Dame Edna Announces Farewell Tour

Barry Humphries says he's 'beginning to feel a bit senior'
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 19, 2012 5:45 PM CDT
Dame Edna Announces Farewell Tour
Dame Edna Everage, aka Barry Humphries, attends a Royal Wedding International Media Event in London West End at Lancaster House on April 26, 2011, in London, England.   (Getty Images)

Beloved comic genius Barry Humphries says he's hanging up Dame Edna's frock and planning a farewell tour, the Daily Telegraph reports. "It's the best aerobics you could do, leaping around on stage, but it's grueling when there are other things to do," says Humphries. "The fact of the matter is that I'm beginning to feel a bit senior." The purple-haired housewife's final tour, Eat Pray Laugh!, will stop at venues in Australia and New Zealand this summer.

Humphries invented the outrageous Australian with wild glasses and an outsized ego in 1955, and rode her fame into a British talk show in the late 1980s. Now, says Humphries, "Edna will crop up on television I guess but not in a live show." Laments for Edna's coming demise are cropping up online, including one from Mark Lawson in the Guardian quoting another Humphries character who wants you "to put your hands together warmly across her opening and give her the clap she so richly deserves." (More Dame Edna stories.)

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