More Please: An Autobiography

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I would consider myself a Barry Humphries fan, but realised that I knew very little about him and his many varied talents.

Humphries' character, Sandy Stone, was an elderly Australian man, either single or married with a daughter who died as a child. His status as 'a dissolute, guilt-ridden, self-pitying boozer' was undoubtedly one of the main reasons for the failure of his first marriage and was a contributing factor to the collapse of the second. He did not graduate from university (although he would receive an honorary doctorate almost 50 years later).Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, followed in 1981 by his part as the fake-blind TV-show host Bert Schnick in Shock Treatment, the sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He finally broke through to widespread critical and audience acclaim in Britain with his 1976 London production Housewife, Superstar! He was married to Lizzie Spender, the daughter of British poet Sir Stephen Spender, and had two sons and two daughters.

He talks of his life in Melbourne, and deals very unemotionally with his descent into alcoholism during his stage career. Sir Les was the polar opposite of Dame Edna; she a culturally aspirational Protestant from Melbourne and he a culture-free Roman Catholic from Sydney. In the UK he made two highly successful series of his comedy talk show The Dame Edna Experience for London Weekend Television. In 2003, Humphries voiced the shark Bruce in the Pixar animated film Finding Nemo, using an exaggerated baritone Australian accent. During this period Humphries was living near Bondi and while out walking one day he had a chance meeting with an elderly man who had a high, scratchy voice and a pedantic manner of speech; this encounter inspired the creation of another of Humphries' most enduring characters, Sandy Stone.Her costumes, most of which were created for her by Australian designer Bill Goodwin, routinely incorporated Aussie kitsch icons such as the flag, Australian native animals and flowers, the Sydney Opera House and the boxing kangaroo. He credited his then mentor, Peter O'Shaughnessy, that without his "nurturing and promotion, the character of Edna Everage would have been nipped in the bud after 1956 and never come to flower, while the character of Sandy Stone would never have taken shape as a presence on the stage".