Barry Humphries’ most memorable moments
Barry Humphries has charmed the Queen, chased Kylie Minogue across a stage and had a laugh with Donald Trump. Here are a few of his – and Edna’s – unforgettable moments.
Entertainment
Don't miss out on the headlines from Entertainment. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Whether he was cracking up the Queen, stealing the limelight from a future US president or chasing Kylie Minogue across a London stage brandishing a fake, er, appendage, no one stole the show quite like Barry Humphries (or his alter egos, Dame Edna Everage, Sir Les Patterson or Sandy Stone).
Here, we remember a selection of Barry Humphries’ greatest hits.
EDNA’S FIRST APPEARANCE
Humphries’ career could have been over before it really started – but Edna was his salvation. A member of the Melbourne University Union Theatre, Humphries was being “phased out” of the company and getting “smaller and smaller roles” because of his inability to learn lines, he was to tell the university’s alumni magazine.
“I finally got a job in a play, Of Mice and Men. I had to be a dog, barking offstage. I was very good at it. I managed to bark correctly, with textual fidelity. But I knew it was the end,” he said.
But his redemption came during the company’s annual revue, when the director Noel Ferrier suggested Humphries do a skit based on the character of a suburban housewife he had been improvising for other members of the company as they toured around on buses.
Of that initial appearance, Humphries said he wore his mother’s twin-set with a big fur, with a yellow hat, and he didn’t even shave his legs.
“It was really no attempt. Edna didn’t even have the glasses, which were introduced in the early ’60s,” Humphries said.
SIR LES PATTERSON AND KYLIE MINOGUE
London’s esteemed Royal Festival Hall – a place of refinement and string quartets – had never quite known the likes of Sir Les Patterson when he took to the stage during Nick Cave’s Meltdown festival in 1999.
“I know a lot of you are asking what is Les Patterson doing in a beautiful venue like this?” Sir Les admitted to the audience. “And I tell you, I’m asking the same question.”
But it was Sir Les’ duet with our Kylie Minogue that seared itself into viewers’ memories when he ended up chasing the pop princess around the stage with his (fake) “frightener” out.
“Dear old Sir Les got a bit carried away,” Minogue recalled later. “I said to Barry afterwards, ‘You’re very naughty and you deserve a big smack.’”
“That Kylie Minogue should be chased off the stage by a phallus-brandishing Australian diplomat seemed, in a way, a first,” added Humphries. “For me, anyway, it was a taste of the old outrageous days.”
EDNA AT THE WEDDING
Dame Edna’s fame was such that she was chosen to co-host Channel 9’s coverage of the Royal Wedding of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson in 1986, her colourful presence lending an absurd touch to a big news event.
“When Fergie finally arrived at the Abbey, standing in an open carriage, Dame Edna waved a huge bunch of gladdies and screamed at the top of her lungs. Fergie saw her, almost fell over laughing, and waved wildly back to Edna. It was a great moment, a great coup for Aussie royalty,” Ray Martin wrote in his memoir.
Dame Edna’s commentary was just as colourful, informing viewers that she had been coaching “that pretty little Sarah” on all the finer points of the nuptials, including “a few tips about the wedding night itself,” Martin wrote.
Dame Edna also reported from the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton in 2011.
EDNA’S ROYAL JOKE
Dame Edna frequently performed for members of the royal family, and even introduced Queen Elizabeth at the 2002 Golden Jubilee concert.
When Dame Edna spotted the Queen taking her place in the royal box, she bellowed: “The Jubilee Girl is here, possums.”
But her funniest and most audacious moment came during the Royal Variety Performance in 2013, when she appeared in the royal box with then Prince Charles and Camilla, only to subsequently tell them there had been a mistake and she was being moved “to a better seat”.
CHAT SHOW MASTER
No one was better on a chat show than Dame Edna Everage (or occasionally, Barry Humphries). Whether Edna was making Ray Martin cry with laughter or Michael Parkinson hysterical, the pride of Moonee Ponds would regularly show up the famous guests alongside her with her bitingly quick wit and outrageously stinging barbs.
