Dame Edna is a character created and played by Australian dadaist performer and comedian, Barry Humphries

Barry Humphries

John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE is an Australian comedian, satirist, dadaist, artist, author and character actor, best known for his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife and "gigastar", and Sir Les Patterson, Australia's foul-mouthed cultural attaché to the...

, famous for her lilac-coloured or "wisteria hue" hair and cat eye glasses

Cat eye glasses

Cat-eye glasses are a form of women's eyewear. They are horn-rimmed glasses with flared outer edges where the arms join the frame. They were mainly popular in the 1950s and 1960s among fashionable women. They preceded the large bug-eye glasses of the '70s, '80s and '90s...

 or "face furniture," her favorite flower, the gladiola

Gladiolus

Gladiolus is a genus of perennial bulbous flowering plants in the iris family...

 ("gladdies") and her boisterous greeting: "Hello Possums!" As Dame Edna, Humphries has written several books including an autobiography, My Gorgeous Life, appeared in several films and hosted several television shows (on which Humphries has also appeared as himself and other alter-egos).

Humphries has regularly updated Edna, originally a drab Melbourne, Australia housewife satirising the conservatism of Australian suburbia.