Product Description
"Barry, you used to be so nice", Louisa Humphries frequently said to her son. Now, in his maturity, the Australian comedian reflects on his long journey away from niceness. Described by Barry as a "cubist self-portrait", "My Life As Me" revisits his childhood, his love-hate relationship with Australia and his adventures of the heart and stage. He tells us of his privileged youth in suburban Melbourne and describes his hectic artistic and romantic career in Australia, England and America. He also shares behind-the-scenes details of his life as creator and personal manager of Les Patterson, Sandy Stone and Dame Edna Everage. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Barry Humphries
The book was labeled as a library book.I knew it was "used" but had no idea it was a library book, so that was disappointing.

I Love This Book
I recently went to see Dame Edna when she came to our local theater.I was in the second row and she "got" me.What a hoot it was to banter with her.I was fascinated by both her and her alter-ego, Barry, so ordered this book.And I loved it.Barry is a wonderful writer and it is a pleasure to read his autobiography.No one could tell his story like he himself did.It usually takes me days, if not weeks, to get through a book, but I read it all in 2 days.If you love Dame Edna and want to read the "back story" of Barry's life, you'll really enjoy this book.I am his "biggest fan" both figurtavly and literally speaking.

Excoriating Humour
Bazza's back with the old bounce in his step. This is an extended and more richly detailed biography of Australia's most gifted comic export. Like many expatriate, fellow-travellers, Humphries has found in Australia, a deep vein of material on which to base a career. His foray into Dadaism during his Melbourne University Review days is crucial to the formation of his various personas(as Uni Reviews would serve later in the UK for Cook and Moore, the Pythons and, more recently in Australia, to The Chasers). His Edna Everidge, Sandy Stone, and Les Patterson are enshrined icons of the Australian psyche. Humphries, a self-confessed bibliophile, is no slouch at writing and this memoir has delicious evocations of pre and post war Melbourne(though only the post stuff can I validate). Barry's portrait of the tedious, middleclass 'burbs' is as good as Ted Egan's is of the workingclass northern suburbs of that era. There's a refreshing restraint on the vengeful tone I detected in the first memoir, and some typically excruciating recounting of some humiliating experiences that endear Bazza with all the frailty that Dame Edna has excorcized from her stage persona. The name dropping is a trifle boring. But then, that's the circle that Humphries frequents. Just deserts! ... Read more

Product Description
John Lahr is one of the most celebrated critics of the performing arts. Winner of Britain's 1992 Roger Machell Award for the best writing about public performance, Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilisation is an insider's account of a great clown and a great act. It takes us backstage at London's Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, with Barry Humphries, and into the weird and wonderful world of his show-stopping creation--Dame Edna Everage.

Humphries is a prodigious comic talent. His copresence in Edna-- a character so real to the public that her autobiography, My Gorgeous Life, appeared on the nonfiction list--actively invites speculation about reality and fantasy, male and female. With her "natural wisteria" hair and her harlequin eyeglasses, Dame Edna was the first solo performer to sell out the most famous theater in England, and she also took the United States by storm, filling theaters from coast to coast. Hilarious and malign, polite and rude, highbrow and very low, the character Barry Humphries inhabits is a bundle of contradictions.

John Lahr, the son of another comic genius, takes us behind the scenes to investigate how a provincial dandy from Melbourne transformed himself into one of the most unlikely megastars of today. In showing the connection between Humphries's comedy and the life it parodies, Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilisation goes beyond reportage to an exploration of the nature of comedy, a subject that Lahr has pursued over the years in his acclaimed biographies of Bert Lahr, Nol Coward, and Joe Orton. Richly entertaining and engagingly written, this book is an anecdotal treatise on the nature of comedy and an absorbing inquiry into what makes us laugh. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Great book but still can't do justice to the live show
Barry Humphries is a genius.No book is ever going to do justice to seeing him perform live, but John Lahr has come close.If you're a Dame Edna fan, you don't want to miss this book.

