Caught with my trousers down... and eating beef à la dustbin
As he steps out from behind Dame Edna to bare his soul on stage, Barry Humphries shares laugh-outloud moments from his very outlandish life
HI’M NOT AN EASY PERSON TO BE MARRIED TO, I WAS AN ALCOHOLIC
e may have just celebrated his 88th birthday, but there’s no stopping Barry Humphries. The artist, author, comedian and satirist best known for creating Dame Edna is still razor sharp and as mischievous as ever.
We’re in the London apartment where he’s lived with his fourth wife, Lizzie Spender, for more than 30 years. His still unparalleled ability to recall in detail incidents from decades past make him a wonderful anecdotist. And, with a circle of friends that has included Peter Cook, Salvador Dali and The Beatles (‘I liked Ringo Starr best of all’), he has plenty of material to draw on.
Throughout his career, Barry – and Edna – have met and charmed most of Britain’s royal family, from the late Queen Mother to the Prince of Wales. But it was through John Betjeman that he had a very memorable non-encounter with Princess Margaret. ‘I was on stage in Treasure Island with Willie Rushton and
Spike Milligan, and after the show we’d all repair to the bar,’ he recalls. ‘One evening the barman shouted out, “Call for you, Barry. Says she’s Princess Margaret”. So I went to the phone and the voice at the other end said, “Hello, it’s Princess Margaret. I have Sir John Betjeman here. We want you to come over now and have some supper with us”.
‘I thought it was a hoax so I laughed and put the phone down. Well, it turned out it really had been Princess Margaret, which didn’t bode well for our next encounter. I could tell by a certain froideur when I was presented to her in a lineup. It was clear she hadn’t been best pleased.’
Then there was the ‘trousers incident’. Barry was friendly with composer Stanley Myers, and one evening they went for dinner at Chez Moi restaurant in London. ‘I had a habit when I’d taken a few drinks of dropping my trousers to shock people. Lord Snowdon [photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones] and some friends were at another table. Stanley goaded me to perform my “trick”, so on my way back from the gents I allowed my trousers to descend to my ankles as I passed Snowdon’s party.
‘Back at my table the head waiter approached and told me I had to leave. Lord Snowdon, apparently, had not been amused. Two burly waiters lifted me from my chair and propelled me out into the street. I couldn’t get back in because the door had been locked from the inside.’ Undeterred, Barry found a phone booth and called the restaurant. ‘When they answered I said in my best fluting tones, “Please could I speak to Lord Snowdon? It’s his mother”. When he came to the phone I said, “Tony, how dare you be so rude to my dear friend Barry. He’s very nice but he’s given to these pranks. You should excuse him, particularly when I remember some of the things you got up to before you were married. So please apologise and buy him a large bottle of Champagne. I believe he’s outside the restaurant now”. Snowdon was spluttering at the end of the line, “Who is this?” That’s when I put the phone down.’
Years later, Snowdon was sent by the Sunday Times to photograph Barry for a profile they planned to run. ‘The whole session went effortlessly, and when it was over he said, “Why don’t we have some lunch?” so I asked where
he’d like to suggest. He looked at me. “Do you know Chez Moi in Holland Park?” he said. It showed he had a sense of humour’.
In many ways it’s hard to pigeonhole Barry Humphries. Who would have thought, for instance, that he’d be a good friend of Jeffrey Archer? It all started in the mid-90s when Barry conceived an elaborate musical called Edna: The Spectacle telling the housewife superstar’s life story. ‘I’d already met Jeffrey, and to my surprise he said he wanted to back this new show. It got ever more elaborate and more expensive but Jeffrey never complained. He just dug deeper.’
The reviews were stinking. Box office takings were woeful. ‘Jeffrey didn’t waver, he steadfastly continued to support us. But I didn’t know what to do, so I called [late US comedienne] Joan Rivers to ask for her advice. She’d seen the show and liked it very much. She didn’t hesitate. “Take it to San Francisco,” she said. “There’s a big gay audience there.” So we went there for a fortnight’s run which turned into four months. The reviews were wonderful – and then we transferred to Broadway where it won a clutch of awards. Jeffrey had been such a
good friend. There’s something rather engaging about him that’s hard to describe. I always say that we all invent ourselves. It’s just that Jeffrey goes to more trouble. He’s a one-off.’
The eldest of four, Barry grew up in well-heeled middle-class Melbourne, his father, Eric, a prosperous builder who could afford a nanny for his children. Her name was Edna and Barry adored her. His mother, Louisa, by contrast, was rather aloof. ‘Edna showed me the warmth my mother didn’t. She was a little chilly, a little emotionally inaccessible. When I was nine she gave away all my precious books – The Arabian Nights, Robin Hood, Treasure Island and so on. ‘I got home from school and asked her where my books had gone. “Oh, I gave them to a nice man from the army,” she said. For a moment, I thought perhaps I was helping in the fight against the Japanese. As it turned out, it was the Salvation Army. I was horrified, which she simply didn’t understand. “But Barry,” she said, “you’ve already read them.” I was inconsolable. The result is that to this day I can’t resist books. I must have well over 30,000. I’m not a bibliophile; I’m a bibliomaniac. They call to me. They speak to me.’
