Barry Humphries, who has died aged 89, brought from Australia a biting humour that tied in with Britain’s 1960s satire boom. His “housewife superstar” alter-ego Dame Edna Everage was later to become an institution in his adopted country.
Dame Edna, waving gladioli and replete with lilac wig, cat’s-eye winged glasses, knuckle-duster rings and red lipstick, was a vehicle for the comedy actor’s swipes at the Australian culture he had left behind – although the Melbourne housewife from Moonee Ponds became a celebrity in his homeland, too.
The transformation into this screen and stage persona was total, with Humphries making the character chillingly real. Far from just a drag act, he described it as an “evocation” rather than an impersonation of a real person. Over the years, Edna was transformed from a shy, mundane housewife into a dame, and became increasingly outlandish, with her drab clothes becoming more garish.
The satire also widened to embrace snobbery and the cult of celebrity. It became sharper in the 1980s in response to what Humphries called the “vindictiveness” of Thatcherism.
Later, showing the “caring” side to which she often referred, a 21st-century Dame Edna told audiences that she intended to adopt an African child for her loved ones from “that country where Madonna does her shopping”.
“Hello, possums!” was Edna’s welcome – and no theatregoer would dare walk late into a performance for fear of being picked on by the larger-than-life superstar, whose interaction with her audience was an important part of the show.
The character was born when Humphries was touring with an Australian repertory company in 1955. “She was a kind of party turn, a funny voice I used to do on the coach we travelled in between dates on tour,” he explained.
In December of that year, the actor performed as plain Mrs Norm Everage in a Christmas revue at Melbourne University’s Union Theatre. Humphries said the name was intended to reflect her “average” housewife persona. As part of the act over the following years, she spoke about her husband Norman’s prostate problems, until his “death” in 1988.
The character was known as Edna Everage by the time Humphries arrived in Britain at the end of the 1950s, but became a real crowd-pleaser only much later, with the launch of the successful West End show Housewife, Superstar! at the Apollo in 1976. Humphries took it back to his homeland, and continued to attract sell-out theatre audiences in both countries.
His shows included A Night with Dame Edna (1978), An Evening’s Intercourse with Barry Humphries (1982), Back with a Vengeance (1987-8, 2005-7) and Edna, The Spectacle (1998), with which he became the only solo act to fill the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Humphries failed to conquer the United States until he starred in Dame Edna: The Royal Tour (1999-2000), which won a Special Tony Award for a Live Theatrical Presentation.
For many years, Edna was seen with Madge Allsopp (played first by Madeleine Orr, then by Emily Perry), her silent, sour-faced former bridesmaid from New Zealand, who sat in a corner of the stage and was the butt of the cruel Edna’s jokes.
On television, Humphries starred in An Audience with Dame Edna Everage (1980), The Dame Edna Experience (1987-9), Dame Edna’s Neighbourhood Watch (1992-3) and The Dame Edna Treatment (2007), as well as the specials Dame Edna’s Hollywood (1991-94) and Dame Edna’s Work Experience (1997).
Although they always played second fiddle, there were other characters in the Humphries repertoire. The best known was the drunken, foul-mouthed Sir Les Patterson, the totally uncultured Australian cultural attaché with a stained suit and yellowing teeth.
The lecherous, belching, offensive Sir Les was intended as the antithesis of Dame Edna. He first appeared at a Sydney club in 1974, and later that year, during a cabaret performance in Hong Kong, he was recognised by English merchant bankers and commodity brokers as resembling some of those they knew in the diplomatic corps.
Sir Les would perform monologues and burst into song as a special guest in Humphries’ one-man shows and television programmes featuring Dame Edna. “There are a number of Australian politicians exactly like Les Patterson – worse, much worse,” he said.
The predecessor of Sir Les was Barry McKenzie, a parody of the boorish Australian abroad, created for a Private Eye comic strip by Humphries, who wrote it – with drawings by Nicholas Garland – at the suggestion of the comedian Peter Cook, the satirical magazine’s major backer. (In 1963, Humphries performed at Peter Cook’s Establishment Club, where satirists found a home for their anti-establishment patter.)
A compilation of the comic strips was published as a book, The Wonderful World of Barry McKenzie (1968), and Humphries later appeared as Dame Edna in a 1972 Australian film, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, with Barry Crocker playing the title character. A sequel, Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, was released two years later.
A more downbeat alter-ego for Humphries – but ever present on stage – was the quiet, self-effacing Sandy Stone, an elderly, childless man from the Melbourne suburbs who epitomised decency and lived a well-ordered, if dull, life. The character was largely based on one of Humphries’ childhood neighbours, about whom he wrote a short story that was published in the Canberra student magazine Prometheus in 1958.
