The Alphabet Club - Saturday detention for H.....

H

is for 

Hello Possums

the famous catch cry of that most gracious of Australian Dames....

Dame Edna Everidge

If you do not know who I am talking about, you can visit her website here and/or read the Wikipedia entry below:

Dame Edna Everage is a character created and performed by Australian comedian Barry Humphries, famous 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". Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Dame Edna became increasingly known and popular in North America after multiple stage and television appearances.

Edna describes her chat-shows as "an intimate conversation between two friends, one of whom is a lot more interesting than the other". The character has been used to satirise the cult of celebrity, class snobbery, and prudishness and is often used by Humphries to poke fun at the political leaders and fashions of the times. Her larger-than-life persona and scathing but dead-on commentary on society and celebrity, as well as her habit of treating celebrities like ordinary people (on her TV shows) and ordinary people like celebrities (in her stage shows) have become signatures.^[1]

Although Humphries freely states that Edna is a character he plays, Edna refers to Humphries as her "entrepreneur" or manager. Humphries and his staff of assistants and writers only refer to Edna as "she" and "her", never mixing the character with Humphries himself. It is this precision and richness of identity which gives Dame Edna her unique force as a character.^[2]

In March 2012, Humphries announced that the character would be retired at the end of the current stage tour;^[3] however, as of 2013 he has decided to bring her back.

(see what I am doing here - I forgot to include her in my E post as I was so smitten with Errol Flynn, so I have snuck her in here! lol!)

For those of you who do not know what I am talking about:

What is the Alphabet Club, I hear you ask?  Well, it is the brainchild of Chiara from The Grey Tail and Jo from Serendipitous Stitching and is loosely based on the premise of the movie "The Breakfast Club" - you can see the button for The Alphabet Club on my right sidebar.

On the first Saturday of each month, members of the club have "detention" and have to post about something that will enlighten others about their culture (as blogland is so diverse).  Of course, there should be something stitchy in there, if possible. Each month will be a different letter of the alphabet - hence the club's name - and, of course, we started with "A" and now we are up to "H"

So, that is H for me, this month, if you want to see what the other detainees have been up to, please check them out here.