Goodbye Possums! Dame Edna Quits The Stage

Dame Edna Everage, the purple-rinsed Melbourne housewife, is hanging up her frocks and retiring from the stage after more than half a century in showbusiness.

Currently on a farewell tour in Australia, the 78-year-old - famous for her put-downs and inflated ego - has decided to take her final bow.

"I can't go on doing it," Dame Edna told a news conference before her show in Sydney.

"I have other activities, I have my books, my charities which are growing.

"The Prostrate Olympics are coming up."

Dame Edna's creator, Barry Humphries, first performed the character in 1955.

She has appeared on stage during theatrical tours of Europe, the US and the Middle East.

Humphries won a special Tony Award for his 2000 Broadway offering Dame Edna, The Royal Tour and a Tony nomination in 2004 for Back With A Vengeance.

With her outrageous outfits and oversized horn-rimmed glasses, Dame Edna became a cult figure - and one of Australia's most successful entertainment exports.

Appearing regularly on television around the globe Humphries won the Golden Rose of Montreux in 1991. She hosted a number of successful TV shows in the UK.

Dame Edna is one of a number of Humphries' characters who will no longer perform. He will also retire the likes of obnoxious, inebriated cultural attache, Sir Les Patterson.

In Dame Edna's final show, which has just got under way in Australia, Dame Edna promises to "empower" audiences as she meditates on the big issues of gender, ethnicity and climate change.

She has never been afraid to shock either, being particularly cutting about Australia's first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, who is struggling in the polls.

Asked by a journalist what advice she had for the PM, Dame Edna said: "Retirement, retirement darling, she was great at other things before she was prime minister, but prime minister?

"No, and we do not want to have a leader of the country who makes us cringe every time she appears in public."

Dame Edna plans to bid farewell to UK audiences in coming months, noting that the Queen's recent jubilee celebrations make the timing perfect.

"The Queen celebrated her Diamond Jubilee, and I'm about to celebrate my diamante jubilee!"