Looking for reaction to the State Memorial Service on social media I found that Dame Edna Everage had written an obituary for Barry Humphries in The Daily Telegraph:
Dame Edna Everage writes: Barry Humphries was an unknown aspiring actor and would-be comedian when I first met him in the early 1950s. It is true that he put me on stage for the first time in December 1955, but it was in order to belittle me and get cheap laughs at my expense and ridicule the great Australian way of life.
How the tables were turned! I became the star and he merely a footnote to my spectacular career. His tragedy was his desire to be an artist and we know what happens to failed artists - Hitler, for example - they either become interior decorators or mass murderers. Barry was spared this fate. He became rich due to my efforts and signed me up to a contract that bound me for life.
He had a lovely family and my heart goes out to them as well as to his unfortunate wives and numerous stage-struck research assistants.
If these words seem uncharitable in the context of an obituary, I am fortunate that The Daily Telegraph, unsurprisingly, was eager to publish them.
Rumours that Dame Edna, Sir Les and Sandy are living out their twilight years in the comfort of a Monte Carlo retirement facility are entirely unfounded.
