Rough Diamonds

On Australian Culture & International Relations

There’s always gold in the comments.

John from Brisbane just commented on the death of Barry Humphries, sharing that he gathered up the nerve to approach Barry when he spotted him painting in the Botanical Gardens some years ago and they ended up having a good old natter. John then went to the Dame Edna Everage performance a couple of nights later and heard ‘a fair slice’ of their conversation repeated back for the audience’s delight.

And that is the beauty and the genius of Barry Humphries and his most spectacular creations, Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson - their combined ability to hear us, see through us and serve us up back to ourselves on a Colby cheese platter, forcing us to bear witness to a delightfully savage smorgasbord of our own peculiarities, absurdities, prejudices, euphemisms, smugness, greed, judgements, self-importance, small-mindedness, over-familiarities and inappropriate behaviours.

As Minister for the Yartz, Chairman of the Australian Cheese Board, Cultural Attache, Elder Statesman and Proud Australian Sir Les Patterson, he presented ‘the fundamental refinement of the Australian character’ to the world, according to talk show host Michael Parkinson. Dame Edna called him ‘almost as unacceptable as a real Australian diplomat’. But as an Aussie in Hollywood who doesn’t mind a lewd joke and often has food on her face, I sometimes related to Sir Les, who told Parky, ‘You know, it wasn’t many moons ago they thought we were a bunch of rough diamonds down here. But it wasn’t very long until they realised we’ve got more culture than a penicillin factory in Australia’. Are you with me?

As Dame Edna, she asked KD Lang ‘When did you first know you were Canadian?’ She invited Richard Gere to use her Royal Box anytime, letting him know it had curtains so he could take his clothes off if he wanted - after telling him he made her feel so maternal she wanted to put a nappy on him and felt like she might lactate. She told late night talk show host Craig Ferguson she thought of a talk show as ‘a monologue interrupted by total strangers’. Talking about her relationship with the US, she told him ‘They love me here… alot of people think Australia’s a long way away, it isn’t, its only about six Ben Stiller movies away’.

Dame Edna was born into international relations. Humphries came up with the concept of the character Edna Everage, the housewife from Moonee Ponds, in response to the wave of Melbourne housewives who excitedly offered up their beautiful spare rooms for international athletes who were coming to Australia for the Olympics in 1955. He wanted an actress friend to play the role in the theatre script he wrote but she felt she already too many scenes in the show and so the director urged Humphries to play her. He thought it would be a one off but it was a huge success - even though early Edna was shy and frumpy, dressed in thrift store twin sets. Over the years he would ‘bring Edna out of the trunk’ amongst his other male characters but by the 6os Edna had taken on a spooky life of her own and had become ‘better dressed than the best dressed woman in the audience’. She became a dame when our Prime Minister Gough Whitlam decided to declare her one off the cuff on live television in the mid 70s.

Dame Edna has declared ‘I belong to the world but I carry an Australian passport’. Humphries has claimed ‘Australia is the Brisbane of the world’ and once said ‘The smugness of Australia in the 50s was insufferable. I once said to a friend of mine who was coming to visit: “You’ll hear a thumping noise as the plane approaches Sydney.” He asked what would be causing it. Kangaroos, perhaps? “No,” I said. “It’s 30m Australians patting themselves on the back.’ Despite that, Dame Edna was commemorated on a postage stamp.

Humphries, in his own words, may be heading to the celestial box office now but his astonishing, hilarious and subversive body of work - which he told Sixty Minutes in 2017 he thought of as ‘an expression of gratitude to his Australian public’ - will forever fly the flag for Australians.

As Dame Edna would say, surrender to the love in your heart possums. x