In the same year, Sandy appeared with Edna Everage in a sketch, “Wild Life in Suburbia”, which was released on record. In 1971, Sandy “died” and took on an eerie new aura as he was seen reflecting on his life in stage shows and in the television special Single Voices: Sandy Comes Home (1990).
“The characters have broadened, but I like to think they’ve deepened as well,” Humphries said in 2012. “I’ve just retained that childish interest. Every time I go to my dress-up box and take out Edna or Sandy or Les, they’ve changed. They evolve without my participation, which I think, you might say, is a bit spooky.”
John Barry Humphries was born in the Melbourne suburb of Kew to Louisa (née Brown) and Eric Humphries, a construction manager, and grew up in nearby Camberwell. As a child, he enjoyed dressing up as different characters, as well as painting, reading, and listening to the music of Vaughan Williams and Delius, imagining an idealised version of the English countryside and wishing he was there.
After attending grammar schools in Camberwell and Melbourne, Humphries studied law and arts at the University of Melbourne, where he wrote and performed songs and sketches in revues. He became an expert on the Dadaist movement, which negated traditional artistic values. This inspired his public pranks, such as an exhibit titled Pus in Boots, a pair of wellingtons filled with custard.
In 1955, after dropping out of university, Humphries joined the Melbourne Theatre Company and created Edna Everage. Two years later, he moved on to the Phillip Street Theatre in Sydney, which became a hub for satirical comedy over the following years. Here he found a new audience for Edna.
Humphries made more stage appearances in Melbourne before moving to Britain in 1959. He was soon cast as Mr Sowerberry in the original West End production of Lionel Bart’s phenomenally successful musical Oliver! (New Theatre, 1960-63), and reprised the role on Broadway (Imperial and Shubert Theatres, 1963-4).
Mixing with performers such as Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, Spike Milligan and Willie Rushton gave Humphries the chance to return to satire in stage revues. He also appeared on television in Not Only... But Also (1965-70) and Frost on Saturday (1969).
Back in the West End, he played Edna Everage in Bart’s musical Maggie May (Adelphi Theatre, 1964-5) and Fagin in a revival of Oliver! (Piccadilly Theatre, 1967). There were also film roles in Bedazzled (1967), starring Cook and Moore, The Bliss of Mrs Blossom (1968), alongside Shirley MacLaine, and – in Australia – The Getting of Wisdom (1978), as a priest.
On television, the series Barry Humphries’ Scandals (1970) followed his one-man revue Just a Show, performed in Australia (1968) and Britain (1969), which drew a mixed reception from critics. Humphries kept ploughing away with his Dame Edna character until he finally won over both audiences and critics.
Proving there was life beyond Edna, he was also seen on television as Rupert Murdoch in Selling Hitler (1991), a comedy-drama about the real-life Hitler diaries hoax, although he was billed as Edna when he appeared in the fifth series (2001-2) of the American sitcom Ally McBeal as Claire Otoms, a secretary in the fictional law firm.
In the cinema, Humphries played Kevin McMaxford, an evil newspaper owner, in Spice World (1997) and the Great Goblin in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012). He also provided the voice for a shark called Bruce in Finding Nemo (2003). He also appeared in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016) as both Charlie, a rich “ex” of Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley), and Dame Edna.
One low point in the Humphries trajectory was his increasing dependence on alcohol in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which he said was a factor in the break-up of his second marriage (he was divorced three times, then had a long, successful marriage to Lizzie Spender, daughter of the poet Stephen). He recovered after his parents admitted him to a private hospital on a trip home to Australia, and never drank alcohol again.
As he approached 80, Humphries announced farewell tours of Australia (2012-13) and Britain (2013-14) with his show Eat, Pray, Laugh. He said there would be further occasional performances, but no touring. “I just can’t wake up in strange hotels any longer,” he said. Nevertheless, he returned in 2019 for the Australian tour Dame Edna: My Gorgeous Life.
As well as painting, Humphries was an avid art and book collector. He wrote two autobiographies, More Please (1992) and My Life as Me: A Memoir (2002). He was also the author of many other books, including Les Patterson’s Australia (1978), My Gorgeous Life (1989, as Edna Everage), The Life and Death of Sandy Stone (1990) and Handling Edna: The Unauthorised Biography (2010).
He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (OA) in 1982 and a CBE in 2007.
Humphries’ first three marriages, to Brenda Wright (1955-57), Rosalind Tong (1959-70) and Diane Millstead (1979-89), ended in divorce. In 1990, he married Lizzie Spender, who survives him, along with Tessa and Emily, the daughters of his second marriage, and Oscar and Rupert, the sons of his third.
John Barry Humphries, actor, writer and artist, born 17 February 1934, died 22 April 2023
