Julie Andrews. Photo / Supplied
Julie Andrews is all class even with wise cracks and the odd barbed comment. Move over, One Direction: Nearly 50 years since Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, a 77-year-old great-grandmother last night commanded a standing ovation and screams of delight just by stepping onstage.
The self-confessed Beyonce fan was perhaps too perfectly presented, polished and diplomatic for us to get much of
a sense of the "real" Julie Andrews - too "squeaky clean", despite her protests - but we got some great anecdotes.
She got her own back on My Fair Lady's Rex ("either she goes, or I go") Harrison. Apparently he was "a very windy gentleman" - she couldn't keep a straight face when singing "my reverberating friend" to him after he just "let fly with a machine gun volley". Her interviewer, Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich von Trapp) responded: "Julie Andrews is the only person who can tell that story and not say the word 'fart'."
She began with a couple of scripted wise cracks about rugby, golf and Peter Dunne - points for topicality - before giving us a lecture (discreetly teleprompted) about her life. The format - literally keeping the audience at a distance, behind a lectern behind a flower arrangement - was surprisingly formal, and the theme of "travel" was laboured.
