Dame Edna Everage star Barry Humphries’ morbid hospital jokes

Barry Humphries held on to his humour right until the very end.

The Dame Edna Everage comic, who died aged 89 on Saturday at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital surrounded by his loved ones, following complications from hip surgery, called the accident that led to his death “the most ridiculous thing” weeks before his passing.

Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald’s Private Sydney celebrity column he described how he took a tumble at home that led to him needing the operation, and said it had left him in “agony”.

“It was the most ridiculous thing, like all domestic incidents are,” he said adding, ”I was reaching for a book, my foot got caught on a rug or something, and down I went.”

Humphries – also renowned for his boozy, foul-mouthed Australian attaché character Sir Les Patterson – gave the interview from a “rehabilitation facility” after his fall, where he was convalescing and undergoing “very painful” sessions with a physiotherapist.

He added about his determination to get back on the road for his fans: ”I have to get back on my feet ... I’m going back on tour later this year. The result of my broken hip means I now have a titanium hip ...you can call me ‘Bionic Bazza’.

”I sit a lot in the show, and there’s a bit of pacing ... I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, but I do have to get on with my physio.”

It’s one of many stories coming out about the actor’s humorous approach to life, including one from a longtime friend of the much-loved performer, author Kathy Lette. She told The Project Australia that during one of her recent visits to the late star, he told a rather morbid joke.

“So the last time I saw him in hospital he was joking about how the Grim Reaper had been walking up and down the hospital corridors at night saying, ‘He didn’t collect me this time.’

“And he joked with the nurses, saying ‘How many did he collect?’ and I said to him, ‘As you’re here they probably died laughing.’ Then he made jokes about what the Grim Reaper was wearing and what a terrible outfit he has, how it was the original hoodie.

" … Being in hospital visiting Barry I almost had to be hospitalised from hilarity,” she joked.

Despite retiring in 2012, Humphries, who was married four times and had four children and 10 grandchildren, was last year back on stage in London with his one-man show Man Behind the Mask.

Humphries also told the Sydney Morning Herald how his medical bill was “bloody enormous”, adding: “I strongly advise not breaking your hip!”

In 1961, while playing the part of undertaker Sowerby, in the West End production of Oliver, Humphries slipped and fell down a cliff during a trip to Cornwall, and broke his arm in the fall down a 50-metre slope onto rocks.

He was later airlifted to the hospital after being strapped to a stretcher dangling from a Naval helicopter.

- Bang Showbiz with additional reporting by NZ Herald