Trivia

On 24 October 2006 Australia Post together with The Perth Mint issued a 50 cent legal tender coin with full-colour portrait of Dame Edna. Coin is mounted in special envelope with 2 postage stamps (featuring Barry Humphries as both Dame Edna and himself) cancelled at Moonee Ponds (the suburb where Edna says she comes from). An Australian $1 silver one ounce coin portraying Dame Edna was issued to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Barry Humphries as Dame Edna.

Was good friends with Joan Rivers.

Barry Humphries was one of the hosts at "The Royal Pop Concert" in Buckingham Palace, London on June, 4th, 2002. He appeared as Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson and had the great honor to announce Queen Elizabeth II.

He was awarded the C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2007 Queen Elizabeth's Birthday Honors List for his services to entertainment.

Created the role of Mr Sowerberry in the original West End production of Lionel Bart's musical "Oliver!".

In 2018, Humphries faced backlash for making comments considered to be transphobic. The comments included referring to gender affirmation surgery as "self-mutilation," and transgender identity as a whole, as a "fashion-how many different kinds of lavatory can you have?" The comments prompted the Barry Award, a comedy festival award in Melbourne named after the comedian, to be renamed the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award the next year.

In 2000, received a Special Tony Award for a Live Theatrical Presentation, for his one-person show titled "Dame Edna: The Royal Tour."

He was awarded the AO (Officer of the Order of Australia) in the 1982 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to Theatre.

Honorary Doctorate of Griffith University (Australia) in 1994

Pictured on a set of five 50¢ Australian postage stamps in the Australian Legends series, issued 20 January 2006. One stamp has a photograph of Humphries without makeup. The other stamps have a photo of his alter ego "Edna Everage", showing how the character has changed through the years.

His fourth wife, Elizabeth Spender, is the daughter of the poet Sir Stephen Spender.

He was awarded the Australian National Medal in December 1979.

He was awarded the Australian Centenary Medal in the 2001 Queen's New Years Honours List for his services to Australian society through acting and writing.

He admits that he is ashamed of Les Patterson Saves the World (1987).

Humphries has Asperger's Syndrome.

In February 2023, he required hip surgery after he tripped on a rug at home. Following the operation, during which he was given a titanium hip, Humphries joked he could now be called "Bionic Bazza".

Attended the wedding of media mogul Rupert Murdoch to former model Jerry Hall in 2016.

He himself is a landscape painter and his pictures are in private and public collections both in his homeland and abroad. Humphries has also been the subject of numerous portraits by artist friends, including Clifton Pugh (1958, National Portrait Gallery) and John Brack (in the character of Edna Everage, 1969, Art Gallery of New South Wales).

He is a prominent art collector who has, as a result of his three divorces, bought many of his favourite paintings four times.

Humphries has spent much of his life immersed in music, literature and the arts. A self-proclaimed 'bibliomaniac', his house in West Hampstead, London supposedly contains some 25,000 books, many of them first editions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of the more arcane and rare items in this collection include the telephone book of Oscar Wilde, Memoirs of a Public Baby by Philip O'Connor, an autographed copy of Humdrum by Harold Acton, the complete works of Wilfred Childe and several volumes of the pre-war surrealist poetry of Herbert Read.

He at one time had the largest private collection of the paintings of Charles Conder in the world.

Cultural historian Tony Moore, author of The Barry McKenzie Movies, writes of Humphries' personal politics thus: "A conservative contrarian while many in his generation were moving left, Humphries nevertheless retained a bohemian delight in transgression that makes him a radical".

He is a great lover of the Flemish symbolist painter Jan Frans De Boever, relishing his role as 'President for Life' of the De Boever Society.

Humphries appears in the 2013 documentary Chalky about his longtime friend and colleague Michael White, who produced many of Humphries' first Dame Edna shows in the UK.

He is a lover of avant-garde music, and a patron of, among others, French composer Jean-Michel Damase and the Melba Foundation in Australia.

Humphries once declared that his character Les Patterson "offended Australians, because they found his behaviour a little too accurate".

Humphries first introduced his most iconic character as 'Mrs Norm Everage' in a 1955 stage show. That name eventually changed to to 'Aunt Edna' and then to 'Dame', a title conferred by then Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam in the film The Adventures of Barry McKenzie.

Another popular Humphries character was the dressing-gown wearing Sandy Stone, who lived a humdrum life and "told very dull stories in a very dull voice".

5Has a character called Sir Les Patterson.