Barry Humphries, creator and manager of Dame Edna Everage, died on April 22nd, aged 89
Those who thought they were the same person were not entirely wrong
The garden Barry Humphries walked through was not in the best part of Melbourne. Moonee Ponds was low-lying, swampy and the wrong side of the tracks. The lawn, with no effort at gentility, was of scratchy buffalo grass. There were few flowers, and they were ones he particularly disliked: gladioli, with their disagreeably optimistic thrusting spears and scentless flesh-pink florets. Little did he know that in years to come he would be ordering thousands of them every month, and that his distrust would have grown into burning hate.
This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “Two lives entwined”
From the April 29th 2023 edition
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