Hello Again, Possums! Dame Edna's Back!

THE AUSSIE LEGEND HAS A NEW SHOW AND A SURPRISE NEW BEAU

- Chrissy Iley

A few years ago Barry Humphries, the creator behind Dame Edna Everage, announced that as she was pushing 80 she would retire. But this year she was forced out of retirement at the grand age of 85, she tells us, by her adoring “precious possums”. Following her My Gorgeous Life tour of Australia this year, she has recorded a BBC Christmas special aboard her luxury yacht.

“One hour on my yacht is better than a lifetime on a cruise liner,” she trills.

Back in all her splendour, complete with gladioli and bedazzled spectacles, her Australian tour was a triumph. She managed to offend and enthral in equal parts, as if she’d never been away.

It’s hard to imagine that the character was created in 1955 as a Melbourne housewife who aspired to being average. Sixty-four years later she still has the great legs, she still rocks her heels and her bedazzling, winged “face furniture”, and she still loves a wisteria-coloured rinse. Her wit is as quick as ever and her voice remains shrill, if a little breathier.

We meet her after a busy day and though she is not in the least bit weary, she does at times seem harried.

She announces, “I was going to go to Australia for Christmas, but now I can’t because the royal family are in disarray. The Queen is going to Balmoral – her timeshare – and she is not to be disturbed. I am having to house-sit Buckingham Palace. I will be seeing the corgis as well – I am particularly fond of one called Edna. She is my favourite!

“I will be going there with my new boyfriend. It’s really new. He is a lovely older man. I met him by accident – he lives mostly in Mexico. He is the father-in-law of Prince Harry, Tommy Markle. So Tommy and I have got together and I haven’t told the Queen. I think she has got enough problems at the moment, don’t you think?”