Barry Humphries

“I feel like I've cheated. I never knew what to do. I was never a good enough painter to earn a living, and so I drifted into the theatre, and I've had a successful life. I feel guilty that I've never done a day's work in my life!”

“Am I old-fashioned? I think I might be. I am a lucky woman, because I was born with a priceless gift... the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others.”

“One of the strangest experiences one can have is to sleep on stage, as I once did in Sydney when I'd lost the key to my flat. I had to stay at night in a bed, which conveniently was on stage because my character Sandy Stone did his monologue from a bed. To wake up looking at a shadowy auditorium is a very peculiar feeling.”

“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'm approaching 70. Unfortunately, from the wrong direction.”

“In Australia, they really want to turn me into a religion. A religion! Can you imagine? The Church of Edna? Oh. I don't want to be over-revered.”

“Most of my contemporaries at school entered the World of Business, the logical destiny of bores.”

“New Zealand is a country of thirty thousand million sheep, three million of whom think they are human.”

“Now the point of comedy is not just looking funny, it's use of language. We have at our disposal a great language... and the imaginative, creative use of that language can be at the service of humour.”

“I really feel sorry for kids who aren't interested in history - recent history, either, because it is this that made us what we are.”

“Political correctness means nothing to me. Nothing. It's the new Puritanism, darling. Preventing us from expressing ourselves.”

“When people laugh at me, they are not laughing in the way that they normally would at a comedian. They are laughing with relief, because the truth has been spoken, and political correctness has not strangled this particular gigastar.”

“My parents were very pleased that I was in the army. The fact that I hated it somehow pleased them even more.”

“Glamour comes from within. My beauty regime begins with my personality.”

“I never thought that I would become a staple in the Australian cultural diet. The equivalent of bread or milk, or a fine old Tasmanian Mauve Vein. I think it's because I talk about things that people dare not mention. I don't mean raunchy things or unsavoury things. I call a spade a spade - I discuss things in a realistic manner.”

“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.”

“There's to be a film about my life. I can give this as an exclusive now. Meryl Streep was offered the part but, no, I wanted Kate Winslet. Kylie Minogue is playing me in middle age. In old age, I'm not sure who's going to play me. I haven't got there yet. Perhaps Cate Blanchett. Or Jacki Weaver.”

“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.”

“I Sellotape whole tins of sardines to my face at night, attach two squeezed lemon rinds to my armadillo-skinned elbows, and put cucumber on my eyes. By the time I'm finished, I look like a fruit salad with added fish. In the morning, the pillow is pretty much a write-off.”

“People only watch my shows for me, and those shows have remained evergreen long after the guests are forgotten.”