CHEERS AND FAREWELL

Fancy a drink...? Well, as a post-script to yesterday's blog about Flanders and Swann, here's the song mentioned by Sheila in her comment...

"Have Some Madiera, M'Dear..."

And on the subject of comedy, we bid a fond and reluctant farewell to actress Emily Perry who died this week at the age of 100 and who, when she was 80 years old, found a curious form of stardom without ever speaking a word as the long-suffering, stony-faced Madge Allsop, former bridesmaid and constant travelling-companion to housewife superstar, Dame Edna Everidge.

The Times reported:

In more than 20 years of taking venomous insults, Madge never uttered a word.

When Perry auditioned for the role of Madge she was asked to stand still and say nothing. “Barry said lots of unkind things about me and tried to make me laugh,” she said. She did not flinch, however, and sailed through the audition.

In his second volume of memoirs, My Life as Me, Humphries wrote: “Miss Perry had the rare gift of being able to do nothing in the face of overwhelming provocation.”

Read Emily Perry's obituary in The Independent.

Let's hope someone in the Hereafter finally gives Madge the badge she worked so hard to earn: SUPERFOIL!