Farewell Dame Edna, we loved you

She could count Kings and Queens as friends, but it was the public Dame Edna Everage loved to entertain, which is why the “Megastar from Moonee Ponds” will be deeply missed.

While tributes are flowing for Australian comedy legend Barry Humphries, audiences are also mourning the loss of his most iconic character, Dame Edna Everage.

With her violet hair, bejewelled glasses, tossed gladioli, falsetto voice and signature phrases – “Hello, possums!” – she was an unforgettable comic creation, an egomaniacal Melbourne housewife who could be brittle, rude, vain, edgy, sometimes full of smutty innuendo – but always hilarious.

Dame Edna Everage was a snob, she was elitist and she was absolutely brilliant. Picture: David Caird

She made her stage debut in the 1955 revue Return Fare as Mrs Norm Everage, a home hostess for the upcoming Melbourne Olympics from the suburb of Moonee Ponds.

The character was reportedly inspired by the dowdy wives of local mayors; “Edna” came from Humphries’ childhood nanny.

“Born” in Wagga Wagga as Edna May Beazley, she had four children, Kenny, Bruce, Valmai and Lois, and was made a Dame by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in the 1974 film Barry McKenzie Holds His Own.

Dame Edna Everage. An Australian institution. Picture: Supplied

While sometimes described as a drag act – Humphries himself disputed the term – Dame Edna’s shtick was more in the cross-dressing tradition of British pantomime. The frequent audience interaction segments of the shows revealed that not only was Humphries a brilliant writer, he also had a rare genius for improvisation.

Interviewing Dame Edna on stage could be a difficult prospect, Ray Martin wrote in his memoir.

“She gets on a roll, into a certain comic rhythm with her answers, and as the audience laughs at each hilarious line it spurs her on to another. And another. It’s a bit like a dripping tap of comedy,” Martin wrote.

Barry Humphries’ brilliant creation, Dame Edna Everage. Picture: Supplied

Billing herself as a “housewife superstar” – later “megastar” and then “gigastar” – Dame Edna was known and loved by generations of Australians for a slew of stage, TV and movie appearances. And while she was a very Australian creation, the character was also a massive hit in the UK and the US, winning Humphries an Olivier Award in London in 1979, and a Tony Award in New York in 2000.

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Dame Edna transformed over the years, from demure and mousy, to a more rambunctious and outrageous character. As she changed, so did her wardrobe, the housecoats, veiled hats and horn-rimmed glasses making way for evermore over-the-top gowns, hair and eyewear.

“Edna has to dazzle,” Barry Humphries told the New York Times in 1999. Picture: Supplied

“Edna has to dazzle,’’ Humphries was to tell the New York Times in a 1999 profile. “She’s a bird of paradise to some extent, or a vulture.”

As the look grew more daring, so did the act. Among her many zingers, she once asked Roseanne Barr: “Is there anything you wish you hadn’t eaten?” Another time she asked Jane Seymour to tell her “the secret of your successful marriages”. Like all the best comics, she relished saying the unsayable.

An early shot of Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage. Picture: Supplied

While Edna’s presence on Australian screens dates back to 1956 – she was interviewed on camera during Channel 7 Melbourne’s first day of broadcasting – it was in the 1980s when she really became the superstar she always claimed to be, thanks to a succession of blockbuster TV specials such as An Audience With Dame Edna.

She released a series of advice books and a memoir, My Gorgeous Life, in 1989, while her alter ego Humphries wrote her “Unauthorised biography” Handling Edna in 2009.

Dame Edna Everage relished in saying the unsayable. Picture: Supplied

She received many accolades throughout her “career”; a Melbourne laneway and a Moonee Ponds street are named in her honour.

In 2008 MAC Cosmetics released a Dame Edna Collection, and in January 2009 a bronze statue was erected in her honour at the Melbourne Docklands.

Edna retired in 2013, but like that other great Dame of the Australian stage, Nellie Melba, she returned again and again.

Her 2019 stage show Dame Edna: My Gorgeous Life was hailed by Herald Sun reviewer Simon Plant as “a two and a half-hour joy ride through the self-obsessed world of Australia’s most adored and decorated woman”.