Quote

Dame Edna is that rarest sighting in our time of the absolute comic, an inspired personification of caprice whose comedy answered the primal call to take the audience for a tumble.

Oddly enough, Dame Edna is not interested in show business. Her friends in Los Angeles are mostly in the world of petroleum. She used to have some acting friends. Sadly, Joan Rivers has passed on. Larry Hagman was a close friend. A number of others.

In Edna, I created a satiric portrait of my hometown of Melbourne, a large provincial English city paradoxically in far Southeast Asia. She's a theatrical figure, related to vaudeville in some respects. She inhabits a world in which there are comparatively few female exponents of comedy.

What is extraordinary about the character of Edna - and I speak as though I am completely outside this character and I am talking to you - I'm, as it were, in the wings, and she's on stage, and every now and then she says something extremely funny, and I stand there and think: 'I wish I'd thought of that.'

I denied this for many, many years and years... but you cannot help but not see a little of my mother in the character of Edna.

My wife happens to be probably the greatest working woman in comedy. I can't think of anyone who even approaches her achievements and her abilities.

I'll never forget my interview with Barry Humphries - one of the oddest I've ever done. He insisted that for half the time he appeared as Dame Edna. So I interviewed the real Barry Humphries in a suit and tie, and then I interviewed Edna in full fig in her dressing room, where she criticised Barry mercilessly.

I remember watching Gilda Radner when I was a kid and everyone thought she was so funny and no one ever said that she was a funny woman, she was just funny.