The Dame is dead
About fifteen years ago I saw Barry Humphries at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne. The first half of the show was Sir Les Patterson and Sandy Stone, and I laughed and thought it was pretty good, but it felt like something from another comedy era.
Then, after interval, Dame Edna arrived. From the moment she hit the stage, it was like nothing I’d ever seen. There was barely a moment when I thought, this is Barry Humphries being Dame Edna. It just was Dame Edna. There was even a bit, on-stage, where she consoled an elderly woman she’d pulled out of the front row — ‘the kids, they don’t visit us, do they?’, and they hugged, and shared a moment, and I had to remind myself this was a seventy-something year old man, and the whole thing was just mind-blowing. At the curtain we waved gladioli, and I left the theatre with that full body ache that you experience at about one in every hundred comedy shows.
Barry Humphries was always more of a performer than a speechmaker, but he did give one excellent speech when he returned from London for a tour of Australia. It was delivered at the National Press Club on 27th April 1978, 45 years ago next Thursday, and in true cultural attaché form it was called ‘Through the thin end of an asparagus roll’. (see below)
Adam Zwar of the Kicker has also shared an excellent piece about his father’s memories of early career Humphries:
Barry Humphries: 'Through the thin end of an asparagus roll', National Press Club - 1978
27 April, 1978, National Press Club, Canberra, Australia
I think it surprises members of the public to learn that stage performers, stage artistes and vaudeville personages like myself do suffer from stage-fright. But I always do. Quite often in fact I'm physically ill before any public appearance. There's usually a plastic bucket in the wings when I do my stage shows. But I thought a few years ago that my trade is not really that of a one-man performer, because the expectant countenances of my audience are very often illuminated into the dress circle. And so really I perform with a very large cast. And it crossed my mind some time ago to invite members of the audience to participate in the show. This sometimes leads to problems as it did in New York not long ago, when a woman sitting in the second row said that she was unable to hear Dame Edna because of the laughter of two 'pansies', as she described them, sitting next to her. So I rashly asked her if she thought she could hear better if she came up on stage. To my alarm she did. (Laughter.) This is five minutes into the show and she was there till the end. She also brought her knitting. I need hardly tell you that this altered the entire course of the occasion. I asked her her name and she said it was Lucy so we called it ‘The Lucy Show’ after that.
At the moment I'm engaged in writing a new starring vehicle for myself and friends and I open in Sydney next month. And it's usually my practice, being a professional procrastinator amongst other things, to commence writing the show as soon as the first ticket has been bought. It entertains me to think that there's some poor character actually paying for something that doesn't exist. In Melbourne I used to like sitting in a little Greek restaurant called the Cafe Florentino. At about ten past eight in the evening. And seeing old Melbourne Grammar boys, contemporaries perhaps of our Prime Minister, hurrying with their wives down the stairs in order to attend one of my performances which I had absolutely no intention of starting for another three-quarters of an hour.
The advantage of course of being a solo entertainer is that they can never start without you. And I think that that is probably one of the few advantages. Except of course that it keeps me off the streets and fills my evenings entertainingly. As I hope it will yours. Difficult, looking at those scrawled envelopes, those comparatively blank sheets of foolscap paper and wondering if the thought that crossed one's mind on a tram is likely to divert an assembly of people. But I've always found that people generally come to the theatre as they do to an occasion like this with an immense store of goodwill, which it's very hard to exhaust. And after all it cost them a lot more to come to the show than just the ticket. They have to get babysitters. They have to take out extra fire insurance on their houses.
I always find too that an audience laughs much louder if they're extremely anxious. And therefore I think at the beginning of my new show I'll remind them of all the terrible things that could be happening at home. Was the kitchen window really firmly locked? What kind of cigarettes was the babysitter smoking? How many friends is she at present entertaining? All of these things, I think, should put them in a very good mood. . . a very receptive mood. I'm going to have a lot of bleepers concealed under the seats so that doctors will be leaving regularly throughout the evening. Hurrying off to save imaginary lives.
I have had people die during my shows, unfortunately. I was informed that a man had fallen gravely ill during my last performance some four years ago in Sydney. And as I left the theatre I noticed some screens had been erected in the foyer. Until the ambulance arrived. But the usherettes were shaking their heads and alas—the customer had caught the ferry as they say. But it pleased me to see a seraphic smile upon his ashen lips, and in his pale grasp was still clenched a wilting gladioli.
