Legendary Australian comedian Barry Humphries is remembered for his array of wild and colorful characters he has played throughout his life.
While he is best known for creating and playing Dame Edna Everage, he also embodied several other great characters in his very long career in show business.
Nothing was off limits to the beloved entertainer’s bawdy, sassy wit, not even his own age and the limits of the times.
In an interview with ABC Melbourne’s Jon Faine in 2012, when Humphries was 78, he joked that he had reached “middle age” and so needed to take it easy.
He created and portrayed many iconic characters, including his most famous, a cantankerous woman who grew taller and more famous than her creator.
Daily Mail Australia has compiled a list of some of Humphries’ most beloved, outrageous and memorable alter egos.
Legendary Australian comedian Barry Humphries (pictured as Dame Edna Everage) took his final bow on Saturday, 89 years in a life well lived
Dame Edna Everage
Dame Edna, along with AC/DC, INXS, Cate Blanchett, Thomas Keneally, Baz Luhrmann and Kylie Minogue, tops Australia’s best-known cultural export list.
Humphries introduced what would become his best-known character as Mrs. Norm Everage on a show in 1955; her last name is a play on how many Melburnians pronounce the letter A as an E.
Initially, Everage was a quiet, scruffy suburban housewife, but as she developed over the following decades, she sparkled with jewels, fancy glasses, and purple hair.
She also got spicier and spicier, with a sarcastic power that could strip wallpaper if given the chance.
He also changed the name, from Mrs Norm Everage to Aunt Edna and then Dame, which was bestowed on her by the then Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in the film The Adventures of Barry McKenzie.
The 1980s was a larger than life decade, and Dame Edna was one of those who best embodied that spirit, with her fame going supernova through TV shows.
During the Dame Edna Experience, she introduced each show by saying ‘Hello possums!’ and then roasting names like Sean Connery, Liza Minnelli and Cliff Richard.
Humphries toured the world and made a fortune as Edna, with the Dame making her last appearance in a BBC show in 2019.
Sir Les Patterson (pictured) was an odious creation, whose character was a former Minister of Inland Drainage who later became Australia’s cultural attaché in the Far East
Mr Les Patterson
Sir Les was an odious creation, whose character was a former Inland Drainage Minister who later became Australia’s cultural attaché in the Far East.
With his blotchy, red face, Patterson seemed permanently drunk, a kind of cover for the politically incorrect, far from awake manner in which he behaved.
“No story too dirty, no gesture too obscene, no idea too racist,” Humphries described Sir Les in the 2008 documentary The Man Inside Dame Edna.
He also said Patterson was his character who offended most Australians as they found his behavior a bit too accurate.
Despite, or perhaps because of, Sir Les – who was introduced in 1974 as a warm-up act for Dame Edna – was Humphries’ favorite character to play.
While Edna at least pretended to be nice while stabbing everyone around her, that wasn’t the case with Sir Les, who had manners or self-awareness.
Patterson didn’t even have time for his creator, saying, “I’ve only met Barry Humphries about twice in my life, and it was twice too many.”
“He’s awake himself, and I don’t get it.”
Barry Humphries (left) is pictured with his wife Lizzie Spender on December 18, 1993 in London
Barry McKenzie
This Drunken Ladies Man was a tale of three Barrys. Barry McKenzie was created by Barry Humphries and played on film by Barry Crocker.
But before he made it to the silver screen, McKenzie was part of a cartoon Humphries made for Private Eye, a London-based satirical magazine.
Humphries used his creation to laugh at the huge number of Australians who gathered around Earl’s Court in London and enjoyed a beer.
“He was sick in almost every episode. It is surprising that beer ever took off,” Humphries told compatriot Clive James in 1987.
The 1972 film The Adventures of Barry McKenzie saw the Australian boofhead drinking heavily and sleeping in the swinging London era of the ’60s.
To tie it all together neatly, McKenzie’s aunt was Edna Everage, but Edna would never have approved of her cousin’s rudeness.
The biggest contribution the film, and its follow-up, Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, made was to give Australian expressions a wider audience around the world.
It’s thanks to them that the “technicolour yawn” – the Australian slang for vomit – became widely known, along with a few others too nasty to print.
Barry Humphries is pictured with his then-wife Diane and their baby Oscar Valentine on April 27, 1981
Sandy stone
Humphries said Sandy Stone was a man who led a “boring and uninteresting” life.
He created Stone in the late 1950s – after Melbourne gained international attention by hosting the 1956 Olympics – to satirize the sleepy suburban city it became again after the international focus faded.
Sandy was wearing a robe and holding a hot water bottle – which Humphries said was really filled with hot water – telling very boring stories in a very boring voice.
“I thought I’d write about someone — and then do it on stage — who would talk really, really boringly to the audience and see how much boredom they could take,” said Humphries.
Much to his surprise, Stone became one of Humphries’ most popular creations.
The character was killed off in the 1970s, but his popularity was such that he was brought back as a ghost in later years.
Australian comedian Barry Humphries (pictured) is known for the many great characters he created
Bruce the shark
Many people who are now young adults first encountered Humphries who terrified them as the voice of Bruce the Great White Shark in the 2003 movie Finding Nemo.
While he scared many in the audience and brought a little Sir Les Patterson to the shark character, it introduced him to a new generation and reminded others of his great talents.
Other TV and movie appearances
Humphries also had roles in the hit TV show Ally McBeal, the 2016 Absolutely Fabulous movie, as the wart-covered Great Goblin in The Hobbit.
Closer to home, Humphries played Justice Loder to great acclaim in the ABC private detective series Jack Irish.