Barry Humphries Unputdownable Podcast

JA:

Hi, this is Jeffrey Archer, and welcome back to Unputdownable, the podcast that celebrates and revels in those works of art and literature that are simply impossible to put down. Thank you for joining me.

As ever, on this podcast, I will be joined by a guest who will be equipped with two recommendations. One will be a book. The other can be any cultural passion of theirs. It just needs to be something that grips them and always leaves you wanting more.

In return, I’ll be offering up two of my own recommendations. My guest today is a man who is much loved in this country for all the happiness he has brought to so many millions of people, and that is an amazing gift.

I’ve heard some say that he’s the most significant comedian to emerge since Charlie Chaplin. He has delighted theatre and TV audiences for well over 50 years with two of his own unforgettable creations – the wicked and wonderful Dame Edna Everage, and the stupid, but not so stupid, Sir Les Patterson. How many awards has he won? How much pleasure has he brought? Of course, I’m talking about Barry Humphries.

How lovely to see you again, Barry. What have you been up to during COVID?

BH:

I’m hoping, Jeffrey, my old friend, that God will give me a bonus couple of years. So, on my final decease, in many years to come, an angel will come and present me with a special voucher and say, you lost a couple of years, you earned it, so we’re going to give you two more.

And I wish I could say I’d achieved much. I mean, in the last few years, though, there’s many things I’d like to have done. And because I’m a stage actor and I’m a sort of well, I’m a comical actor, I miss the laughter and the audience really do miss going on that stage and bringing a bit of a smile to people’s lips, because that’s what makes me happy…

JA:

..and everyone else. And what a ridiculous statement you’ve just made, Barry. You’re one of the most loved people in Britain. Ridiculous statement.

BH:

Yes, I know.

 

JA: But you and Dame Edna, how is she by the way?

 

BH:

In your presence, Jeffrey, I feel that modesty is the watchword. Self effacement. Nothing better than the wireless we’re on. And I should tell our listeners or our auditors that I have no idea what a podcast is. Something to do with pods.

BH:

Are we restricted in our vocabulary?

JA:

Tell me, Barry, how is Dame Edna? Has she had a good COVID or a bad COVID?

BH:

As I came here this morning, I thought to myself, I bet he asks me about Edna. So I’m glad you’ve really fulfilled my prophecy.

Edna, I think, is pretty well and very impatient to get back to Her Possums. Very impatient to get back to them. Because she doesn’t feel she’s being useful. If she isn’t on a stage, or isn’t being particularly disagreeable to some poor woman in the front row.

And she has taken to looking at ladies in the audience and asking them what they think of their clothes. And Edna said quite recently to a very nice woman who’d gone to a bit of trouble, she said, I’m trying to think what word describes you, darling?

How can I describe your dress? And I found the word – affordable. Affordable.

JA:

You’re being wicked.

BH:

And I think we leave Edna at that, don’t you?

JA:

God bless her on behalf of us all. Wish our best wishes.

BH:

We will soon ease ourselves back into the world of intellectual discourse.

JA:

Well, I always think of you, Barry. In the 40 years we’ve known each other, I’ve seen you at a Cambridge dinner party with Nobel Prize winners, heads of colleges, and they have been in awe of you.

So I’ve always looked on you as an intellectual. So I’m fascinated to see which book you’ve chosen and why.

BH:

Well, I have chosen a book called The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth. And I’ll tell you why.

We Australians don’t delve much into our ancestry, for obvious reasons, particularly people in Sydney. The memory of imprisonment and transport to Australia is still too vivid. In Melbourne, however, where I come from, we did not have a convict history.

But nonetheless people came there, those who came and I advise, by the way I should digress by saying that I once said to my mother – quite a formidable woman  – I said if people from Sydney came from convicts, where did we come from?

And my mother thought for a while, and she said – tourists. So, we were all descended from tourists born with cameras strung around their necks, and Hawaiian shirts…

JA:

But this book why have you chosen?

 

BH:

I have a feeling because on my mother’s side of the family, certainly it’s a bit mysterious.

And I’ve always felt that I might come from Central Europe. There is no evidence that I did. It’s, in fact, highly unlikely. But whenever I am I’m in Vienna or in Prague or in Budapest I feel a sense of belonging.

