Barry Humphries

Sex is the most beautiful thing that can take place between a happily married man and his secretary. ”

One of the strangest experiences one can have is to sleep on stage, as I once did in Sydney when I'd lost the key to my flat. I had to stay at night in a bed, which conveniently was on stage because my character Sandy Stone did his monologue from a bed. To wake up looking at a shadowy auditorium is a very peculiar feeling. ”

When people laugh at me, they are not laughing in the way that they normally would at a comedian. They are laughing with relief, because the truth has been spoken, and political correctness has not strangled this particular gigastar. ”

Political correctness means nothing to me. Nothing. It's the new Puritanism, darling. Preventing us from expressing ourselves. ”

I guess you could say I'm an addict - an adrenalin addict - I get great excitement and stimulation from doing stuff in public, even though I'm nervous and I have very bad stage fright. ”

I really feel sorry for kids who aren't interested in history - recent history, either, because it is this that made us what we are. ”

I think of myself as an actor. The duty of an actor is to be able to impersonate anything - a child, an old man, a tree, a chair, a woman. ”

I hate it when theater people go on about professionalism - aren't they boring? I try to be as unprofessional as possible. And I'm a little bit politically incorrect. ”

My parents were very pleased that I was in the army. The fact that I hated it somehow pleased them even more. ”

I have got to the point in my life when a lot of people I know have died or are dying, so I realise that somewhere outside the pearly gates is a queue, shuffling nearer and nearer to the celestial box office. ”