The day I made Barry Humphries vomit

I asked Mrs Everage about her sex life with Norm, which generated quite the response, writes Phillip Adams.

Barry Humphries. I could write a book about him, but promise not to. For the first week after his death I could only manage a few tweets, refusing requests to add to the Everest of obits and declining to do interviews. Too many memories and, yes, mixed feelings.

Barry. It’s only now I can try to write a few hundred words about a bloke I knew for over 60 years. With whom I travelled widely and made three very different films. I introduced him to a young Rupert Murdoch – more of that later. Barry introduced me to his menacing mother. No need to be Sigmund Freud to see how she kindled his demons.

Barry. His politics and opinions would divide us, but a lot of the time it was fun; we were partners in crime. Circling old Singapore in rickshaws, taking photos of each other with duty-free cameras and laughing like loons – and circling central London in a taxi for an hour bemusing our Cockney driver by chorusing old Australian jingles. Come along and have a Peters ice-cream or a cup of Bushells Tea or some Aeroplane Jelly. Or heading to London’s Old Bond Street, lined with the world’s most expensive shops, with our first-ever American Express cards. Barry insisted on shopping in By Royal Appointment emporia – getting a scarf here, a monocle there, and a hat from the place that supplied the Duke of Edinburgh. When the grovelling salesman said a Cecil Beaton number not only suited Mr Humphries but was being offered at a discount, Barry said snootily: “I abhor a bargain and insist on paying extra.”

Another memory. We’d arranged to meet after a West End performance but my flight from Oz arrived late at Heathrow. I expected the theatre to be in darkness but the bloke at the stage door said that Dame Edna was still hurling gladdies at the audience. “He’s got toothache so he’s keeping them late as a punishment. They’ve all missed the last bus.”

A dinner in London. Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Anna, Barry and me. Murdoch was new in town. A pleasant evening and Rupert drove Barry and me back to our hotel.

One newspaper obit had Barry “exiting stage left”. Nonsense. He never did anything left. “Stage right” if you please. A subversive in every way, he was increasingly conservative. Via many of his less famous stage characters, Barry excoriated the Left. John Clarke and I went to one of Barry’s opening nights in high sprits – only to sulk in the stalls, unsmiling.

On the other hand I remember stopping Barry from smiling. In an interview for my 1970 documentary film The Naked Bunyip I asked Mrs Everage about her sex life with Norm. She/he left the set (actually my Aunty Con’s lounge room) to vomit in her garden. “I’ve never thought about it before,” he told me with a shudder. Back in character, beneath a flight of Con’s plaster ducks and a Tretchikoff print, he/she said: “Norm has never seen me naked. Nor has he expressed any desire to do so.”

Barry. Politics notwithstanding, nothing can take away from his genius. Dame Edna was Australia’s most famous cultural export since Dame Nelly. How odd that her dame-hood was the gift of our most legendary leftie – a captain’s choice of PM Whitlam in a Barry McKenzie fillum. Exit stage right.