I’m not going to pass away midperformance like poor Tommy Cooper. But brave? On the contrary, I’ve always thought of myself as quite cowardly. The sound of a bat hitting a ball causes me to duck.
He might be best known for Dame Edna Everage and Les Patterson but now aged 88 Barry Humphries has decided to appear on stage as himself. Richard Barber talks to him.
You’re never too old, it seems, to try something new. Ask veteran comedian and actor Barry Humphries. This spring, he is touring the UK, in a oneman show as himself rather than hiding behind Dame Edna’s sequinned frocks or Sir Les Patterson’s food-spattered ties. Both his monstrous creations may make brief appearances on stage in film clips but essentially the whole evening will consist of Humphries sharing anecdotes and observations from his crowded life. “Frankly, I thought it would be a little easier,” he says. “No need to dress up. I’ve had a lot of extremely interesting, colourful, scary, joyous experiences in my life. And I’m quite good with audiences.”
He premiered it in Australia more than two years ago. “And it was very, very successful. In a way, it was my out-oftown try-out. Now I’m bringing it here. I’ve written the whole show plus a new song called Alone at Last which would bring a tear to a glass eye”
By the time he appears at the Grand Opera House, York, on April 13, he won’t have been on a stage for nearly three years. So it’s quite a brave, quite an exposing, undertaking. Is he scared? “Oh no, I’ll get back in the groove very quickly.”
Still, he recently turned 88. “Yes, but it’s not as though I’m going to pass away mid-performance like poor Tommy Cooper. But brave? On the contrary, I’ve always thought of myself as quite cowardly. The sound of a cricket bat hitting a ball invariably causes me to duck.”
The show, he emphasises, is a comedy. “So the most important thing is to get that first laugh.
Then I’ll be back in my comfort zone.”
He’s well used to making audiences laugh. After a year working in the wholesale department at
EMI in his native Melbourne in his late teens, he got taken on by Australia’s only touring repertory company and was cast as Orsino in a production of Twelfth Night. “Or should I say miscast? I had to wear tights and, when I walked on stage, I thought
I heard a titter running round the audience. Immediately, I tried to disguise the bottom half of my body.
“After three performances, the director said that my entrance was terrible. Why was I skulking behind the furniture? I explained that I thought my legs were ruining this serious play. He assured me his wife was of the opinion that I had very good legs. But then he added: ‘You must realise as an actor that you’re naturally ridiculous.’
“Now, some people might regard that as a bit of an insult. I was 18 and it could have shaken my confidence. But it didn’t. What it made me realise was that I was in the wrong department of theatre. Whether I liked it or not, I belonged in comedy.”
Even so, he thought of himself as a painter, mostly landscapes, although he also does caricatures. Then, at university, he began writing sketches for revues in the style of Noel Coward or Terence Rattigan. “Later on, I tried my hand at writing about what was in front of me. No one at the time wrote about Australia in general and the suburbs in particular.”
When the Olympic Games came to Melbourne in 1956 – Humphries was 22 – the director of the repertory company decided to put on a revue and invited him to write something for it.
“There weren’t enough hotel rooms in the city so people were encouraged to let international athletes stay in their spare rooms. So I wrote a sketch about a housewife called Edna who invited a muscular sportsman into her home.”
In that early incarnation, Edna had not blossomed into a superstar. “Not at all. She was rather shy, very suburban, a little dowdy. But, in time, that changed. 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, a silent bridesmaid, Madge. She took on a life of her own. It was as though she’d started writing her own script. I’d be on the side, observing with some admiration, Edna’s quips.”
By the early 60s, Humphries resolved that
Edna had run out of steam. “But no, she proved indestructible. And she’s turned out to be a
very useful mouthpiece. She can say things, for instance, about political correctness that I couldn’t possibly express.”
The same must be true of Sir Les. “Absolutely. For example, I never swear in real life. Both characters are wonderful outlets. I’m very careful myself about what I might say. Edna and Sir Les, on the other hand, can point to the nudity of the emperor.”
The first review Humphries ever got was headlined “Are houses funny?” The young Edna, he explains, only talked about her lovely home in Moonee Ponds. “I did it as accurately as possible and I’d clearly stumbled upon something because I was rewarded with the laughter of recognition. In fact, that first review was by the architectural correspondent of the Melbourne Age.”
His colourful career has been mirrored by a lively private life. Married four times and father to two daughters from his second marriage and two sons from his third, he and fourth wife Lizzie got together 33 years ago and married in 1990. Why does he think this marriage has endured? “Oh, because I’m a bit smarter now. The truth is that I’m not a very easy person to be married to. For over ten years of my life, I had a serious alcoholic illness.”
His drinking culminated in his being found unconscious in a gutter. It proved a turning point. “If you’re dependent on alcohol for your happiness or your comfort or merely to function, it’s not only degrading but you head in one direction – and that’s downwards. I finally put the cork in the bottle when I was 38 and I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol from that day to this.”
For many years now, Humphries has made a point of living in the present. “That’s a very hard thing to do,” he says, “but a very good spiritual exercise. And I’m happier since the arrival of my grandchildren. I’m relating to them in a way I didn’t get round to doing with my own children. That’s a major regret. I’m trying to make up for the years lost to alcoholism.”
Perhaps the last word should go to longsuffering Lizzie. “Barry’s totally vague, an absentminded professor,” she says. “He’ll go downstairs to his library to pick up a book he needs and he doesn’t reappear for four hours when he gets hungry. He’s like a toddler in many ways. You go out shopping with him, turn around, turn back again and he’s gone. But, whatever he does, life is never dull with Barry.”
■ Barry Humphries: The Man Behind The
Mask, York Grand Opera House, April 13. www.manbehindthemask.co.uk