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Dame Edna Everage is a character created and performed by Australian comedian Barry Humphries, known for her lilac-coloured or "wisteria hue" hair and cat eye glasses or "face furniture", her favourite flower, the gladiolus ("gladdies") and her boisterous greeting: "Hello, Possums!" As Dame Edna, Humphries has written several books including an autobiography, My Gorgeous Life, appeared in several films and hosted several television shows (on which Humphries has also appeared as himself and other alter-egos). Humphries has regularly updated Edna, originally a drab Melbourne housewife satirising Australian suburbia; then he caused the Edna character to adopt an increasingly outlandish wardrobe after performances in London in the 1960s through which his Edna character grew in stature and popularity. Following film appearances and an elevation to damehood in the 1970s, the character evolved to "Housewife and Superstar", then "Megastar" and finally "Gigastar".

Barry Humphries was invited to join the fledgling Union Theatre Repertory Company early in 1955 and toured Victorian country towns performing Twelfth Night, directed by Ray Lawler. On tour, Humphries invented Edna gradually as part of the entertainment for the actors during commutes between country towns. Humphries gradually developed a falsetto impersonation of a Melbourne housewife, imitating the Country Women's Association representatives who welcomed the troupe in each town. At Lawler's suggestion, Mrs Everage (later named Edna after Humphries' nanny) made her first appearance in a Melbourne University's UTRC revue at the end of 1955, as the city prepared for the 1956 Olympic Games. The sketch involved a houseproud "average housewife" offering her Moonee Ponds home as an Olympic billet, spruiking her home as possessing "burgundy wall-to-wall carpets, lamington cakes and reindeers frosted on glass dining-room doors". At this time the character was billed as "Mrs Norm Everage" (Humphries describing this name as "Everage as in 'average', husband Norm as in 'normal'") and had none of the characteristic flamboyant wardrobe of later years. His mother (whom the interviewer William Cook said "sounds like a frightful snob") was a major inspiration for Edna, although he denied it when she was alive to protect her feelings. Her first monologue in 1955 was about her "lovely home", reflecting young Barry's own site visits accompanying his builder father. Originally she was a "mousy" character and too quiet to please the raucous crowd at The Establishment club in London. According to one author, Edna came into her own during the 1980s when the policies of Thatcherism--and what he described as the "vindictive style of the times"--allowed Dame Edna to sharpen her observations accordingly. Lahr wrote that Edna took Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's "seemingly hypocritical motto" of "caring and compassion" for others and turned it on its head, Edna became the voice of Humphries' outrage. CANNOTANSWER

Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?

The sketch involved a houseproud "average housewife" offering her Moonee Ponds home as an Olympic billet,