Every weeknight in September, the Trio Network will offer a dose of Dame Edna Everage, that indefinable creation of writer-actor Barry Humphries.

Among the Edna programs being offered on the arts entertainment network are "An Audience with Dame Edna," "Another Audience with Dame Edna," "The Dame Edna Experience" and "One More Audience with Dame Edna." The Dame's guests on these various shows include such celebrities as Mel Gibson, Charlton Heston, Kiri Te Kanawa, Sean Connery, Joan Rivers, Yehudi Menuhin, Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McDowell, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones and Tony Curtis. All programs begin at 8 PM.

Dubbed Australia's First Lady, Dame Edna is the invention of Humphries, a successful character actor in Europe and Australia as well as an esteemed landscape painter. Some of Humphries' theatrical credits include roles in Waiting for Godot, Oliver! and Maggie May, but his most successful outings have been as Dame Edna, a character he created in 1956. Humphries was given the Order of Australia in 1982 and was endowed with an Honorary Doctorate of Griffith University in Australia in 1994.

For more information about the inimitable Dame, go to www.dame-edna.com. For the Dame's Trio schedule, go to www.triotv.com.

In related news, Dame Edna begins touring her new show, A Night with Dame Edna: The Family Tour, Sept. 10. Edna, beloved the world over, makes her first stop in Miami, FL, at the Jackie Gleason Theatre, where she will reside — gladioli and all — through Sept. 15. About the new show, creator Humphries recently told the Florida Sun Sentinel, "I keep adding and changing things. People ask if it's going to be the same show, and I say, 'How could it be?' I never remember what I do from one night to the next."

The Dame's tour includes the following venues:

Sept. 10-15 at the Jackie Gleason Theatre in Miami, FL
Sept. 17-22 at the Tampa Performing Arts Center in Tampa, FL
Sept. 26-Oct. 13 at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, MA
Oct. 15-20 at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, CT
Oct. 24-Nov. 3 at the Ford Theatre in Vancouver, BC
Nov. 5-10 at the State Theatre in Minneapolis, MN
Nov. 12-17 at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, MO
Jan. 21, 2003-Feb. 2 at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Feb. 4-16 at the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia, PA
Feb. 18-23 at the Bushnell Center in Hartford, CT
—By Andrew Gans