The pillar box red diamante-encrusted spectacles and bejewelled frocks could only belong to one person, possums – the late, great Dame Edna Everage.
Around 250 items from Barry Humphries’ personal Dame Edna collection will be auctioned by Christies on Thursday (February 13) – with each lot evoking colourful memories of the inimitable star. With an estimated worth of over £2 million, the collection also includes art work – such as Charles Conder’s painting ‘Sand dunes, Ambleteuse.’
The most famous creation of comedian Barry Humphries, who died in 2023, aged 89, he once described Dame Edna to The Mirror, saying: “She’s the celebrity and I’m the puppetmaster.”
His alter ego, Edna, the abrasive, yet loveable Melbourne housewife, was renowned for her incredible wardrobe.
Her OTT dresses and cats-eye butterfly winged glasses, which are expected to fetch over £1,000 a pair, are very different to Barry’s original vision for the housewife as a rather drab-looking middle-aged woman simply called Edna Everage.
Thankfully, for her millions of fans, she instead evolved into the rumbustious lilac-haired character, who became a mainstay of British TV schedules in the eighties and nineties.
Barry’s first and most enduring character creation, Edna also put him on the path to global stardom and enabled him to hide his stage fright.
“I was too nervous to appear as myself,” he said “I disguised myself often, which I enjoy doing, because you can express things through another character satirically. Edna says the opposite of what I think – mostly.”
Yet, Edna’s flamboyance was a true reflection of Barry’s rather colourful life – especially his love life, which saw him marry four times. His marriage to first wife Brenda Wright at 21 lasted less than two years; he had two daughters Tessa and Emily with second wife Rosalin Tong; two sons, Oscar and Rupert, with his third wife Diane Millstead, and then married Elizabeth Spender, a former actress, his fourth and final wife, who he stayed with from 1990 until his 2023 death. They shared a terraced townhouse in South Hampstead for 40 years.
Born in Melbourne, Australia, on February 17 1934, the son of Louisa and prosperous builder Eric, even as a child Barry invented fictional characters, spending hours in his parents’ back garden, dressing up and discovering a talent for entertaining which gave him a great release and helped him find new friends.
Yet, after attending grammar school, he went on to study law, philosophy and fine arts at the University of Melbourne – but dropped out to pursue his acting dreams.
His first professional role, aged 21, was playing Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night and while touring Victoria with his theatre company, a meeting with the state’s mayoress inspired the character of Edna.
Told by the theatre company director he was “naturally ridiculous,” he knew comedy was his calling and Edna became his mouthpiece – giving a satirical view of his experience growing up in Australian suburbia.
In 1955, Edna made her stage debut as a volunteer hostess for the Melbourne Olympics. Six feet tall, she wore distinctive glasses – although subtler than the outlandish specs fans grew to expect. And instead of the bouffant hairdo, she had an unremarkable bob.
But she referenced her husband Norm, son Kenny, daughter Valmai and mother (who she’d condemned to Twilight Lodge, the maximum-security nursing home).
Later, in stage monologues, she mentioned her bridesmaid Madge, who years later would become her ever-dependable foil on several Dame Edna-fronted TV shows.
Shortly after debuting Edna, Barry married Brenda Wright – divorcing her two years later and meeting and marrying Rosalind Tong, with whom he moved to London in 1959 – where he became our adopted national treasure.
Contributing to satirical magazine Private Eye, he also auditioned for TV and theatre roles, getting a break in Oliver in the West End in 1962.
But he jokes that his “first starring role” came on a holiday afterwards in Cornwall, where he went to work on developing Edna – only to fall down a 50 metre slope onto rocks, while out hiking, and be airlifted to hospital with a broken arm and dislocated shoulder, all of which was caught on camera by a TV news crew.
Despite some fortuitous breaks, the 60s, by his own admission, were something of a “boozy blur” for Barry, who later found sobriety, but described himself as “a dissolute, guilt-ridden, self-pitying boozer.”
In the grip of alcoholism, he started his day with a ‘grappling hook’ hangover concoction of brandy and port.
But Edna blossomed and, on his 1968 Just A Show tour in Australia, she abandoned her drab look and came on stage in a glorious red Thai silk coat over a green dress. “Am I overdressed?” she asked, looking around. “No, I don’t think so.”
Confessing to have “brought upon myself some horrible events,” while drunk, after sobering up in 1970 – too late to save his marriage to Rosalind – he premiered his Les Patterson character, ironically an offensive, grotesque, yellow toothed drunk. Other creations include Sandy Stone – Australia’s most boring man.
But Dame Edna was crowned ‘Australia’s greatest export’ – appearing on the 1974 Russell Harty Plus chat show.
Of her home country, she quipped: “You mustn’t judge Australia by the Australians. ”
Meanwhile, off screen, Barry fell in love with painter Diane Millstead, who he married in 1979 and had two sons with – Oscar, now a fine art dealer and journalist, and Rupert, who works in video games and co-wrote the huge hit Grand Theft Auto.
From 1980 when, on ITV’s An Audience with…Dame Edna Everage, she asked former Bond girl Jane Seymour: “Jane, you’ve been successfully married three times. What’s the secret of your success?” Edna became a hot ticket.
The Dame Edna Experience, Dame Edna’s Neighbourhood Watch, Edna Time, and The Dame Edna Treatment followed.
Edna worked as a double act with her silent bridesmaid Madge Allsop, wearing grey attire and played to perfection by Emily Perry, who was 100 when she died in 2007.
Her appearance contrasted starkly with Edna, whose eye-catching outfits included a scarlet gown with puffed-up sleeves and a frock that made her resemble a giant bumble bee.
Both dresses were worn at the Eat Pray Laugh! – Barry Humphries Farewell Tour, which opened at the London Palladium in 2013.
The collection at Christie’s this week also includes a dazzling blue gown, with thigh-high split that Edna wore to meet the then Prince Charles.
Cheeky Edna was photographed showing the future monarch a bit of leg – in bejewelled red tights – at the Royal Variety Performance at the Palladium later that year. She later crashed the royal box, sitting next to an anxious-looking Camilla.
As a member of the Royal security team came in and presented Edna with a card, she told Charles and Camilla, “I’m so sorry. They’ve found me a better seat.”
The now king and queen joined the audience in raucous laughter, before Edna gave a royal wave to the crowd and left.
Other royal fans included the Princess of Wales, who met Edna at the Golden Jubilee concert in 1987, and the late Queen, who awarded Barry (as himself) the CBE in 2007.
At the end of his life, Barry was happily married to his fourth wife, Elizabeth Spender.
But of his first three broken marriages, he said, back in 2018: “I didn’t know what to do. I was very clever in some areas and very stupid in others. Most people would agree that I was not ready for marriage or early parenthood. But I’ve come round to it.”
Meanwhile, of his old age, he said: “It is a good innings, and I don’t know what I attribute it to. But I don’t do exercise, and I think that’s the answer.”
When he died in 2023 following complications from a recent hip injury, the whole world mourned – even Dame Edna, who was attributed as the author of one obituary, which read: “”Barry Humphries was an unknown aspiring actor and would-be comedian when I first met him in the early 1950s.
“It is true that he put me on stage for the first time in December 1955, but it was in order to belittle me and get cheap laughs at my expense and ridicule the great Australian way of life. How the tables were turned! I became the star.”
Christie’s will auction Barry Humphries: The Personal Collection in London on February 13 2025.
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