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Madge Allsop
Madge Allsop (born Marjorie Kiri McWhirter) is a fictitious character invented by satirist Barry Humphries as the long-time companion (and former bridesmaid) of his most popular and enduring character, Dame Edna Everage. First mentioned in Edna's monologues in the 1960s, Madge was subsequently depicted on stage, TV and film, over three decades, by several people. The character was discontinued following the retirement of British actress Emily Perry, who played the role for over 15 years. Origins of character When Barry Humphries first began to perform as Edna Everage during his one-man shows, the character of Madge Allsop, Edna's bridesmaid and companion, was only ever mentioned in passing and never actually depicted on stage. By the early 1970s, Madge was an increasingly strong presence in Edna's on-stage musings, but still remained unseen. In Barry Humphries' 1971 Australian show, ''A Load of Old Stuffe'', her monologue was entitled "Edna and Madge Allsop in Stratford", while ...
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Barry Humphries
John Barry Humphries (born 17 February 1934) is an Australian comedian, actor, author and satirist. He is best known for writing and playing his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. He is also a film producer and script writer, a star of London's West End musical theatre, a writer, and a landscape painter. For his delivery of dadaist and absurdist humour to millions, biographer Anne Pender described Humphries in 2010 as not only "the most significant theatrical figure of our time … utthe most significant comedian to emerge since Charlie Chaplin". Humphries' characters have brought him international renown, and he also appeared in numerous stage productions, films, and television shows. Originally conceived as a dowdy Moonee Ponds housewife who caricatured Australian suburban complacency and insularity, Dame Edna Everage has evolved over four decades to become a satire of stardom – a gaudily dressed, acid-tongued, egomaniacal, intern ...
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Sir Les Patterson
Sir Leslie Colin "Les" Patterson (born 1 April 1942) is a fictional character created and portrayed by Australian comedian Barry Humphries. Obese, lecherous and offensive, Patterson is Dame Edna Everage's exact opposite: she is female, refined, Protestant and from Melbourne; he is male, uncouth, Roman Catholic and from Sydney. Character origins By Humphries' own account, the character of Patterson first appeared in a one-man show that he performed at the St. George leagues club in Sydney in January 1974.Humphries, Barry. ''A Nice Night's Entertainment'', pp. 178–83. Appearing in the guise of the boorish, loud-mouthed and uncultured Patterson, Humphries claimed to be that club's own entertainments officer as he introduced the next act, Dame Edna Everage. As Humphries recalled, "I understood later that many members of the audience thought Les was genuinely a club official, which says a lot for his charm and sincerity". Later that same year, the character (by now identified as Au ...
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Fictional New Zealand People
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose often referring specifically to novels, novellas, and short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games. Definition Typically, the fictionality of a work is publicly marketed and so the audience expects the work to deviate in some ways from the real world rather than presenting, for instance, only factually accurate portrayals or characters who are actual people. Because fiction is generally understood to not fully adhere to the real world, the themes and context of ...
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Comedy Television Characters
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term originated in ancient Greece: in Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by political satire performed by comic poets in theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance pitting two groups, ages, genders, or societies against each other in an amusing '' agon'' or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old". A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions posing obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth then becomes constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to resort to ruses which en ...
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Female Characters In Television
Female (Venus symbol, symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ovum, ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the Sperm, male gamete during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females and males are results of the anisogamous reproduction system, wherein gametes are of different sizes, unlike isogamy where they are the same size. The exact mechanism of female gamete evolution remains unknown. In species that have males and females, Sex-determination system, sex-determination may be based on either sex chromosomes, or environmental conditions. Most female mammals, including female humans, have two X chromosomes. Female characteristics vary between different species with some species having pronounced Secondary sex characteristic, secondary female sex characteristics, such as the presence of pronounced mammary glands in mammals. In humans, the word ''female'' can also be used to refer to gender i ...
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Christiaan Barnard
Christiaan Neethling Barnard (8 November 1922 – 2 September 2001) was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant operation. On 3 December 1967, Barnard transplanted the heart of accident-victim Denise Darvall into the chest of 54-year-old Louis Washkansky, with Washkansky regaining full consciousness and being able to talk easily with his wife, before dying eighteen days later of pneumonia, largely brought on by the anti-rejection drugs that suppressed his immune system. Barnard had told Mr. and Mrs. Washkansky that the operation had an 80% chance of success, an assessment which has been criticised as misleading. Barnard's second transplant patient, Philip Blaiberg, whose operation was performed at the beginning of 1968, returned home from the hospital and lived for a year and a half. Born in Beaufort West, Cape Province, Barnard studied medicine and practised for several years in his native South Africa. As a young docto ...
