his core, touring up until the last year of his life and planning more shows that will sadly never be. His audiences were precious to him, and he never took them for granted. Although he may be best remembered for his work in theatre, he was a painter, author, poet, and a collector and lover of art in all its forms.

 

“He was also a loving and devoted husband, father, grandfather, and a friend and confidant to many. His passing leaves a void in so many lives. The characters he created, which brought laughter to millions, will live on.”

 

Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said: “For 89 years, Barry Humphries entertained us through a galaxy of personas, from Dame Edna to Sandy Stone. But the brightest star in that galaxy was always Barry. A great wit, satirist, writer and an absolute one-of-kind, he was both gifted and a gift. May he rest in peace.”

 

Born John Barry Humphries in Kew, Melbourne, in 1934, as a child he loved dress-ups and acting. The eldest child of working-class parents, his “boring” childhood in the leafy suburb of Camberwell was spent “disguising myself as different characters”.

 

“I also found that entertaining people gave me a great feeling of release,” he wrote, “making people laugh was a very good way of befriending them. People couldn’t hit you if they were laughing.”

 

As a teenager he became a lover of literature, theatre and art, all feeding into his first sustained character, Dr Aaron Azimuth, a cloaked dandy and dadaist. He attended Melbourne University but never graduated, leaving to make his theatrical debut at Melbourne’s Union theatre in 1953.

 

Humphries’ lifelong fascination with dadaism manifested early on in a series of unsettling performances amid ordinary life that would become legendary: one involved Humphries, disguised as a Frenchman, boarding a Melbourne tram to beat an accomplice who was pretending to be blind, to the horror and disgust of passengers; on aeroplanes he would empty a tin of Heinz Russian salad into a sick bag, before pretending to vomit and eat it. In another, he would hide a serving of roast beef and a glass of champagne in a bin; then, dressed as a tramp, he would rummage through the rubbish and sit down to his meal in front of perplexed onlookers. “I was trying to bring theatre into real life,” he said.

 

 

In 1955, while on a tour bus driving around rural Victoria in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Twelfth Night, he began to develop a character that would dominate his whole career: Edna Everage. With her lavender bouffant and winged glasses, the sharp-tongued housewife was a parody of the priggish streak Humphries saw in his parents’ generation, particularly his mother. “I recognised the intrinsic bittersweet comedy of suburban life,” he later wrote.

 

[https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/apr/22/barry-humphries-dies-australian-comedian-death-dead-dame-edna-everage-sir-les-patterson]