Hello, possums….

The familiarity of my greeting is not just because I’m Down Under, writing this in Sydney; but also because last night I saw Dame Edna being Back with A Vengeance in her home country (if not her home city, which of course is Melbourne). I have been seeing Barry Humphries’s now-legendary Dame, I now realise, for some 28 years, ever since I first saw her at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1979 (in a show called A Night with Dame Edna). I have since variously seen her in shows at Drury Lane (An Evening’s Intercourse with Barry Humphries, 1982, and Back with A Vengeance, Dame Edna’s Second Coming, in 1989), the Strand (Back with a Vengeance, 1987) and the Theatre Royal, Haymarket (Edna – the Spectacle, in 1998); as well as on Broadway (Booth Theatre in 1999).

I have seen her variously tumble out of a giant Maltesers’ Box to make an entrance in one show, and then exiting by ascending, on a hydraulic lift, over the heads of the audience in an attempt to reach “the paupers” (as she routinely describes those seated in the cheaper seats – “hold on to your seats,” she once cautioned them, “we don’t want a shower of the underprivileged”). I have also, thanks to Edna, seen the inside of Jeffrey Archer’s penthouse flat, between Vauxhall and Lambeth bridges, some years before Archer’s fall-from-grace. (I should explain: when Edna came back to the West End for the 1998 Haymarket run, Archer had a producing interest in the show and opened his flat to Edna to host a press conference in. The chance to see inside this fabled residence was one sure way of getting us to attend. And yes, the views are spectacular.)

Seeing her again last night in Sydney, however, was something special – here was a homecoming for an international Australian celebrity, albeit one who is entirely manufactured, that at once so gloriously skewers the cult of celebrity yet has become an iconic (and ironic) one in her own right. But even more astonishing is the realisation, in a show that is staged as a celebration of 50 years in showbusiness, that her creator Barry Humphries – now 73 – has been going at it so long: he actually first created Edna as a young actor touring in a production of Twelfth Night with the then-nascent Melbourne Theatre Company, and according to the entry for Humphries on wikipedia, “the first stage sketch featuring Mrs Norm Everage, called ‘Olympic Hostess’, premiered at Melbourne University’s Union Theatre on December 12, 1955”

And here she is, nearly 52 years later, still amongst us: as ageless as she is peerless. Her shows – which she prefers to think of as “sharings” or “conversations between two people, one of whom is a lot more intersting than the other” – are noted for the intimate rapport she establishes with an audience: the put-downs are legendary (looking for the best word to describe what one of the women near the front was wearing last night, she comes up with “affordable”), but she insists, “I don’t pick on people – I empower them”. It’s done with such affection that no one is ever affronted. The celebrities, of course, get their own just desserts – on one of her TV interview shows she asked Roseanne, “Is there anything you’ve ever wished you hadn’t eaten?”, and I recently read an interview with Edna in the Daiy Mail in which she bemoaned the rise of reality TV, and referring to Heather Mills’ recent stint on the American show Dancing with the Stars, she went on to say, “I hope that Sir Paul McCartney finds love in the arms – and legs – of a real woman”.

Last night, Heather Mills also got a mention from Edna’s legendary warm-up artist, Sir Les Patterson, whose vulgarity is rivalled only by Edna’s glamour: “I’m as busy as Heather Mills in an arse-kicking contest,” Sir Les told us, inbetween constant adjustments he makes to his crotch area. Sir Les also had an idea for a reality TV of his own: to have a show set in an all-woman prison for which the public would vote for “which lezzos you want to see locked up together for the night.” Edna, of course, would never stoop so low; though her crinkled face of disdain for the idea of “same sex couples” attending her shows suggested that she’s cut from the same reactionary cloth.

That’s part of the joy and danger of it all: just how far s/he’ll flirt with uncomfortable ideas. Humphries, of course, is licensed to do so by his characters; but for the first time last night, I saw him do something I’ve not seen before: he took a final curtain call as himself. He is playing at the Capitol Theatre – so beautiful, Edna says, that its “a wonder it wasn’t pulled down – it must have been an oversight” – where Billy Elliot will have its Oz premiere in December, to June 9.