Life’s a drag for Dame Edna as she’s put out to pasture
ALL GOOD things come to an end and the end to which I refer is the partial retirement of Dame Edna Everage. I hasten to reassure you that the great Dame is still in the very best of health; as is her creator, the equally great Barry Humphries.
However, Barry has decided that at the age of 78 (his age not hers) Dame Edna is to retire from performing in theatres after six decades. She will not retire to the same “maximum security twilight home for the bewildered” in which her mother resided and, fortunately, Barry has promised us that she will continue to pop up on television from time to time.
The news of Dame Edna’s semi-retirement set my mind racing back to some broadcasts I presented for the BBC from Australia in the Eighties. During the course of two visits I interviewed Bob Hawke; first when he was a trade union leader in 1982 and on the second occasion in 1987, when he was prime minister. By 1987 interviewing the megastar Dame Edna was an absolute must.
It was a bizarre occasion. I had expected to greet Dame Edna in all her finery. However, Barry, quite rightly since the interview was on radio, saw no reason to bother turning up in full drag. The result was that, sitting opposite me in the studio was the beefy, and obviously very masculine, Barry; yet, in answer to my questions, out of his mouth came the voice of Dame Edna. The listening millions will have had no problem with that but had I asked the great Dame what she thought of the scene in the studio I have no doubt she would have described the whole episode as “very, very, spooky”.
LAST week the Government, as though it was announcing something new, boasted that thousands of children are to sit new national tests called Super Stats. They are aimed at gifted 11-year-olds, designed to stretch the brightest pupils and ensure that high ability children reach their full potential.
I have news for the Government. National tests aimed at 11-year- old academically gifted pupils have existed for years. I sat one at the age of 11 in 1932. They were designed to achieve the present government’s stated ambition and they succeeded. They ensured that high ability children, many from poor families, could reach their full potential by being educated at grammar schools, those centres of excellence that successive governments, including to their utter shame the Conservatives, have hounded, harassed, and tried to close.
If David Cameron sincerely believes in the Government’s message he will campaign vigorously to increase the number of grammar schools which have proved, beyond any possible doubt, that they are the established route to a better life for gifted children.
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