Sparkling wit: Dame Edna Everage announces her farewell tour at Her Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne yesterday. Credit:Penny Stephens The line that separates Edna and her creator, Barry Humphries, has always been closely patrolled, but in this twilight moment the barrier seems a little more porous than usual. Between interviews yesterday it was possible to catch glimpses of the 78-year-old man behind the housewife superstar, the long day ahead of media commitments appearing to weigh almost as heavily on their collective shoulders as did Edna's dazzlingly sequined dress (which weighs about 20 kilos, according to an assistant). Humphries has in fact announced he is retiring not just Edna but his full retinue of characters — Sir Les Patterson and Sandy Stone among them. Edna, and perhaps some of the others, may yet crop up on TV occasionally, but the Eat, Pray, Laugh theatre tour that kicks off in Canberra in June is, he insists, his last. And that's ''last'' as in final, not ''last'' as in Whispering Jack. ''Because it's my last show, I can't say, 'I've got this idea, I'll use it in the next show'. It all has to come into this one,'' says Edna, who could for the moment just as easily be speaking for Humphries. Admitting it could ''go on for hours and hours'', Edna promises her producer, Paul Dainty, ''will pay for your babysitter if she goes into overtime''.

Does he know this yet? ''No. He's learning it for the very first time.'' Being Dame Edna Everage is not, she insists, without its burdens. ''To be the most loved woman — I won't say in the world — but to be as adored as I am is a responsibility. I wear it lightly, but I mustn't abuse it. I have to check self-abuse very carefully and rigorously.'' Of course, Edna wasn't born into greatness; she slowly thrust it upon herself. In the early days, she recalls, ''I was mousy, timid, extremely reticent and above all vulnerable ... Then I grew in confidence and authority. I felt I had something to tell the audience, though I didn't know what it was. So I told them about themselves. ''I described my own home and people listened and they said, 'We know that house, we know that Laminex, we know that lava lamp, we know that picture on the wall, the Chinese girl with the tinted green face. We've got that'. And slowly they began to feel that where they lived was not such a boring place after all because I had enshrined it in a work of art.'' As a description of Humphries' achievement with Edna, that's hard to top. Her surname is a play on ''average'' (her late husband was Norm, for ''normal''). At first her description of life in Moonee Ponds was both squirmingly and comfortingly familiar; later, as the humble housewife became first a superstar, then a megastar and finally a gigastar, she maintained her connection with the ''little people'' by involving them directly in her shows. Interaction with her possums has been one of the defining facets of Edna's schtick, and she's not about to let it go. ''I involve the audience because they're there,'' she says.

''For centuries, really, audiences, have sat out there and not felt part of it. They've felt separate. 'That is the show, we are the audience.' I mix it: they are the show, I am the audience. I'm going to get them all to come onto the stage and I'll just sit out there on my own and watch them.'' This farewell tour will, Edna says, be ''a meditation on loss, gender and ethnicity''. She promises a little something ''for our indigenous people. I'll be opening the show saying thank you to the original owners of this theatre — the firm of J.C. Williamson.'' Clearly, treading delicately is something best left to others. And with the roar of F1 engines still buzzing in her ears Edna is keen to share her thoughts on the Grand Prix, in language with which Barry Humphries, scourge of developers in Camberwell, might appreciate. ''I deplore some things I find in Melbourne,'' she rails. ''The National Trust is not supported by any government money at all, whereas sport gets everything. Think of the money that's squandered on sport and the vulgarity of squirting each other with expensive champagne when the alcoholics of the world are starving.'' Should we give it back to Adelaide?

''I think so. But they've got tourist things of their own,'' she says. ''They've got Snowtown.'' Loading Barry Humphries Eat, Pray, Laugh is at Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne July 19-22. Tickets on sale from March 30 through ticketek.com.au or 132 849. Karl Quinn is on Twitter: @karlkwin