I REMEMBER... Barry Humphries

Creator of housewife megastar, Dame Edna Everage, and cultural attaché, Sir Les Patterson, Barry Humphries, 88, will soon embark on a nationwide one-man tour... as himself. Here, he recalls a life crowded with a succession of eye-popping episodes

- Richard Barber

FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER, I'VE LOVED DRESSING UP... This is me in a sailor hat (above), aged five, in the garden of our home in Melbourne. I was a very happy small child, the eldest of four-I have a younger sister and two brothers content to play on my own. My parents often referred to me as “Sunny Sam”. I was always cheerful and always indulged by a large number of aunties.

On Sunday afternoons, I had to perform a little cabaret. There was a camphor box-I still have it-in which I kept a diverse range of costumes. I'd appear and they'd all laugh and clap and then my mother would urge me to sing "Nymphs and Shepherds”. But I was too shy and had to go behind the curtain. Then she would say, "Pretend to be the wireless."

EDNA WAS NAMED AFTER A CHILDHOOD NANNY I ADORED.

But Mrs Everage's personality was more like my mother's and her friends'-intensely house-proud suburban wives. By 1958, when this photo (above) was taken, I'd begun to appear on Australian television.

Edna was very rudimentary in those days, dressed in a stretched twinset of my mother's, a discarded skirt and a conical hat she bought to go to the races but never wore. The hair, though, is my own! Gathered around this early evocation of Edna is the cast of the TV Review, broadcast live all over Australia.

THIS PHOTOGRAPH OF ME PAINTING ON AN AUSTRALIAN BEACH IS RATHER NAUGHTY.

The elastic had gone in my swimming trunks, something captured by a wicked friend of mine. I've been a lifelong enthusiast and I like to paint in oils. I also draw in pen and ink in restaurants. I'm having an exhibition in London later this year of those drawings. I'm rather a good caricaturist but then I suppose the characters I create on stage also fall into that category.