Beyond creating an indelible character, Humphries is a master improv comedian.In November 2003, I saw 'Dame Edna' live at a Dallas, Texas appearance.(S)he balanced five or six active storylines that were conjured up in conversations with various audience members.How the evening went totally depended on what Edna pulled out of those people.The results had the audience rolling in laughter and shocked at how much wonderful material could get mined out of what didn't appear to be much to work with.

If I had 10% of Barry Humphries talent, I would be very happy.

Dame Edna: National icon
Put the words "Barry Humphries: Living National Treasure" before the title above this review and you will have my full intended heading. Thank you.

For anyone who is a fan of Humphries and his characters this book provides a detailed insight into the creative force and intellect that has produced the best comedy theatre in the world.

For any of the new American fans of Dame Edna, this book may go some way towards filling in what you have been missing out on since Edna Everage made her quiet and unassuming debut in Australia nearly 50 years ago.

Humphries' heavy touring schedule in the US is your gain, and our loss. If you haven't seen the show, do whatever it takes to see this man and his characters on stage. I have never seen theatre which could have an entire audience bent over in laughter, tears pouring down their faces, at the mere sight of a character walking across the stage - Sir Les Patterson - and then reduced to total silence, shedding noiseless tears as Sandy Stone quietly mourned the loss of a treasured lemon tree.

This book has opened my eyes to so many other reasons why we find Barry Humphries' characters funny. It is as incisive an examination of the man and the art as one could hope to find.

Nothing worth reading
If you're looking for an intelligent, open-minded book, look elsewhere. This book is an utter failure.

Save your time
Absolutely nothing of merit here.

Save your time
Absolutely nothing of merit here. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fair dinkum Bazza
Now if you ask me, and a surprising number of fairly respectable folks do more often than you might guess, Barry McKenzie is the most important cultural offering the Australians made in the early 1970s and Barry Humphries is an absolute genius. Earl's Court may no longer be the stomping ground of expatriate Aussies in London (I hear the Mohammedans took it over and run the place now and the Aussies are over at Shepherd's Bush) but the whole Bazza McKenzie saga grabs that scene by the neck and flings it out on the pages of this here book for the whole world to see. And what you see is a beer-soaked, profanity slinging, parochial bunch of colonials storming through the uppity higher reaches of the English stratosphere.The English need to have troops of beer-soaked Australians slogging through the higher reaches of society on a fairly regular basis just to keep things interesting.

The artwork is brilliant, the humor is biting, and the Australianisms are dated and obscure... but still fun. Barry Humphries is Dame Edna Everage, and Sandy Stone, and Sir Les Patterson. Barry Humphries is an Australian institution up there with Skippy, vegemite, and footy.

I done let Junior read this book because it is filled with cartoons and Junior takes to cartoons pretty good. He didn't much understand the words on account of him not being able to read too well, and also because he doesn't have Australianisms in his vocabulary, but the normal person with average mental faculties would understand just fine. Australian will also understand just fine because it is their slang and their humor what Humphries is playing up. Junior is as dumb as a sack of hammers, but don't go telling his Mama I said that or she'll have my hide. ... Read more

Product Description
In this text, Barry Humphries takes a "back to the future" look at the people, events, obsessions, fads, fashions and music that defined Australia through the 1950s to the 1980s and combined to shape the way Australia is today. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the first volume of a duet that charts Barry Humphries' life and career. Nostalgic, the book reveals much about a man who has kept his private life private, overshadowed by, among others, his most monstrous creation, Dame Edna Everage. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Disappointing
Much as I have admired Barry Humphries work and laughed at his shows,"More Please" is an example of his total self absorption and prediliction for under graduate humour. One always expects undergrads to become instant experts on world affairs and the arts, once they attend university (hopefully, they grow out of this eventually) but B.H.seems happiest when playing the Enfant Terrible who is out to shock and disparage the very milieu in which he was raised.Okay-so his mother was always trying to put him down and bring him to heel! So whose mother hasn't done this?Big deal and get over it!! I also found his deliberate use of more obscure words to be patronising and annoying in the extreme. He is a brilliant man and doesn't need to do this childish,smart-arsey stuff!