JA:

Oh, really?

BH:

And so the literature of that region is powerful in its influence on me. And the Radetzky March by Joseph Roth is about the decline of the Austro-Hungarian empire. And often books about a disintegrating society are often very powerful.

This is it’s the story of a family, of course, several generations, and the subtext is this terrible crisis in Europe which causes its decay and the rise, of course, of fascism, Nazism, whatever, socialism, communism.

So in many ways, it has this metaphorical power, this book. But it’s a gripping story. It is, I think, one of the greatest books of the 20th century. Joseph Roth himself was born in Austria on the border of Hungary, and so his childhood was spent while the Empire was still hanging together.

I mean, the world of France. Joseph was still intact to some extent, and then he was a witness to what happened, first war and then the subsequent rise of Nazism from which he fled because he was Jewish, he went to Paris, and he was also a very dedicated alcoholic.

So his personal tragedies and the tragedies of his country and of Europe indeed, were all embodied in his nature. And it all emerges in this great book, which I have before me in a new translation. And I couldn’t recommend it to our auditors.

JA:

How wonderful. I’ve chosen, which is not far off your feelings. I’ve chosen a book set in Moscow, where was recommended, and I thought it was my book of the year. It’s called A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amore Towles.

Now, this is a story, I suspect, because you read everything you’ve read, but for the listeners, it’s the story about a man who was a friend of Lenin’s. And Lenin wasn’t sure what to do with this aristocrat when he’d taken over the country, so he banned him to a hotel in Moscow, a Grand Hotel, and said, you will stay there for the rest of your life, and if you come out, I’ll have you shot.

And that’s where the story begins. And what I love about it, Barry, is something Peter Giddy of Hatchards said to me 50 years ago. There are good books, there are fun books, but there are very few original books.

And this book, the story is genuinely original. And it helps that he’s a fine writer and a good storyteller. I wondered if you’d read it.

BH:

I have. I read the book from cover to cover, and again, I must use the word masterpiece.

I think it might be its author’s only masterpiece, though one should never say that about a living writer. But it’s extraordinarily original, gripping, humorous, sympathetic, and, in a sense, tragic, because the central character, the gentleman, the aristocrat, who is obliged, after living the life of a pre revolutionary aristocrat, obliged to live in the attic, in a small attic room in a grand hotel in Moscow.

And he contemplates suicide twice in the book and is deemed, by accidents. By the little girl.

JA:

By a little girl who saves his life.

BH:

And so this, again, is, I think, one of the great books.

And if he never writes another one. He will be acclaimed for this.

JA:

I think I agree with you.

BH:

It’s a very good choice, Jeffrey. And I know that you do read a lot of books and you write a lot of books and you’ve written serious books, too, if I may say so, because your diaries, I think, are amongst the very best things you’ve done.

Your success is so well earned and deserved and so annoying to a minority of people who couldn’t write a letter, who couldn’t write a note to the milkman. Does the milkman exist? And incidentally, I just heard this morning that in Australia, where I come from, listeners or viewers, whatever you are, I just heard that you can’t say window cleaner anymore.

JA:

What do you want to say, Barry?

NH:

You have to say view enhancing technician. A view enhancing technician is a window cleaner.

JA:

Well, I’m glad for that piece of education.

Now, as you know, Barry, we have to move on to one other piece of that loosely used word culture where you can choose anything.

And again, I know it being you. You will have chosen something you consider a masterpiece and you consider unlikely to be equaled because you have that very challenging brain, very demanding brain, and very critical brain. So what have you chosen?

BH:

Well, I’m a high brow. I’m an unashamed artistic snob. And I agree with my late friend John Betjeman that there is art. He used to say, art never lets you down. And art never does let us down.

And in a way, during this period of enforced isolation that we’ve gone through and we continue to some extent to go through, and we may even have to go through for the rest of our lives. We are redeemed by art and those amongst us who can not just create masterpieces, but create minor masterpieces, or who can just quite simply amuse us.

One of my favorite movies is All About Eve. Now, that may come as surprise.

JA:

Why is it?

BH:

Well, All About Eve is a pure entertainment about a subject, an unlikely subject. It’s about a fan played in this great film of the early 1950s by Anne Baxter.

