Being Edna's manager: Barry Humphries

Title:
Being Edna's manager: Barry Humphries
NFSA ID
1223680
Year
1980
Courtesy
Mike Walsh AM, OBE Hayden Productions
Access fees

Barry Humphries seeks to put to bed once and for all the 'scurrilous story' that he and Dame Edna Everage are the same person.

He confides that one of the downsides about being her manager is that he has to go clothes shopping for her because 'we are exactly the same inside leg measurement'.

He tries on a pair of Everage's bespoke spectacles with lips and teeth on them, much to the hilarity of the audience who feel like they're in on the joke. Everage sometimes refers to them as 'face furniture'.

Two early photographs of Dame Edna Everage from an unknown source are shown to illustrate how far she has come in terms of her appearance and the couture fashion she now wears as a self-proclaimed superstar.

Humphries says Everage thinks of herself as the natural successor to Australian opera singer Dame Joan Sutherland.

Walsh talks about Everage's more unpleasant side, such as heckling audience members, and shows clips of her flirting outrageously with a woman on Walsh's show and putting US producer Allan Carr in his place.

Clip from The Mike Walsh Show: Archive no. 154, circa 1980.

Notes by Beth Taylor