Barry Humphries: The evolution of comedy legend’s character Dame Edna Everage

Lilac-hued bouffant, diamante-encrusted cats-eye glasses, ever-present gladioli and ebullient refrain of “Hello, Possums!”

Dame Edna Everage, the larger-than-life housewife from Moonee Ponds, Melbourne, is undoubtedly the most enduring creation of legendary Australian comedian Barry Humphries.

Putting aside the wisteria-coloured hair, face furniture and gladdies, perhaps Dame Edna’s most significant contribution to the national culture is the character’s superbly nuanced satirical appraisal of Australian suburbia, as well as a skewering of class-based prejudice and the cult of celebrity.

First coming out on stage as Mrs Norm Everage in the University of Melbourne revue Return Fare in 1955, Humphries drew inspiration for the character from the Country Women’s Association representatives who welcomed the touring production in each Victorian town.

The debut skit, Olympic Hostess, featured Mrs Everage offering her home for accommodation for the following year’s Melbourne Games.

Initially far less flamboyant than his last character, Humphries soon developed a rich backstory for the not-so-humble housewife who secured damehood in the 1970s and evolved from “superstar” to “megastar” and, finally, “gigastar”.

Dame Edna claimed to have the ear of presidents, prime ministers and royalty — Queen Elizabeth II was a close friend and confidante.

Born in Wagga Wagga, NSW and married to Sir Norman Everage, she had four children, Lois, Benny, Kenny and Valmai.

During a camping trip in the outback, Lois was abducted by a “rogue koala” — a reference to Azaria Chamberlain.

While Valmai has appeared on TV with Dame Edna, Bruce is an engineer, and Kenny is a fashion designer in London and designs all her frocks.

She is the aunt of another Humphries character, the boozy, crude and naive Aussie bloke Barry McKenzie, famously played by Barry Crocker in two 1970s films that co-starred Dame Edna.

The off-stage life of the “gigastar” is so detailed that Macmillian published her “autobiography” My Gorgeous Life as non-fiction.

Despite exploring the minutiae of Melbourne suburbia, Edna Everage earned an appreciative audience in the UK — however, her first appearance at comedian Peter Cook’s nightclub The Establishment was a total flop.

Almost a decade after that early failure, Humphries’ stage show Edna Everage Housewife Superstar featuring humorous monologues, songs, and audience interaction, was a hit in London’s West End in the mid-1970s.

The character’s off-Broadway debut in New York in the late 70s also received a poor review, and Humphries mainly focused the next few decades on TV and stage appearances in the UK and Australia.

He eventually won a Tony award for Dame Edna: The Royal Tour in 2000, an honour he described as “like winning a thousand Gold Logies at the same time”.

Dame Edna spent most of her career accompanied by bridesmaid Madge Allsop, a New Zealander who never spoke in public and endured constant ribbing from the superstar housewife.

While Australian actors Madeleine Orr and Connie Hobbs first played the silent sidekick, English actor Emily Perry became the definitive Madge.

She last portrayed the doleful spinster in 2003’s Dame Edna: Live at the Palace, during which she was caught in bed with rocker Ozzy Osborne.

Perry died in 2008 at age 100. Humphries acknowledged her death in the BBC special Dame Edna Rules the Waves in 2019.

Legendary actor Charlton Heston was a regular fixture on The Dame Edna Experience, which aired on ITV from 1987-1989.

Like many of her celebrity guests, who included Sean Connery, Mel Gibson, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jerry Hall and Cliff Richard, the Hollywood icon was prepared to be the butt of Dame Edna’s jokes.

She described her chat shows as “an intimate conversation between two friends, one of whom is much more interesting than the other”.

Humphries announced that Dame Edna would retire at the end of his 2012 farewell tour, Eat, Pray, Laugh! But brought her back only a year later.

He insisted on being addressed with the pronoun “she” when in costume.

Thus, it seemed out of character in a 2016 interview when he agreed with feminist author Germaine Greer’s transphobic comments about “men who believed that they are women and have themselves castrated”.

“You’re a mutilated man, that’s all,” Humphries said. “Self-mutilation, what’s all this carry-on?”

He also described American trans woman Caitlyn Jenner as a “publicity-seeking ratbag”.

The controversy became more confusing when Humphries used Dame Edna’s official social media channels to distance herself from her “manager publicly”.

She claimed to have fired him years earlier before saying he was “losing the plot” and “deserves our pity, not our disapproval”.

Fired or not, the character of Dame Edna — the average suburban housewife-turned-global-superstar — will surely outlive the man who donned the wig and outlandish glasses to summon his greatest muse.