It's Barry Humphries, stupid!
As the previous reviewers said, if you're after information on Edna Everage, Les Patterson, Sandy Stone, and people like them, "More Please" is not for you. But, then, if you're after information on them, why are you reading Barry Humphries' autobiography? Edna Everage is not Barry Humphries. Les Patterson is not Barry Humphries. Sandy Stone is not Barry Humphries. Get those facts clear, and you'll be better able to understand Barry Humphries and his work.

"More Please" is a wonderful journey through Australian society, and Mr Humphries is a wonderful guide on that journey. As an American living in Australia, I felt better able to understand the people around me after reading this book.

If you want to know about Barry Humphries and the country that produced him, read this book. If you want to know about Dame Edna, Sir Les, or Sandy, read their books.

Some excellent writing, but patchy.
On the positive side, Humphries wonderful use of language is evident in his autobiography. The sections describing his childhood are wonderfully evocative but I must agree with the previous reviewer that scant attentionis given to the evolution of Edna and Les. The biography really only coverstill 1976. This could have been a 5-star piece of work if it had had moreinteresting detail. Eg: Behind the scenes details on the Barry McKenziefilms and other movies he was in such as The Naked Bunyip (1970) Moreinformation on the books he's published. More detail on The Barry Humphriesscandals and other TV appearances. What would be really nice is 'moreplease!', say information from 1976+ and the brilliant plethora of work heproduced in these years.

Humpries' autobiography starts well but crashes and burns
For fans of the various immortal creations of Barry Humphries - Dame Edna Everage,Sir Les Patterson et al.- his autobiography seems at first sight to be a no-lose proposition. Indeed, the first half, in which he chronicleshis by no means uncomfortable childhood in the achingly bourgeois suburbsof Melbourne, is a fine piece of work. It easily stands comparison with thefirst part of the autobiography of Clive James (another ProfessionalAustralian), with which it shares the same warm nostalgia for the Australiaof the forties, recalled here in great detail. There is plenty of thattagging of memories with the names of brands and places which echoes theauthentic experience of recollection.Sadly, once Humphries decamps forEngland, having become about as 'artistic' as is possible in Australiawithout being incarcerated, his memory becomes highly selective. This maypartly be due to large sections of it being physically missing - he was analcoholic of heroic proportions - but seems more the result of hurriedpreparation and inadequate caution from an editor. The aspects of his lifewhich most interest many of his fans - his multiple marriages, theevolution of Edna and particularly of Sir Les - are barely touched upon; onthe other hand, despite a caution early on that lovers of name-droppingwould be disappointed, Humphries indulges freely in the embellishment ofhis account with borrowed lustre. This growing egotism culminates in alittle coda of stories about him by others, none of which illuminate anynew aspect of the artist. His penchant for obscure vocabulary - even themost erudite reader will be reaching for the dictionary, always assumingthey care enough to bother - and frequent references to little-knownartists are the only uniting threads in this scrappy work. A fine startpeters out as the writer seems to lose interest in his own work.Incredibly, a legion of the famous have attached glowing comments to theback cover - 'A literary masterpiece' says Auberon Waugh - but thisreviewer suspects there was some blackmail or debt-repayment here.Like JohnLennon and Spike Milligan, the latter a collaborator in various stageprojects, Humphries' humour is based solely on sarcasm and satire. The rootof most of it is contempt for his mother, a cripplingly status-obsessedsuburban queen who lives on magnified as Edna, but once the negativeaspects of her character have been fully exposed and ridiculed viaanecdotes easily retailed at this distance in time, no more is said of her;nor of his brothers and sisters, who appear almost by magic along the wayonly to vanish again. A major disappointment. ... Read more

