Barry Humphries

Dame Edna hasbeen around as long as I can remember, she came into being the year I was born, and I can't remember a time when she wasn't on the TV entertaining us all. My parents had emigrated (for a while only) to Melbourne so she was popular viewing in our house ... so I couldn't miss the chance to see her farewell tour! Heck, I'd even been to the cinema as a youth to see "Barry Humphries Holds His Own"!

The first half of the show was mostly Sir Les Patterson; disgusting and inappropriate as always. Backed by a pianist and four youg and fit dancers (five if you include the acrobat!) he sang and joked his way through material that was familiar, in style if not content, with a small on-stage cookery demonstration and some audience participation (and humiliation of course) . This gave way to one of the other characters, Sandy Stone, a sad and beautifully written monologue that ended the first act.

Act 2 was basically all Dame Edna at her very best - though I think she may have regretted the choice of audience members to bring on stage the night I saw it ;-) What can I say, this was Dame Edna all over, funny, cutting, full of energy and wildly non-PC. It ended with the traditional threowing of the gladioli (during which we had permission to photograph the stage) and a final, and extrememly touching goodbye (and tribute to the Bristol Hippodrome) from Barry Humphries himself.

I'm glad I went, glad I saw these iconic characters live and before they are silenced forever ... glad, if I'm honest, to have one more evening of laughing like we used to when we were less frightened of offending and people were less likely to take offence ... those days are gone but one quick glance back was much appreciated by me and by the rest of the audience ...

UPDATE: Barry Humphries won the Best Solo Performance Award at the Whatsonstage Awards 2014 for this show/tour.