Beauty and her beasts
Comic rolls into Toronto next week with a suitcase full of celeb-shrinking venom, writes Richard Ouzounian
HOLLYWOOD— Dame Edna wants to set the record straight: Tom Cruise proposed to her before settling on Katie Holmes.
“ Poor Tom,” she sighs, stirring a cup of tea as we share a power breakfast in a trendy L. A. hotel. “ The dear boy was so into me, but he was, errr, lacking in certain things I find necessary in a partner.” The Scientology issue was another stumbling block. “ ‘ I have my own cult, Tom,’ I told him ‘ and it’s bigger than yours.’ That shut him up and the needy little beggar left me alone.” Edna is in her element here in La- La Land, frantically trying to juggle offers and close deals before she heads to Toronto, where her latest show, Back With A Vengeance, starts previews
one night, does it?”
She’s also weighing the possibility of appearing on the hit series Desperate Housewives. “I mean, darling, Edna is the original desperate housewife. I would be a sort of counsellor, advising one wife each week. I see myself in a lovely office, sharing and caring — the things I do best. Another surprising piece of news is that Edna will be making her Las Vegas debut this Christmas. “I’m at the Luxor, that sweet little hotel that looks like a pyramid. It’s very handy because when people lose money and want to commit suicide, they don’t have to jump out of a window, they just slide down the wall.” A non- stop chorus of glitterati stops by our table to pay court to Edna, who seems to know all the Hollywood dish.
“ I told them that Daniel Craig was a stupid choice to play James Bond,” she sneers. “ I never trust a man with two Christian names. Besides, he doesn’t look like a suave secret agent, more like someone who would valet- park your car wearing a Tshirt under a fake Armani suit.” And it’s not just the world of show business that seeks Edna out.
“ Laura Bush is on the phone to me a lot, asking me if I could use some influence to convince George to have a drink.
“ He hasn’t had one in 13, 14 years and those white knuckles are driving her crazy. But the poor boy has his ways of compensating. Whenever he feels like a drink, he just goes out and invades someone.” A black-suited media mogul scoots over to our corner table for some whispered talk with Edna, followed by an air kiss.
“ That’s my producer. I might as well break the news to the Toronto Star
first, Richard, but they’re planning to make the film version of my life. I will play the older Edna, Nicole Kidman the middle- aged Edna, and maybe that Paris Hilton girl as young Edna if we could clean her up a bit. She’d need grooming and brainwashing and maybe even plastic surgery.”
Edna has always denied that she has
known the surgeon’s
knife, but she now
makes another staggering revelation.
“ I’ve had to have some artificial double chins added on, because I was looking too young and attractive.
“ They were made from Elizabeth Taylor’s left love handle and if you look closely, you can still see Richard Burton’s fingernails.” Edna is looking forward to being in Toronto, she says, “ so I can jog along the waterfront in the new mauve and fluorescent pink jogging suits that my son Kenny has designed for me.
“ In fact, Kenny will be visiting me in Toronto with Clifford Smail, his partner. I hate that word ‘ partner,’ since it makes him sound like a lawyer instead of a boyfriend. At any rate, Kenny said he would have some sort of ceremony in Toronto. Do you know what he’s talking about?”