Product Description
A biography of Australian comedian Barry Humphries, creator of Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Exactly what was required.
A terrific account of the life of Australia's most famous and controversial satirist. The biography is more satisfying than Humphries own autobiography "More Please" as it covers till the end of the1980s and pays more attention to his numerous achievements. The language isnot as poetic as Humphries writing but is clear, precise and poetic. Inthis biography you will discover the social and satirical content ofHumphries shows since the 1960s, the Barry McKenzie comic strip and filmsof the 1960s and early 70s and more clever slang than you can poke a stickat. A must for Humphries enthusiasts. ... Read more

Product Description
Best known to his fans for the flamboyant character Dame Edna Everage, the Australian actor and comedian Barry Humphries is also a painter, composer, and critically acclaimed author. Taking outrageousness to new heights by borrowing from the British Music Hall tradition and the Dada art movement, this brilliant jester of the absurd has made millions laugh by casting stones at everyone and everything, from the Queen of England to Dame Edna's own purple bouffant wig."A Portrait of the Artist as Australian" offers the first critical assessment of Barry Humphries' entire career - as a daring post-modern deconstructionist on stage, film, and television, with sixty-seven stage shows, twenty-four film and thirty-four video appearances, thirty-four television series and seventy-one television appearances, and seventy-two audio recordings, but especially what he calls his 'second career' as author of twenty-nine books. With an oeuvre that includes novels, biographies, autobiographies, editions, compilations, comic books, poetry, dramatic monologues, sketches, film scripts, and several unclassified works, Humphries is a literary and dramatic artist of considerable significance.Arguing that Humphries is one of Australia's greatest writers, Paul Matthew St Pierre reveals a multi-faceted artist whose success is rooted in music halls, Dadaism, and his identity as an Australian. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

St. Pierre, Dada Artist!
The inside back dustjacket flap of this book notes that Paul Matthew St. Pierre is a Dada artist.I suspect (duh!) that he has written his Barry Humphries study precisely in his capacity as a Dadaist, as a tribute to Humphries (himself a Dada artist) but also as, what he calls in the book, a "dadact", an act of subversion in the spirit of Dada.What is he subverting?Well, I think he's deconstructing the whole idea of academic criticism, the very thing that Humphries himself deplores, being taken seriously.If you accept this premise, A Portrait of the Artist as Australian: L'Oeuvre bizarre de Barry Humphries becomes a very complicated book, at once subverting the whole idea of the academic study and undertaking a daunting research project into just about everything Humphries has ever done as a writer and a performer.Did I like the book?Yes, I think it's amazing.It's certainly unlike any other book I have read about Humphries, by John Lahr, Peter Coleman, Ian Britain, and Stephen Alomes.A singular performer, Humphries certainly deserved this kind of singular treatment.Kudos to St. Pierre for having the pluck (Humphries would say the spunk) to write it!

Barry Humphries and Criticism
In his well researched and provocatively written book, Paul Matthew St. Pierre has made a sound case for Barry Humphries as a writer of literature.Certainly, I had not known that Humphries has been writing books throughout his career on the stage.St. Pierre addresses all of Humphries' writing and much of his stage and television work, and comes up with some original interpretations.As an academic, St. Pierre draws on some pretty infamous critics like Derrida and Barthes, but he also mentions some really interesting writers such as Es'kia Mphahlele and my late countrywoman Janet Frame, and somehow makes the mix work.In addition, he seems to be trying something nonacademic by writing a new kind of criticism.I am not sure what kind it is, but Dada criticism comes to mind, the subversion of conventional criticism.This aspect of the book offered a real challenge to me as a reader, because I realized the author was trying to change the rules of the critical game precisely as I was reading his book, which put some of the responsibility on me to play along.I see this as St. Pierre's intellectual challenge to the most avid readers.