She predicted Donald Trump’s presidency on British talk show Wogan way back in 1988 because of the “gorgeous” Ivana’s suitability as a First Lady, but missed the mark by a Trump wife or two.
In 2002, she had Welsh singing legend Tom Jones working up a sweat after she insinuated he’d had a bit of “work”.
Jones protested, but Edna – who admitted she’d had “a bit of tightening here and there” – barged on. “No, but the thing is you are still recognisable and that’s what I like,” she argued.
“Some people go in to see these cosmetic surgeons and they forget, before the anaesthetic takes over, to say, ‘I want people to know who I am when I come out.’
“They go in like a Mercedes and they come out looking like a the backside of a Ford Mondeo.”
EARLY MORNING MIX-UP
In 2021, Humphries appeared on Britain’s This Morning show where he congratulated Dermot O’Leary (filling in for regular host Phillip Schofield) on his “courage” in coming out. (It was Schofield who had come out at the age of 57 in 2020.) Co-host Alison Hammond dissolved into fits of laughter, while Humphries carried on before a flustered O’Leary responded: “Thank you. I’ll pass that on to the gentleman that’s here from Monday to Thursday.”
“What?” asked Humphries, staring blankly into the camera.
“Your bravery was amazing,” he continued, as Hammond kept wheezing with laughter.
Viewers were split on whether it was an awkward gaffe or a perfectly delivered joke from Humphries.
At various times, Dame Edna hosted her own talk shows. “I’d like to apologise to all the guests I ever had on my TV chat shows,” she once said. “I was always far more interesting than them, and that must have been tough.”
THE DEATH OF NORM
Dame Edna’s long suffering husband Sir Norm Everage kicked the bucket in 1988 “after many years in hospital with prostate problems and a ‘testicular murmur’.” (Edna founded the non-profit “Friends of the Prostate” in his honour.)
Not that she ever remembered poor old Norm overly fondly.
“It was always a disappointment to me that my husband, Norman, didn’t pass away sooner,” she once said. “I’ve never been happier since my husband died and I think if most women were honest, they’d say the same thing.”
PRANKING HARRY
Humphries was known for his pranks and practical jokes, some of which he seemed to arrange just for his own amusement.
In his 2010 memoir, Confessions of a Not So Secret Agent, Harry M Miller wrote that in 1971 he received a most unusual letter from the then Prime Minister William McMahon, in which the PM both appeared to ask for a job within Miller’s organisation, and held out the tantalising prospect of an Australia Day honour for the New Zealand-born agent.
Signed by the Prime Minister and embossed with the Coat of Arms, it looked the real deal, and Miller (who died in 2018) said he was “flattered” although “flummoxed” by the letter.
It was not until several days later, when Miller discussed the contents of the letter with a mutual friend, that he realised he was being pranked, and who by.
THE MYSTERY OF BABY LOIS EVERAGE
Dame Edna and Sir Norm had three adult children, Bruce, Kenny, and Valmai. Tragically, Edna’s first daughter, Lois, went missing as a baby, and was thought to have been abducted by a “rogue koala” during a family camping trip to the outback – an edgy, arguably tasteless riff on the Azaria Chamberlain disappearance. In Handling Edna: the Unauthorised Biography, Humphries cleared up the misconception, saying the koala had nothing to do with the baby’s disappearance and that Lois “survived the abduction to become a Catholic nun”.
Join the conversation
Taylor, Travis stun with PDA at US Open
The A-list couple appeared more in love than ever during their very public date at the US Open.
Read more
Loved-up Taylor parties with Travis amid WAG rift rumours
Taylor Swift and NFL star boyfriend Travis Kelce were showing plenty of PDAs after rumours of a fallout with the singer’s fellow WAG Brittany Mahomes.
Read more