Dinner for Dame Edna

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When she married Vincent Price, the actress Coral Browne went to live in Hollywood. On one occasion she and Vincent were invited to a party given by Zsa Zsa Gabor for Barry Humphries…

The trouble was, the invitation said to meet Dame Edna of London, but Zsa Zsa forgot to introduce him to anybody. He didn’t know anyone but us. She’d said ‘Come to dinner’ – and she’d invited 300 people. The wine was unbelievable. I said at the bar ‘I’ll have a glass of champagne.’ And the waiter said ‘This is champagne – from West Germany.’ It was maple syrup and old floor moppings and God knows what. Dinner was served at 11.15pm. It was absolutely superb – everyone had half a duck – but not at around 11.15 at night. Then the cheesecake arrived. I hadn’t got enough muscle-power to lift it. It must have come from West Germany too, from the concrete factory.


From Calman at the Movies, The Bodley Head (1990)

Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer on VisualHunt.com / CC BY-SA