What a career Barry Humphries had! An avant-garde artist and actor in Fifties Australia, then part of the satire boom in Sixties London and after that best known as the manager of housewife gigastar Dame Edna Everage.
One achievement that may get overlooked in the tributes is that in 1960 he was in the cast of the original production of Oliver! and then went to Broadway with the show. He played Mr Sowerberry the undertaker, and Lionel Bart liked him so much that he wrote this song for him.
If you don't know it, that may be because it's not in Carol Reed's film or on the Broadway cast album.
Humphries was also Ron Moody's understudy in that original production and was later to play Fagin himself in revivals of the show.
I've also learnt a pleasing piece of trivia today. Humphries' widow (his fourth wife - they were married for 33 years) is the actress Elizabeth Spender. She appeared in Terry Gilliam's Brazil and is the daughter of the poet Stephen Spender.
She once suggested that the fiercely intellectual Humphries had married her for her books.
That line from Elizabeth Spender is comedy gold. Thanks.
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