Reading to Learn
I have just finished reading A Portrait of the Artist as Australian: L'Oeuvre bizarre de Barry Humphries, which I found an engaging and informative book.Having been familiar with Barry Humphries mainly as Dame Edna Everage, from television and The Royal Tour, I evidently had a lot to learn about him.I hadn't known he was a writer, for example, the author of 29 books.Nor had I known that he draws on music hall and dada in his stage performances as Edna and Sir Les Patterson.One of the most fascinating parts of the book is a chart in which St. Pierre compares some of Dame Edna's and Les Patterson's lines with the conventional spiel of the music hall chairman, who presided over stage shows a century ago: that Humphries might be invigorating some of these old formulas I found quite fascinating.St. Pierre claims that "Sandy Agonistes", which is a Sandy Stone monoloque, is the greatest Australian poem of the 20th-century.I wouldn't know.I haven't had a chance to find a copy of the poem yet, and, I must confess, I am not always sure whether I can take all of St. Pierre's claims seriously, but he has made me very very curious.I know I have to read this poem.So now I have started looking to purchase Humphries' books, records, and CDs (St. Pierre lists hundreds of them in his bibliography), because St. Pierre has intrigued me about the man beneath the make-up, who, I am convinced, must be a great artist.I realize that I knew NOTHING about Barry Humphries before reading this book.Now I think I know quite a bit.But, more important, St. Pierre has made me want to learn EVERYTHING about Humphries.He has created an interest in me.

Who's kidding who here?
I think the joke is on the reader only if one doesn't recognize this satire of a satirist.And Les Patterson, well, I think with his rave review he hopes we won't be aware of his close relationship to Barry Humphries.We all know that rave reviews are often the product of a reciprocal arrangement where you rave about my book and I rave about yours.Come to think of it, though, Mr. Patterson HAS written a book.But I doubt that Mr. Humphries had anything nice to say about it.

Every page satirizes what the author must feel is Mr. Humphries' pompous writing style (or should I say sesquipedalian?) A writing style like this is so distinctive, so exaggerated and bizarre, how can anyone doubt the real author?Barry's memoirs and other books are wonderfully written and hard to put down, whereas I can't imagine anyone plowing through this balderdash.Excuse I for asking, but how did the author ever have the time or inclination to write book like this?More Sir Les and Dame Edna, please!

Reading Barry Humphries' books requires a dictionary close at hand. But here the author has helped us out.All the big stumblers are footnoted, and we are spared having to haul a big heavy dictionary into our beds, or onto the train.But do we really care?

Barry Humphries is a genius.I'm positively in love with Dame Edna and have a real soft spot for the Australian Attaché to the Court of St. James, but--and I mean this with respect--I learned a lot more about Barry Humphries from Women in the Background (not autobiographical!!) This book is Barry on speed or something, and I'd rather have another volume of his autobiography, something that will keep me up until 2 a.m.All I can say in favor of this book is the cover is great.

Laughter Liberates and Informs
Paul St. Pierre's A Portrait of the Artist as Australian (2004)

Paul St. Pierre's thoroughly researched text is a scholarly portrait of Barry Humphries' (the flamboyant character of Dame Edna Everage) entire career as a comic artiste extraordinaire.Humphries is a master of "grotesqueries and bizarreries," whose reputation as an actor, performer, writer, music hall artiste and Dada prankster situate him as the darling of Australian, British, and international artistic communities.The reader is invited to travel through satirical, comedic, entertaining and witty literary work with St. Pierre leading the way as a true pathfinder.Humphries' oeuvre includes dramatic monologues, comic books, (auto)biographies, film scripts, poetry, novels, and sketches.St. Pierre acknowledges Humphries' unique talents:

By playing up and sending up cultural stereotypes, Humphries has encouraged Australians, and others, to laugh not only at him and his characters but also at themselves, at the negation of themselves on stage, and to come up on stage and join in the subversion of their images in the mirror.... Thus, Humphries
invites audiences to find pleasure in subversive things such as Dada, music hall, parody, theatre, kitsch, class, race, gender, and Australiana, as they play in the one-man show, and also to find the act of subverting pleasurable, even laughable. (133)

We owe our gratitude to St. Pierre for introducing to us the world of Humphries' laughter and for his delight in researching and writing this text "not out of opportunism but out of community service, as a note of thanks to Barry Humphries and as an offering to his squillions of fans" (224). If you wish to partake in lively amusement and introspection, then sample Humphries' genius for "putting out bush fires of ignorance, pomposity, seriousness, complacency, provincialism, and political correctness around the world" and pick up a copy of St. Pierre's A Portrait of the Artist as Australian (251).In these troubled times we all need to feel the miraculous properties of laughter to heal our spirits. ... Read more

Product Description
Bizarre [Hardcover]Barry Humphries (Author) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Wierd and Insightful early Humphries.
This is a great insight into vintage Humphries - the Dadaist known for staging bizarre, disturbing and shocking public events in Melbourne in the fifties.
The book is a collection of the wierd, bizarre writings vintage erotica, dadaist imagery and shocking freakshow photography.
Humphries has put together something that is genuinely comic and unsettling. A must for Humphries fans.

What else can you say but "Bizarre"
This is Barry Humphries from his later Dada days. It's a collection of everything weird, outlandish, unexpected and literally bizarre. Where else would you find a photograph of a three-legged man and other oddities of nature.

There is no easy way to classify, or even describe, this eclectic collection or anthology of the bizarre. There are pages on sexual topics. There are pages showing the effects of many different ways to mutilate pictures of the Mona Lisa. There is a wealth of detail, with the one theme being the bizarre nature of the contents.

This book is a lot of fun if you have an appreciation of the bizarre. It's classical Barry Humphries, playfully satirizing the world with its own bizarreness.

A miscellany of decadence.
Long before the current vogue for "reality TV", goth music, and even before the expurgated edition of "Hollywood Babylon", there was "Bizarre", a curious anthology of fin-de-siecle literature, photography of sideshow freaks, Symbolist and Surrealist art, and the like. Fashionably (for the time) underedited, its uneven quality (a page of "creative destruction of the Mona Lisa" -- by burning, stapling, "puerile manipulation", etc. of a small print) or a full-page, unflattering photo of Sophia Loren eating a banana abuts such fascinating material as the short story "Earl Lavender" and the novella "Count Fanny's Nuptuals", a small, forgotten masterpiece, here given in full.

At the time I first read it (at about the age of 14 or so) this book had the allure of patchouli oil, nose snuff, and poison rings. The freaks were the real draw...the literature was gravy. Nowadays, I'd be more interested in the lit...so little of this is reprinted. Still, I wouldn't mind having a copy...my mom made me throw it out. (It's that good!) ... Read more

Product Description
Dame Edna Everage - housewife, megastar, investigative journalist, social anthropologist, children's book illustrator, chanteuse, swami, monstre sacre, polymath, adviser to British royalty, grief counselor, spin doctor, and gifted woman in the world today.The seeds of stardom were planted in Melbourne, Australia when her career as a performing artiste was strictly a cult following.In the 1960's, she did a series of one-woman shows and occasional stage and TV appearances in England with Barry Humphries.She spends her time visiting world leaders and jet-setting between her homes in Malibu, London, Sydney, and Switzerland.Her hobbies are having afternoon tea with Stephen Hwking and doing compassionate photography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Hilarious!
I read the book many years ago when it first came out in hardcover and found myself laughing hysterically the entire time I was reading it.I loaned it out to a friend but never got it back because they loved it so much and thought it was hilarious as well.Subsequent copies that I have bought over the years were also never returned after being loaned out.Everyone loves the book and it is one of the funniest that I have ever read.

