John Barry Humphries was an Australian comedian, satirist, dadaist, artist, author and character actor, best known for his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife and "gigastar", and Sir Les Patterson, Australia's foul-mouthed cultural attaché to the Court of St. James's. He was a film producer and script writer, a star of London's West End musical theatre, an award-winning writer and an accomplished landscape painter.