My brilliant year
In 2020, Dame Edna Everage chatted with the Queen, began her dazzling memoirs and had an MOT from her celebrity gynaecologist
HELLO, POSSUMS! I’ve been called a comedienne by some people, but I’d rather be a nice Australian woman whose meditations on things like climate change, same-sex marriage, cultural appropriation in hairdressing and Mr Trump are so ‘on the nail’ that people just gasp.
A whole audience gasping with amazement and admiration at my insights and aperçus can sound like laughter to an untrained ear. Let’s face it, Possums, who’s heard enough laughter lately to know what it sounds like?
These days, comedians don’t have to be funny anyway – they just have to IDENTIFY as funny. A source close to the Comedy Industry tells me there’s a deep sense of relief amongst many ‘stand-ups’ that they don’t have an obligation to be funny any more. A lucky few said it came naturally. Anyway, they need time to focus on getting as many ‘f’ words as possible into a sentence.
Over the past year, I’ve been keeping a safe distance from the UK and Australia on board my luxury yacht, the Sea Widow. And I’ve kept up my New Year’s resolution to stop helping others.
Most celebrities and female high achievers run around like scalded cats doing charity work in the hope of becoming a dame or even a baroness! But I’m a dame already – so it makes sense for me to slow down on tiring and, let’s face it, unconvincing acts of kindness.
I’m not even sure I want to be a dame when you see some of the nonentities who get the honorific.
The Queen told me in the strictest confidence that sometimes, with the sword in her hand, she looks down at the kneeling figure before her and thinks, ‘You’ve got to be joking!’
This horrible lockdown thing has led some people to think I’ve retired. No way, Jose! People say, ‘How can you do so much, Edna?’ To which I reply, ‘How can you do so little?’ I have a royal friend who lives in a very large, detached home in central London with an enormous backyard overlooking the nearly finished Peninsula Hotel, who is still working flat out, and she is significantly older than me! Unfortunately, I can’t do stage work at present and the NHS has told me they get a lot of patients suffering from EDS (Edna Deprivation Syndrome). I just hope the next generation will get a chance to see me in the flesh one day.
Before you ask, I still look gorgeous, and my gynaecologist, Rick Stein – yes, the same, Possums! – looked up the other day and told me I was at the height of my powers!
He is a famous chef as well – so he’s always washing his hands, bless him. When I told him that I had an opening for a gynaecologist, he jumped at it.
Now I’m looking back on my wonderful achievements over the years and starting work on my Trilogy.
It’s only one book but my literary agent, Jonathan Lloyd, tells me people love trilogies, and who am I to argue?
It’s pretty Proustian, actually, and I was nibbling a scrumptious sponge finger one day when it all came flooding back. The triumphs, the heartache, the applause, the standing ovations and the safe-distancing ovations.
You will read about my lunch at the Spectator (a periodical of the period) with the American statesman Spiro Agnew. My stint in the Falklands War when I fearlessly sent my bridesmaid Madge Allsop over the top to look for land mines. My virtual adultery with Salvador Dali. My long years of selfsacrifice during my husband Norm’s illness, and how I established my worldwide charity, Friends of the Prostate.
On these pages, you will meet my mother, before I had her caringly relocated in a facility for the bewildered, and read about the legendary night we burnt my mother’s things.
It’s been a year for reflection, for taking stock; a watershed, if you will.
Throughout all this, my son Kenny (an influencer) has been at my side, as has his same-sex wife Clifford Smail (a children’s entertainer and video essayist).
Yes, I’ve at last publicly acknowledged Kenny’s fluidity, which has been a lesser cross to bear than my husband’s fluidity.
I needed this break, this intermission in my life, this ‘me time’… But fear not, Possums, I’ll be back!