JA:

When she was unknown.

BH:

She was an unknown young actress and a famous actress, Bette Davis. And by the way, I’ve never been sure whether it’s Betty or Bette.

JA:

I’ve always called her Bette. And before you continue, Barry, both of us having loved many actresses, I think she’s among the truly greats.

No one could describe her, no one could describe her as a stunning beauty. When she was on the screen, you couldn’t take your eyes off her.

BH:

That was her gift. In fact, if you look closely at her performances, playing, for example, Elizabeth I, opposite my countryman, Errol Flynn.

And if you watch Errol Flynn or listen carefully, he’s still got a broad Aussie accent. Even when he’s playing Robin Hood.

JA:

I’ve never thought of you two.

BH:

I don’t have any other qualities that Errol Flynn used for such effect.

But if you look at her, she wasn’t really a great actress, but, and certainly no beauty. But as you say, she is watchable. You cannot take your eyes off her performances. And in this film, the part is made for her.

It’s an immensely enjoyable film.

JA:

It’s a cruel part.

BH:

It’s very wordy. It’s not what you would call a cinematic triumph. It’s a stage play, almost really. It takes place in theater, almost in one room.

It’s about the theater. There’s no great scene that sticks in your mind, no great setting. But it has a lot of words and a lot of wit and a lot of irony. And as a classic movie, it perhaps falls down in some areas, but it’s still, I think, a deathless entertainment.

JA:

I loved the fact that here was the ageing Bette Davis at the end of a brilliant career, and here was this young actress, so ambitious that she wanted to outdo her, and you could see the contrast between them.

BH:

And there’s only one character in the film that really seems to look on all of the cast with a jaundiced and experienced eye, and that is the critic. Addison de Witt, played by George Sanders, who at this time was married to Zsa Zsa Gabor, of whom Oscar Levant said, Zsa Zsa does social work amongst the rich. He said, when she went behind the Iron Curtain, she came back wearing it.

BH:

But that’s got nothing to do with the film at all, except that George Sanders is magnificent in the film, and Anne Baxter couldn’t be better. And after she made the film, she met an Australian and unfortunately married him.

If only my former wives could have been dissuaded from marrying me. And she married this guy and ended up in the Outback having a horrible time, and she wrote a book about it. So Anne Baxter disappeared from Hollywood for quite a long time and then came back.

But she was a great actress.

JA:

She was a great actress.

BH:

And in this film, All About Eve, which I can see countless times, I sometimes watch things. Another film that I loved, of course, which I suppose we all admired greatly, was that film The Third Man.

BH:

It’s a masterpiece book.

JA:

Masterpiece. That’s a masterpiece.

BH:

Masterpiece. Because, again, of course, that’s set in Vienna in the kind of territory that I’ve told you an affinity with when we were talking about the Radetzky March.

Incidentally, The Radetzky March is a great tune. Dum dum dum dump dum dump dum dum dump dump dump dump dump dump well, you know, I normally charge when I sing. You got that free. The Radetzky March is by Johann Strauss, but…

JA:

Another Master.

Barry, I’ve chosen because I’ve known over the years your passion for art, I mean, almost unequal when you go into a house to get you into dinner is almost impossible. In fact, they’re on the second course by the time you arrive because you can’t stop looking at other people’s pictures.

BH:

And you remember this  – dinner at your place, Jeffrey, is usually just shepherd’s pie.

JA:

One doesn’t want that.

BH:

I’m never in a hurry to eat that.

JA:

But I came across a picture quite recently that you may have seen. It has an amazing history. It’s a Caravaggio. It has an amazing history called The Taking of Christ. It failed to sell in the London showrooms in 1912 with with an opening price, if you wanted it, of 50 guineas.

No one purchased it. A lady then went backstage, so to speak, and purchased it and gave it – she was a Roman Catholic. She took it to Dublin and gave it to a Jesuit foundation, and there it hung on the wall for all to see.

And if you didn’t get to the National you Barry, the people listening. If you didn’t get to the National Gallery a couple of years ago to see it hanging both here and then later in the National Gallery of Edinburgh, and I had the privilege of seeing both, for me, he’s just such he’s just one of the greats of all time.