Read this book, possums!
I've been a fan of Dame Edna's for years and I have to say that this faux autobiography is one of the funniest books I have ever read.Starting from her humble beginnings (with mauve hair even then) we see our lovely Edna blossom into womanhood, marriage and motherhood---though she rarely has time to properly look after the kids because of her hectic and famous life.As an advisor to the rich, famous and royal (a spin doctor, in her words, to the Queen), Edna becomes a superstar in her own right---struggling with her troublesome childhood friend, Madge Allsop, who Edna lets us know, is a burden a good deal of the time!Edna deals with many dramas----her eccentric children, her husband with his desperate prostrate problem and the trials of being so easily recognizable to the general public.If you wanna read a book with a great deal of laughs, try to find a copy of this book.You won't be disappointed.

Therapy on a Tape
This is one of my all-time must-haves in the car...so that I can relisten to it any time LIFE gets a little too real, and I need a mini-mental vacation while driving.(It's an ideal gift too.)

It's a joy, and Dame Edna never fails to bring me back to a gentler reality.

I'm sorry to say that it hasn't been rereleased in Audio CD. I'm hoping that it will be available in that format in the future.

Delightful.
Barry Humphries admirably fleshes out the life of his most famous comic creation - Dame Edna Everage from Moonee Ponds housewife to beaming megastar. Like on TV, Edna is an outrageously egotistical tyrant who wefind out has bullied Madge Allsop since High School and even danced withher cultural compatriate Les Patterson at a teenage formal. Here you willsee how Edna saved Barry Humphries stage debut and has had him under hersolicitors thumbs for several years.For sharp Edna/Barry enthusiasts thereare a few questionable moves Humphries has made in the book though - 1) Heis cheeky in that he leaves out a number of years in Edna's life as he didin his own biography. Why? 2) Edna started off as shy and genteel in the50's. Here she is as bold as brass all the way. No real character change.3) Her nephew "Barry McKenzie" is never mentioned. They did go toEngland together and do two movies together after all. Yet, despite thesequibbles, there is Humphries characteristic razor sharp wit throughout andeven a moving epilogue where Edna visits her husbands grave. In this thereis a wonderful pathos which makes Humphries dedication to his character andhis audience first class. Fans should look for other out of print Ednatitles such as "Dame Ednas Coffee Table Book" if they enjoy this.

A Must Read for Dame Edna Fans!
If you love Dame Edna (and who doesn't?) and her rapier-sharp wit and wordly wisdom, this is the book for you.This autobiographical journey follows the housewife megastar from her sometimes painful childhood inMoonee Ponds to her meetingthe man she would marry (and later purchase anew mechanical prostate for) to her meteoric rise to stardom (accompaniedby her ever-present, though not always welcome bridesmaid, Madge).It's alaugh a minute, not unlike the Douglas Adams series, The Hitchhiker's Guideto the Galaxy.it will make you laugh out loud on public transport andguffaw during your tea-break (even though Dame Edna might disapprove ofthese slight breaches of etiquette).Pick it up, possums.It's likely theclosest you'll ever get to this megastar. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

...And a good day's read!
This fantastic collection of Humphries' satirical monolgues spanning over three decades is essential reading for his fans. See the birth of Mrs Everage as a 1956 housewife offering accomodation to Olympian athletes andread her early tips on interior decoration. Relive the time when SandyStone was a working husband having a 'bit of strife parking the vehicle' ona Saturday morning and witness Les Patterson's definitive tribute to"The Yartz". Best of all, this book will introduce you toHumphries lesser known characters such as Rex Lear (a father of the bride),Lance Boyle (a Trade Unionist) and Neal Singleton (a trendy artist). Thewide-ranging list of characteristics that make Humphries' work sodistinctive is exhibited here - from the outrageous flamboyance of ouralternative cultural ambassadors to the aching pathos of 'the little man ofthe suburbs' feeling the chill of being on 'the outer'. ... Read more