Dame Edna digs her heels in over neighbour’s basement

AUSTRALIAN Barry Humphries, aka dame edna everage, has become the latest celebrity to protest against major excavations ‘down under’.

Humphries, 81, has asked camden council to refuse plans for a basement extension next to his home in West Hampstead, fearing the work will harm his Victorian house. ‘These houses are all from the 1870s, a miraculous period, but street after street is filled with scaffolding,’ he says. ‘ it would be nice to have a gym and a cinema and a swimming pool, but these places won’t stand it.’

Humphries says he had a ‘near miss’ when his ceiling fell in during a basement project at another property in his street.

‘i looked in horror as a huge slab of ceiling landed on the living room floor just where i had been sitting a moment before,’ he says. Poor possum.