Academically gifted, he scored top marks at his fee-paying school. At university, he began writing sketches for revues in the style of Noel Coward or Terence Rattigan. ‘Later on I tried writing about what was in front of me. No one at the time wrote about Australia in general and the suburbs in particular. So I started writing about suburban life and with some anger.’
When he dropped out of university he was faced with the necessity of getting a job. ‘My father played golf with the manager of EMI in Melbourne and he gave me a job behind the record counter of the wholesale department. I was being groomed to become an executive of some kind.’
It was the transition period between 78s and LPs. ‘For copyright reasons which I never fully understood, the vast store of 78s had to be destroyed. I was put in a room without windows and given a hammer. All these Sibelius symphonies, all these early Bing Crosby recordings, every one of them had to be smashed. It linked me with a period in art history in which I’d become very interested: the Dada movement, an artistic anarchy against the establishment. I thought of myself as a latter-day Dadaist.
Destroying old 78s with a hammer played into that.’
And so began a series of pranks, but be warned, look away now if you’re having breakfast. One of Barry’s favourite wheezes was to empty a helping of Heinz Russian Salad into a brown paper bag before hopping on a bus and then pretending to be sick. Taking a fork from his pocket, he would then eat the contents of the bag to the revulsion of all around him.
Almost as unsavoury was his habit of surreptitiously placing a serving of prime roast beef and a glass of Champagne in a dustbin.
‘Then, dressed as a tramp, he’d shuffle up to the bin in full view of a queue of customers waiting to be served at a sandwich bar and rootle through the rubbish, before extracting the beef and fizz and settling down to a slap-up meal. ‘I was trying to bring theatre into real life.’
After a year at EMI he was taken on by a touring theatre company, and when the Olympic Games came to Melbourne in 1956 (Barry was 22) the director of the company decided to put on a revue and invited Barry to write something for it.
‘I wrote a sketch about a housewife called Edna who invited a muscular athlete into her home. She was shy, very suburban, a little dowdy. But that changed in time. It was as though she started to assert herself. I’d wake up one day and she’d acquired those trademark glasses.
‘Her confidence grew. Suddenly there was an invalid husband, Norm, a gay son, a delinquent daughter and a silent bridesmaid, Madge.’
Even so, by the early 60s, Barry resolved that Edna had run out of steam. ‘But no. She proved indestructible.’
In April, Barry takes to the road with a new UK one-man tour, but rather than hiding behind Dame Edna’s specs or Sir Les Patterson’s food-spattered ties, he’ll be appearing as himself for the first time.
Both his monstrous creations may make brief appearances on stage in film clips, but essentially the whole evening will consist of Barry sharing anecdotes and observations from his extraordinarily colourful life.
It’s a brave undertaking for someone who hasn’t been on a stage for nearly three years. He must be terrified.
‘Oh no,’ he says, ‘I’ll get back in the groove very quickly. I’ve had a lot of extremely interesting, scary, joyous experiences in my life, and I’m quite good with audiences. So I put together a show that revealed The Man Behind The Mask. I shall be playing a character called me.’
‘I call the tour my “Tourette” because that’s what I’ll be doing on stage: saying whatever comes into my head. And there’s no need to dress up.’
Barry and fourth wife Lizzie – daughter of the late poet Stephen Spender – got together some 33 years ago and married in 1990. He has two daughters by his second wife, dancer Rosalind Tong, and two sons by his third, Australian artist Diane Millstead.
‘I remain on civilised terms with both Rosalind and Diane because we’re bound by the children we had together,’ he says. Why does he think his marriage to Lizzie has endured? ‘Oh, because I’m a bit smarter now. The truth is I’m not a very easy person to be married to, and for over 10 years I had a serious alcoholic illness.
‘If you’re dependent on alcohol it’s not only degrading but you only head in one direction – downwards. I moved on to whiskey, which was like drinking petrol, and I was fond of Fernet Branca, a hangover drink that tasted ghastly so it was both a punishment and a cure. I used to love the atmosphere of English pubs.
‘I finally put the cork in the bottle when I was 38 and I haven’t touched a drop since. But I know many alcoholics who have chastening experiences and yet carry on drinking.’
An example was his good friend, the late satirist Peter Cook.
‘He was remarkably gifted but in the grip of the grog, though that was true of so many people in the ’60s. Sadly he couldn’t be saved. You’ve got to want to kick the habit. I have an addictive personality but I channel it into my work. And I’ve never touched drugs.’
So is he happy?
‘Yes. I’ve learnt to live in the present. I’m happier since the arrival of my new grandchildren. I’m relating to them in a way I didn’t get round to doing with my own children. I’m trying to make up for the years lost to alcoholism.’
DAME EDNA SHOWED ME THE WARMTH MY MOTHER DIDN’T