A lot of Australians attempt, when abroad, to evoke agreeable memories of their homeland. Some burn gum leaves. I thought I'd perhaps call the first volume of my autobiography, Some Burn Gum Leaves. My first thoughts were to call it . . . well I like titles like Silverfish in the Bath or Snails in the Letterbox. If you come from Melbourne you know about snails in the letterbox. And I'm essentially, you see, a Melbourne artiste. It was kind of you to say, not in so many words of course, Mr President, that I belong to the universe, was it, or the galaxy? I can't remember your exact words. But I would insist that I'm basically a regional monologist. Just as I suppose Dorset belongs to Thomas Hardy, Dublin to James Joyce, Hull to Philip Larkin, Canberra to Manning Clark.. . I suppose the Mornington Peninsula belongs to me. Moonee Ponds wherever she may wander still belongs, I think, to Dame Edna Everidge. And so I still look at the world rather through those dusty venetians, through those crossover terylene drapes. Still peer at those things which peculiarly amuse me through the thin end of an asparagus roll. A uniquely Australian invention I would point out. The asparagus roll is not to be found anywhere else in the world. It's not a problem to open a tin of asparagus, it's not a problem to cut brown bread thin enough or butter one side of it thinly. The problem is to stick it up. The punk asparagus roll will soon be with us, no doubt, secured with a suitably sterilised safety pin.
The other great Australian inventions of course are the terylene golfing hat, the lamington and the Hill's Hoist. I can't think of any more. Perhaps the Vanilla Slice. I remember once asking the Australian painter, Sir Sidney Nolan, what he missed most about Australia when he was away—and he said it was the way the icing on a vanilla slice stuck to his thumb. I suppose the second volume then of my autobiography will be called The Way It Sticks to Your Thumb though that may well evoke memories of Ms Shere Hite. Or I might call it something rather grandiose, like The Restless Years.
But some Australians burn gumleaves. Others like to remember the old advertisements on commercial radio. The old wireless programmes like The Koolmint Theatre of the Air. The old days when one perhaps listened to the ABC for entertainment. (Laughter.) We evoke nostalgia in many different ways. Inducing such maladies as Persephone's Neck. I introduced that for the scholars in our midst, and I'm relieved to find there are none. Or the Lot's Wife syndrome. When glancing back at Australia you turn into a pillar of bauxite.
I always like of course to write the reviews first. In New York I provided typewriters in the foyer for this purpose. To save them rushing to their newspaper offices they could always type the notices then and there, and come back and enjoy the show in a relaxed frame of mind. I also had a very large map which a lot of people took quite seriously. Like most of us I was a little indignant when some apparently sophisticated person thought that Fiji was the capital of Australia. And I had a very large map in the foyer of Australia showing the entire Americas fitting into Gippsland. And there was a big caption which said something like, 'For Your Information, Actual Scale Map, America in Relation to the Australias'. Quite a few people were very impressed by that. Rightly so. It took a lot of painting.
But the object is rather a callow one I suppose, to pre-empt adverse criticism since who isn't a little susceptible to it. I've always liked to give my shows rather self-deprecating titles so that perhaps a journalist who would have been thinking of starting his review with 'It's rather pathetic at his age' would have to think again and say, 'Well if I said that I'd be agreeing with him really wouldn't I if my previous show was called At Least You Can Say You've Seen It. And most of these show titles were all invented by my aunt. Who is still with us I'm happy to say. Whenever she went to a Williamson show—and it wasn't David in those days, it was JC—she used to come home and say. . .You know, we only went to the theatre in those days on wedding anniversaries. Now we go on Mother's Day as well as wedding anniversaries. But she used to always say something like... 'What did you think of it?' I'd say and she'd say, 'Well, Barry, at least I can say I've seen it.' She'd say, 'Oh it was just a show.' But more often than not she used to say, 'Isn't it pathetic at his age?', 'You know, he used to be wonderful in The Desert Song' 'Why do they still do it?' I mean, that my aunt can say to me, 'Why do they still do it?' as I'm simultaneously borrowing five dollars from her, I don't know.
But when I came back to Australia, as I always do, again I saw those banners outside newsagents which I like to collect. I'm the person who goes around late at night stealing banners from outside newsagents. If you don't know what a banner is it's one of those things printed in very bold type which are put in little cages which look at us through little wire grilles outside milk bars and newsagents all over Australia. The first one I saw I was tempted to steal in broad daylight. It's the first time I've ever done it. I'm going to hold it up just to show you. It says, 'Killer Spiders, What To Do'. Well we all know what to do. Scream and die painfully.
RIP The great Barry Humphries.
Thanks to recent paid subscribers ⭐Margaret Blair Gannon ⭐ Edward Teal ⭐ Tony Haycox ⭐ RJ Phillips
Here is the podcast episode featuring Andrew Denton’s eulogy to John Clarke