My Life As Me : A Memoir - Barry Humphries

My Life As Me

A Memoir

By: Barry Humphries

Paperback | 3 May 2004 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

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Described by Barry Humphries as a 'cubist self-portrait', My Life as Me revisits his childhood, his adolescence, his complicated relationship with Australia, and his adventures of the heart and of the stage. In this heady memoir, his various distractions - painting, travel, collecting, marriage and divorce - are explored, if not explained.

A master of comic writing, Barry tells us of his privileged youth in suburban Melbourne and, with a disarming candour that he already regrets, describes his hectic artistic and romantic career in Australia, England and America. There are also hilarious glimpses of his life as the creator of Sir Les Patterson, Sandy Stone, Dame Edna Everage - and himself.

About the Author

Barry Humphries, sometimes known as Dame Edna Everage, is the author of several books and many plays. More Please, his first autobiographical work, won the J.R. Ackerley Prize in 1993 and was described by Auberon Waugh as 'an extraordinary cocktail of a book . . . a literary masterpiece', and as 'marvellously funny' by Sir Alec Guinness. Since his success on the Broadway stage in 1999, Barry Humphries has been in perpetual motion performing throughout the United States.

Industry Reviews
Barry Humphries's autobiography, More Please, was highly praised. This follow-up does not pick up where its predecessor left off but is what he calls a 'parallel memoir' adding events, stories and anecdotes that Humphries did not put in the first book. He reveals himself to be a complex man, a bibliophile and art collector who has travelled widely, the friend of famous poets, artists and writers. The photographs in this volume show him with a large cast of celebrities from the satirists of the Establishment Club to John Betjeman and Salvador Dali. He refers briefly to the unhappy periods in his personal life but gives detailed and hilarious stories of his stage appearances as Les Patterson, Sandy Stone and the great Dame herself. The passages relating his encounters with the great and famous are interesting and often funny but his descriptions of family life in Melbourne are a triumph. He was indulged by his parents but impatient and embarrassed by their provincial and respectable ways. Dame Edna first made her appearance on the stage when Humphries was at university and the sketch where she welcomed guests to Australia into her lovely home was screened as part of the inaugural programme for Australian television. This success baffled Humphries' parents, who deplored what they saw as their eldest son's failures and excesses. Louisa Humphries was an affectionate parent but she had strong opinions about everything from alcohol to foreigners and constantly warned her children not to draw attention to themselves. Luckily for us her son ignored her. (Kirkus UK)

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