In 2000 Humphries took his Dame Edna: The Royal Tour show to North America winning the inaugural Special Tony Award for a Live Theatrical Event in 2000 and won two National Broadway Theatre Awards for "Best Play" and for "Best Actor" in 2001. These highly popular programmes have since been repeated worldwide and the special A Night on Mount Edna won Humphries the Golden Rose of Montreux in 1991. He credited his then mentor, Peter O'Shaughnessy, that without his "nurturing and promotion, the character of Edna Everage would have been nipped in the bud after 1956 and never come to flower, while the character of Sandy Stone would never have taken shape as a presence on the stage". R. Ackerley Prize in 1993 and was described by Auberon Waugh as 'an extraordinary cocktail of a book . You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

Humphries' character, Sandy Stone, was an elderly Australian man, either single or married with a daughter who died as a child. Other exhibits the group mounted include "Creche Bang", a pram covered in meat and "Eye and Spoon Race", a spoon with a sheep's eye.

Granted a coat of arms by the College of Arms with a shield bearing crossed gladioli and the Sydney Opera House, supported by a shark and a possum both wearing butterfly glasses, along with other symbolism containing a funnel-web spider and a blowfly. Humphries said in 2016 that "slowly the character has deepened, so I begin to understand and appreciate him, and finally feel myself turning into him". His brother Christopher worked as an architect, his brother Michael (1946–2020) was a teacher and historian, and his sister Barbara is also a former schoolteacher. The comments prompted the Barry Award, a comedy festival award in Melbourne named after the comedian, to be renamed the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award the next year.

I also found that entertaining people gave me a great feeling of release, making people laugh was a very good way of befriending them. Humphries later summed up his negative reception by saying: "When The New York Times tells you to close, you close. Samuel Beckett's Reception in Australia and New Zealand" Archived 17 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine, by Russell Smith and Chris Ackerley, in The International Reception of Samuel Beckett, Matthew Feldman and Mark Dixon eds.As the character evolved, Edna's unseen family became an integral part of the satire, particularly the travails of her disabled husband Norm, who had an almost lifelong onslaught of an unspecified prostate ailment. Humphries' forte was always his one-man satirical stage revues, in which he appeared as Edna Everage and other character creations, most commonly Les Patterson and Sandy Stone. In September 1957, Humphries appeared as Estragon in Waiting for Godot, in Australia's first production of the Samuel Beckett play at the Arrow Theatre in Melbourne directed by Peter O'Shaughnessy who played Vladimir.

Some of the more arcane and rare items in this collection include the telephone book of Oscar Wilde, Memoirs of a Public Baby by Philip O'Connor, an autographed copy of Humdrum by Harold Acton, the complete works of Wilfred Childe and several volumes of the pre-war surrealist poetry of Herbert Read.As Humphries aged, he no longer required makeup for the part, and played Sandy in his own dressing gown. His status as 'a dissolute, guilt-ridden, self-pitying boozer' was undoubtedly one of the main reasons for the failure of his first marriage and was a contributing factor to the collapse of the second. Their friendship was, in part, based around numerous shared interests, including Victorian architecture, Cornwall and the music hall. In March 2008, Humphries joined the judging panel on the BBC talent show I'd Do Anything to find an unknown lead to play the part of Nancy in a West End revival of the musical Oliver! Humphries spent two years studying at the University of Melbourne, where he studied law, philosophy and fine arts.

A key event took place when he was nine – his mother gave all his books to the Salvation Army, cheerfully explaining: "But you've read them, Barry. In 2018, Humphries was criticised on social media for making comments considered by some to be transphobic. Her daughter Valmai and her gay-hairdresser son Kenny became intrinsic elements of the act, as did her long-suffering best friend and New Zealand bridesmaid, Madge Allsop. In December 1987, Humphries appeared on the BBC Radio 4 program Today in a recorded interview in which he simultaneously played the characters of both Dame Edna and Sir Les.We honour Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' continuous connection to Country, waters, skies and communities.