Recalling Barry Humphries, Dame Edna and dangling modifiers

That last reference was not a nod to Humphries' controversial comments about the trans-sexual community (more on that in a bit).

No, rather, a dangling modifier is a little-known grammatical term that has haunted me for the last three decades.

In 1989, in my first year at university - the Mitchell College of Advanced Education, soon to become Charles Sturt University in Bathurst - we were given an assignment to write the obituary of someone famous.

I chose Humphries. He would make good copy. His characters were larger-than-life. I felt like I knew him.

Dame Edna and Sir Les and Sandy Stone had all been staples in our household. Dame Edna was someone both my mother and father would laugh at, probably on one of Humphries' regular TV specials or else turning up on Parkinson or some royal gala or another.

We also had a few of his books. The Barry Humphries' Treasury of Australian Kitsch was a favourite. Just pages of photographs of random items - a cement koala letterbox here; a Sydney Opera House ashtray there. It was fascinating but also a little unsettling because this was people's stuff we were laughing at.

So, I dutifully typed out my obituary on Humphries - in the common computer lab on campus - and printed it out on that old-school perforated paper. I've still got the assignment (note to self: Must. Declutter).

Unlike real life in which Humphries died in hospital in Sydney after surgery at the age of 89, in my writing assignment I had him passing away in his sleep in his Paris apartment at the tender age of 55. (This was 1989 remember.)

I thought I'd done pretty well with florid lines like this one: "With the 55-year-old's death falls a battalion of lurid, glittering and drab, larger-than-life figures, instruments he used to reflect the crassness of bourgeois Australia". Yes. It was a lot.

But, to my eternal embarrassment, my lecturer quoted a couple of lines from the essay to the entire class to explain the concept of a dangling modifier. He also said I was "some writer, hey?" as I sunk deeper into my seat.

"Born on February 17, 1934, in Melbourne, Humphries' birthplace, epitomised in the suburban kitsch of Monee Ponds, became the creative well from which he drew his alter egos". Yes, there was the dangling modifier. Humphries' birthplace was not born in 1934, Humphries was! Basically the subject of the sentence needed to match with the opening description. And I've never, ever forgotten that lesson. (Feel free to email me examples of where I have though. No, please.)

So, to Humphries. He got into trouble by making throw-away comments a few years back saying trans-sexualism was a fad and self-mutilation. Humphries had the right to his beliefs, just as others had the right to disagree with him. We did not need to lose our collective mind or write Humphries out of the comedic history of Australia.

Even in my 1989 piece, Humphries' schtick was up for debate. One critic called him a "man of genius"; another someone who "turns the full force of his contempt upon the losers and defenceless in society".

Humphries, himself, said his role was to "provide a drop of vinegar when things get too sweet". He certainly helped to shake up boring, white-bread, post-war Australia and gave the country's cultural landscape a kick up the arse, as Sir Les might say. He was necessary.

I met him once, in a press pack in Melbourne in 2006, for the launch of Ednafest, a celebration of Dame Edna's 50 years on the stage and her journey from Moonee Ponds housewife to international megastar.

Those other foxy morons of the suburbs, Kath and Kim, were there.

''It's such a suspicious occasion,'' Kath said at the time. LOL.

One line from that gathering stood out for me as Dame Edna reminisced about being plain old Edna standing at the kitchen sink in Moonee Ponds "wrist-deep in greywater and peas and mutton fat", looking through the "chipped aluminium venetian blinds at the backyard with a rusty Hills Hoist and broken kiddies' toys", thinking is this all there is?

Humphries was funny because he was bitingly accurate and pointed. It's a cliche, but he did hold a mirror up to ourselves. Did he distort the picture? Well, everyone has their own perspective and plenty of housewives might have been perfectly happy living in the suburbs and raising a family, rusty Hills Hoist and all.

And as for my assignment? I got 5.2 out of 8, which seems now very specific for a humanities work.

"Quite a good article," my lecturer wrote.

"You paint him in quite rich colours."

Yes. Humphries, whatever else, definitely brought some technicolour to the beige.