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1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake
Events January * January 2 – South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics. * January 4 – German pilot Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa. * January 22 – Sir Isaac Isaacs is sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia. * January 25 – Mohandas Gandhi is again released from imprisonment in India. * January 27 – Pierre Laval forms a government in France. February * February 4 – Soviet leader Joseph Stalin gives a speech calling for rapid industrialization, arguing that only strong industrialized countries will win wars, while "weak" nations are "beaten". Stalin states: "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us." The first five-year plan in the Soviet Union is intensified, for the industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. * February 10 – O ...
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Palmerston North
Palmerston North (; mi, Te Papa-i-Oea, known colloquially as Palmy) is a city in the North Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Manawatū-Whanganui region. Located in the eastern Manawatu Plains, the city is near the north bank of the Manawatu River, from the river's mouth, and from the end of the Manawatu Gorge, about north of the capital, Wellington. Palmerston North is the country's eighth-largest urban area, with an urban population of The official limits of the city take in rural areas to the south, north-east, north-west and west of the main urban area, extending to the Tararua Ranges; including the town of Ashhurst at the mouth of the Manawatu Gorge, the villages of Bunnythorpe and Longburn in the north and west respectively. The city covers a land area of . The city's location was once little more than a clearing in a forest and occupied by small communities of Māori, who called it ''Papa-i-Oea'', believed to mean "How beautiful it is". In the mid-1 ...
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Hollywood Walk Of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a historic landmark which consists of more than 2,700 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along 15 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California. The stars are permanent public monuments to achievement in the entertainment industry, bearing the names of a mix of actors, directors, producers, musicians, theatrical/musical groups, fictional characters, and others. The Walk of Fame is administered by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce who hold the trademark rights and maintained by the self-financing Hollywood Historic Trust. It is a popular tourist attraction, with an estimated 10 million annual visitors in 2010. Description The Walk of Fame runs east to west on Hollywood Boulevard, from Gower Street to the ''Hollywood and La Brea Gateway'' at La Brea Avenue, plus a short segment on Marshfield Way that runs diagonally between Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea; and north to sout ...
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Errol Flynn
Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn (20 June 1909 – 14 October 1959) was an Australian-American actor who achieved worldwide fame during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles, frequent partnerships with Olivia de Havilland, and reputation for his womanising and hedonistic personal life. His most notable roles include the eponymous hero in ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' (1938), which was later named by the American Film Institute as the 18th greatest hero in American film history, the lead role in ''Captain Blood'' (1935), Major Geoffrey Vickers in ''The Charge of the Light Brigade'' (1936), and the hero in a number of Westerns such as ''Dodge City'' (1939), ''Santa Fe Trail'' (1940), and ''San Antonio'' (1945). Early life Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn was born on 20 June 1909 in Battery Point, Tasmania. His father, Theodore Thomson Flynn, was a lecturer (1909) and later professor (1911) of biology at the University of Tasmania. His mo ...
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Vivienne Westwood
Dame Vivienne Isabel Westwood (née Swire; born 8 April 1941) is an English fashion designer and businesswoman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream. Westwood came to public notice when she made clothes for the boutique that she and Malcolm McLaren ran on King's Road, which became known as SEX. Their ability to synthesise clothing and music shaped the 1970s UK punk scene which was dominated by McLaren's band, the Sex Pistols. She viewed punk as a way of "seeing if one could put a spoke in the system". Westwood opened four shops in London and eventually expanded throughout Britain and the world, selling an increasingly varied range of merchandise, some of which promoted her many political causes such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, climate change and civil rights groups. Life and career Early years Westwood was born in the village of Tintwistle, Cheshire, on 8 April 1941, as the daughter of Gordon Swire and Dora Swir ...
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Rotorua
Rotorua () is a city in the Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand's North Island. The city lies on the southern shores of Lake Rotorua, from which it takes its name. It is the seat of the Rotorua Lakes District, a territorial authority encompassing Rotorua and several other nearby towns. Rotorua has an estimated resident population of , making it the country's 12th largest urban area, and the Bay of Plenty's second largest urban area behind Tauranga. Rotorua is a major destination for both domestic and international tourists; the tourism industry is by far the largest industry in the district. It is known for its geothermal activity, and features geysers – notably the Pōhutu Geyser at Whakarewarewa – and hot mud pools. This thermal activity is sourced to the Rotorua Caldera, in which the town lies. Rotorua is home to the Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology. History The name Rotorua comes from the Māori language, where the full name for the city and lake is . ''Roto'' m ...
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