And that statement by Sir Kenneth Clark that no one does hands the way he does hands. So you’ve always got to look at a Caravaggio and look at the hands. And I’m told, the expert, Brian Sewell once told me that you could look at a Caravaggio, look at the hands, and tell you whether it was the real thing or not.

And this picture is just truly remarkable. Do you know the picture, Barry?

BH:

I don’t. I’m looking at this laser print of yours, and of course, it is already in this small reproduction, a recognizable masterpiece.

But I would agree about the hands in a Caravaggio. But also, the feet are very revealing because Caravaggio painted the feet, particularly of urchins, very accurately and dirty. He was the first artist not to airbrush his real people.

They had, the feet are really a great giveaway in Caravaggio. But also in this picture, the people in the painting are all looking in slightly different directions, and that is a marvelous trick. Cecil Beaton, when he took his photographs, when he took a group of photographs, usually a royal group, made it all interesting by asking the family to look slightly away and different from other points of view.

And it immediately made it a more interesting picture than a lineup, a straight lineup or a conventional composition. So this shows Caravaggio’s genius. And of course, if you’d been at that auction, you’d have that picture, wouldn’t you?

JA:

You bet.

BH:

Are you thinking of becoming a Jesuit?

JA:

To live with it for 30 years.

BH:

It would need a very large pocket. A very large pocket in your raincoat.

JA:

Now, Barry, I want to end by asking you a personal question.

You began life as an artist, as a painter. In between, you’ve written nonfiction, novels. You performed on the stage. You have claimed on this programme disgracefully that you were a singer of some caliber and that you normally charge large sums.

BH:

Later in the day, though,

JA:

I’m giving you a life back again. Which of those talents would you wish you had in abundance?

BH:

Well, I have so many talents in abundance, Jeffrey. In a way, I wish I had my talents in less abundance than I have.

JA:

Why?

BH:

Because then I could just retire comfortably. But I have them all wrestling to express themselves, impatient. I think a painter, the life of an artist. Sometimes when I step onto the stage and it doesn’t I mean, we all have all kinds of things going on in our personal lives.

Mostly agreeable, sometimes very disagreeable. And we have to go on with our jobs, whether we speak in the house, whether we make a broadcast, whether we have to go on stage and be funny. Being funny is not so easy.

And only when I go onto that stage do I feel alone. I think I’m free of the phone – a constant interrupter of thought and deed. My family obligations mean nothing when I’m standing on the stage heavily disguised as someone else.

I very rarely as a matter of fact, except at the behest of friends like you do anything as me. Such is your power of persuasion, Jeffrey. But I say to myself alone at last and I think my epitaph will be, my tombstone will say here lies Barry Humphries, old fashioned comedian alone at last.

And I wrote a song which I will sing to you later in the day called Alone at Last.

JA:

I think you should honor us with it now, Barry.

BH:

No. It’s very affecting and it’s going to be in my show next year. And this gives me a brief opportunity to mention that from May next year I’m touring the United Kingdom in small beautiful theaters.

Norwich, Windsor, Guilford, Bath, all over the…

JA:

Oh, they’re lovely – Theatre Royal in Bath.

BH:

And doing a show about myself. And at the end of it I sing, I step to the piano and look, there won’t be a dry eye in the house.

People say, you know, he’s rather a nice chap after all. Thank God I didn’t have that life. And the show is called The Man Behind the Mask and I welcome this opportunity to mention it on your podcast.

I know it’ll be cut.

JA:

No, it will not.

BH:

This will be heavily edited, what you’re listening to, ladies and gentlemen. So thank you very much for putting me at my ease.

JA:

And thank you. Barry, for being on the show.

So, a special thank you to my guest and old friend, Barry Humphries. And when I say old. We’re both octogenarians, but thank you for joining me on this episode. Make sure you don’t miss out on any future episodes, so please hit, follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Join me next time when I’ll have another special guest who will bring their own stimulating thoughts and special recommendations.

This is the boring bit done through compulsion. Please remember that I am a writer and my new book, Over My Dead Body, is now out in hardback eBook and audiobook.

I hope you enjoy it.

Until the next time. Goodbye.