BARRY HUMPHRIES

(17 February 1934 - 22 April 2023)

Barry Humphries, the Australian actor and comedian, was one of the most talented performers of the twentieth century. He was a unique satirist whose legacy has left us memories of hilarious nights in the theatre, at the cinema and on television and radio through his creation of the odd characters he invented and portrayed. Most famous was his monstrous incarnation of Australian motherhood in Dame Edna Everage, quickly followed by the appallingly sleazy Sir Les Patterson and the almost invisible Sandy Stone. Barry Humphries was preparing another UK tour, but died aged 89, after a fall and a hip operation that went wrong.

John Barry Humphries was born in Melbourne to the construction manager Eric Humphries and his wife Louisa. The family lived a quiet life where Barry was left to his own devices, playing at dressing up and entertaining the locals. As a teenager he felt stifled in his cosy surroundings and formed an interest in the art world, read extensively and was drawn to the Dada and Surrealist movements. He began experimenting with musical forms and staging joke events, Dada fashion. Having written songs and sketches at university, he joined the Melbourne Theatre Company where he gave birth to Edna Everage, who was to stay with him for the rest of his career. Moving to Sydney he appeared in revues but his career took off once he came to London in the 1960s, when he appeared at Peter Cook’s Establishment Club in Soho. For Private Eye he wrote a cartoon strip about Barry McKenzie’s adventures of an Ozzie abroad. He was in the first London productions of Oliver! and Maggie May and did Treasure Island at the Mermaid. He also played Fagin at the Piccadilly Theatre and the London Palladium.

On the film front he turned up in Bedazzled with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, The Bliss of Mrs Blossom with Shirley MacLaine, Bruce Beresford’s The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, as Edna, Side By Side and The Getting of Wisdom, and he played the Great Goblin in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. In cinema and television, he often appeared as Dame Edna Everage and in all clocked up nearly a hundred appearances.

It would be easy to dismiss Edna as just another drag act but his typical Australian housewife was real and not an impersonation as were his other characters. His one-man shows with Emily Perry as his silent friend as Madge Allsop were hilarious even in their disguised brutality. He also toured the world and eventually even conquered America. As an actor, he was unique but there was more to Humphries, as he was a talented painter, art collector, authority on German cabaret (which he presented on stage and radio), and a bibliomaniac with a library of some 50,000 books. He also wrote many books himself, often based on his alter egos.

Barry Humphries married four times, first to Brenda Wright then Rosalind Tong, with whom he has two daughters Tessa and Emily, Diane Milstead with sons Rupert and Oscar, and Lizzie Spender, daughter of the poet Stephen Spender. He received many awards including an Olivier, a Tony, Bafta nominations, several comedy prizes and Oldie of the Year. He had Doctorates from Griffith University, the Universities of Melbourne and South Australia and was Honorary Fellow of King’s College, London. A life well spent.

MICHAEL DARVELL