Inside Barry Humphries’ ‘out of control’ years: One of comic genius’s oldest friends opens up about Dame Edna creator’s battle with booze and tablets … and how it nearly killed him in his 30s
- Barry Humphries and historian Ross Fitzgerald were friends
- They sobered up together through Alcoholics Anonymous
- Fitzgerald has spoken of Humphries battle with the bottle
One of Barry Humphries’ oldest friends has revealed the comic genius would have been dead within a year while still in his 30s if he did not give up alcohol and drugs.
Ross Fitzgerald, emeritus professor in history and politics at Griffith University, drank with Humphries in the 1960s and like the creator of Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson became a raging alcoholic.
Humphries, who died of complications from hip replacement surgery on Saturday aged 89, gave up the drink in 1970 after he was badly bashed in a Melbourne pub.
Fitzgerald told broadcaster Chris Smith on TNT Radio he was attending Melbourne’s Monash University when he first encountered Humphries in the nearby Notting Hill Hotel.
The pair became friends but the bottle nearly killed them both.
One of Barry Humphries’ oldest friends has revealed the comic genius would have been dead within a year while still in his 30s if he did not give up alcohol. Ross Fitzgerald, drank with Humphries (above as Dame Edna Everage) in the 1960s and like him became a raging alcoholic
‘We drank together and we got sober together in Alcoholics Anonymous and we were both very, very ill,’ Fitzgerald said.
‘If Barry and I hadn’t stopped drinking and using tablets in 1970 we wouldn’t have made 1971.’
Fitzgerald has also revealed his friend of more than 60 years appeared to have been flirting with a late-found belief in God when he called from his hospital bed in the days before he died.
Humphries spent most of the 1960s living in London and by the end of that decade was a self-described ‘dissolute, guilt-ridden, self-pitying boozer’ hopelessly dependent on alcohol.
Fitzgerald, who included anecdotes about his times carousing with Humphries in his book Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholic’s Journey, said they were both out of control.
‘He wasn’t quite as reckless as me,’ Fitzgerald told Smith. ‘He didn’t try to murder anybody for example and he didn’t steal cars and drive them off bridges like I did.
‘But he courted danger and he got very badly beaten up in a pub in Richmond where he nearly died and he was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital.’
Ross Fitzgerald told radio host Chris Smith he and Humphries got sober together in Alcoholics Anonymous. ‘If Barry and I hadn’t stopped drinking and using tablets in 1970 we wouldn’t have made 1971,’ he said. Humphries is pictured performing in an undated photograph
The two friends were at the end of the line when both were admitted to Delmont private hospital in late 1969.
Delmont’s lead psychiatrist, Dr John Moon, was a great supporter of Alcoholics Anonymous and the night before Humphries and Fitzgerald were discharged they were taken to an AA meeting at Malvern Town Hall.
After the meeting, Fitzgerald asked an ‘old-timer’ called Antique Harry if he had any hope of staying sober long-term and got a gentle, life-saving response.
‘He said, “Son, if you stay close to this movement you’ll be all right,’ Fitzgerald told Smith. ‘And Barry heard that and those words changed both of us.’
‘Barry and I throughout our lives regularly attended – as I still do – AA meetings, not just in Australia but especially in England and America.’
In 1973, Humphries invited Fitzgerald to see what would be his first performance of the lecherous inebriate Les Patterson at Rooty Hill RSL Club in Sydney’s western suburbs.
‘We sat down together and Barry said, “I’ll be back in a minute” and a couple of minutes later this dishevelled fellow came in wearing a crumpled suit,’ Fitzgerald told Smith.
In 1973, Humphries invited friend Ross Fitzgerald to see what would be his first performance of the lecherous inebriate Les Patterson at Rooty Hill RSL Club in Sydney’s western suburbs. Humphries is pictured playing Patterson for a television special in 1980
‘He looked as though he was drunk and said, “G’day, the name’s Les Patterson” and he gave this sort of meandering monologue of “Time waits for no man” and it took me a minute or two to realise it was Barry.
‘Now this was way before he turned Sir Les into a vaudeville character as the Australian ambassador to “the yartz” with a huge penis and dribbling mouth.’
A year later later Humphries introduced Fitzgerald to his future wife, model and actor Lyndal Moor, at an AA meeting in Sydney’s Darlinghurst.
At the time Moor was in a relationship with Humphries’ manager Clyde Packer – son of media magnate Sir Frank and brother of Kerry.
Moor never drank alcohol again. She married Fitzgerald in 1975 and died three years ago.
Asked by Smith if Humphries was philosophical about death near the end, Fitzgerald said his old friend called him shortly before he died.
‘Now bear in mind he was medicated,’ Fitzgerald told Smith. ‘He said, “God doesn’t want us to die Rossy”.
‘I said incredulously, “Do you believe in God now Barry?” And he said, “I’m moving in that direction but I tell you something – he’s not interested in us when we’re dead”.’
Humphries spent most of the 1960s living in London and by the end of that decade was a self-described ‘dissolute, guilt-ridden, self-pitying boozer’ hopelessly dependent on alcohol. He is pictured at the Savoy Grill in London in January 1968
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