Celebrated entertainer Barry Humphries, creator of Dame Edna Everage, dies at 89

He was also a film producer, screenwriter, author, landscape painter and satirist, as well as popular figure on the West End stage, where he had his breakthrough in the 1960s in the original production of the musical Oliver!

Born in Melbourne, Victoria on February 17, 1934, Humphries grew up in the suburbs and enjoyed spending hours playing dress-up in the back garden.

He then spent two years at Melbourne University, studying Law, Philosophy and Fine Art while also undertaking his National Service with the Australian Army Reserve.

It was during his time that he developed his love of Dadaism, an avant-garde art movement that saw its artists reject the logic and reason of modern society in favour of nonsense and anti-bourgeois statements in their work, which took in collage, cut-up technique, sculpture and assemblage among other things.

Humphries also began to become famous for his notorious public pranks, which included tricking people into thinking he was eating his own vomit by secretly emptying a tin of Heinz Russian Salad into an air sickness bag.

After leaving university, he joined the Melbourne Theatre Company and created his much-celebrated character, Dame Edna Everage, who made her public debut in a 1955 sketch when Humphries was 21.

He then moved over to Sydney’s Phillip Street Theatre in 1957, which became a leading venue for satire, before starring as Estragon, one of the two main characters in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, in its Australian debut.

In 1959, Humphries headed to London, gaining the public’s attention with his turn as Mr Sowerberry in Oliver!, a role he later reprised on Broadway, before moving over to star as Fagin in the 1967 West End revival, and once more at the London Palladium in 1997.

He also appeared in Maggie May and a 1968 production of Treasure Island, alongside his friend Spike Milligan.

Humphries’ other famous friends included Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, with the actor then making his film debut in a small role in their comedy Bedazzled in 1967, which was later remade with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley in 2000.

The star truly found his stride during this period too with Dame Edna Everage and other comic character creations in his one-man stage shows, returning to Australia to tour them until Just a Show received a West End transfer in 1969 – which also led to his BBC TV series The Barry Humphries Scandals.

Other popular characters of Humphries’ included boozy and lecherous cultural attaché Sir Les Patterson, as well as Sandy Stone, an elderly Australian man whose daughter died as a child.

Dame Edna made her movie debut in 1970 in The Naked Bunyip, and over the following years both she or Humphries appeared in movies including Side by Side, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Rocky Horror Picture Show sequel Shock Treatment.

Later movies were Dr Fischer of Geneva, Immortal Beloved, Spice World and the 2002 adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby, in which he played Mrs Crummles, the wife of actor Nathan Lane’s part.

On TV, The Dame Edna Experience was a big success in the late 1980s, with its two series worth of guest stars including Sir Sean Connery, Dusty Springfield and Sir Roger Moore. He also filmed one-off specials and shows in the US, where he chatted to more stars such as Cher and Barry Manilow.

The Dame Edna Treatment in 2007 marked Humphries’ return to ITV in the UK, and yet more celebrity interviews, this time with the likes of Sigourney Weaver and Dame Shirley Bassey.

Due to his link with the show, he made for an entertaining and appropriate judge on Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s BBC talent contest I’d Do Anything in 2008, as the theatre impresario launched a nationwide search for an actress to play Nancy in a revival of Oliver!