Barry Humphries, the Australian satirist and comedian whose skewering of middle class values made him a global star, has died aged 89.
Best known for characters such as the waspish Dame Edna Everage, boozy vulgarian Sir Les Patterson and the melancholic pensioner Sandy Stone, Humphries’ reputation became tarnished in recent years, thanks in part to his increasing conservatism and his notorious description of gender reassignment surgery as ‘self-mutilation’.
