BARRY HUMPHRIES Comedian
Dame Edna’s alter ego is feeding his addiction to TV detective series and looking for a lamb’s head to bury in his garden
What I’m watching
Endless murder series in the Nordic style where everyone, including the taxi driver, could have done it. Exhausted, I fall back on reruns of old favourites:
Poirot, that materialisation of genius; Endeavour, to which I’m addicted. This confirms my view that David Suchet and Roger Allam are our greatest actors, as are Michael Kitchen – with Honeysuckle Weeks the perfect foil to Foyle – and Martin Clunes (I hope my doctor refers me one day for a Cornish consultation with Doc Martin). The
Professionals is still a great show with London streets as they were when I first came. It’s almost idyllic. What am I reading?
Well, lockdown’s a chance to tackle Robert Musil’s legendary three-volume
masterwork The Man
Without Qualities. Amazed to find it’s funny and gripping. Why was I scared off for so long? Laughing at every page of Bring on the Girls, the theatrical memoirs of Guy Bolton and PG Wodehouse. I’ve always been too snobbish to read Wodehouse, and now I’m addicted. Craig Brown has written a long book about The Beatles – no book by Craig Brown is too long. Ringo is a friend of mine – I met him 30 years ago at Billy
Connolly’s wedding on a snake-infested island near Fiji – but I have never been interested in The Beatles. I wouldn’t cross the road to see them... even Abbey Road. Yet I can’t put this wonderful book down. What am I listening to?
If I wanted desperately to be in Pseuds Corner, I’d admit to being enraptured by Bruckner’s ninth symphony – massive and slightly sinister. Otherwise, anything by Chabrier and my friend
Karrin Allyson, the superb jazz singer. My new hobby
Gardening. We have a patch in South Hampstead where there used to be market gardens. At the end of the garden flows the River Westbourne. There I am encouraging hydrangeas to turn blue. Well, I’m encouraging the gardener. I want to install a wisteria, and there’s an old Portuguese method to guarantee a beautiful and robust vine – bury, under or near the roots, a lamb’s head. Must ask Waitrose. The thing that made me laugh this week
Realising that I’m still in my dressing gown and it’s 4pm! I laughed, but then I cried. We also had a handyman pottering about at a safe distance. He asked my wife for a glass of water. I heard her say “still or sparkling?” What does that tell you possums? What I can’t wait to do once this is all over
I’m thinking of reviving a show I did at the Fortune Theatre in 1968. It was Dame Edna’s first appearance on the West End stage. It’s perfect for these times because every member of the audience was at least 6ft apart.