The actress Emily Perry won unexpected international fame at the age of 80 when she played Madge Allsop, the cowed, silent but all-adoring companion of Dame Edna Everage, the gladioli-waving alter-ego of the Australian comedian Barry Humphries.

Madge was described by Dame Edna as, “A worry. She was my bridesmaid. She caught my bouquet. On the back of the neck as it happened. It wiped out an entire nerve centre and she has been dependent on me ever since. Well, she's a New Zealander.”

In more than 20 years of taking venemous insults, Madge never uttered a word.

When Perry auditioned for the role of Madge she was asked to stand still and say nothing. “Barry said lots of unkind things about me and tried to make me laugh,” she said. She did not flinch, however, and sailed through the audition.

In his second volume of memoirs, My Life as Me, Humphries wrote: “Miss Perry had the rare gift of being able to do nothing in the face of overwhelming provocation.”

Perry was widely admired by her peers for her on-stage cool and was often compared to the Marx Brothers foil, Margaret Dumont, as well as the non-speaking actors who had variously played the role of “Cynthia” opposite the music-hall comedienne Hylda Baker.

Perry appeared in The Dame Edna Experience (1987-1989), the anarchic comedy chat show which attracted guests such as Sean Connery and Cliff Richard, and this was followed by Dame Edna's Neighbourhood Watch and Dame Edna's Hollywood.

She also toured the world with Humphries in his stage shows and in 2003 appeared in Dame Edna Live at the Palace.

Born Patricia Emily Perry in Torquay, Devon, in 1907, she was known to her friends as Pat. Her father was an accountant. She began singing and dancing as a child in pantomimes and local variety shows.

During the war she toured in troop shows for ENSA (“Every night something awful”) and she became famous for carrying a pet duck around with her in her handbag.

After the war she opened a successful children's dancing school in South London, the Patricia Perry Dancing School, which she ran for 25 years. She returned to acting in 1984 and chose Emily Perry as her professional name.

After winning fame as Madge she had other roles on television in series such as Dempsey and Makepeace, The Bill and A Perfect Spy. In 1995 she played Mrs Broadbent in the popular sitcom Last of the Summer Wine.

She retired in 2004 and, at Humphries's suggestion, became a resident at Brinsworth House, the actors' retirement home in Twickenham, West London.

She never married. “I didn't want children,” she said. “All I ever wanted was dancing, dancing, dancing.”

Patricia Emily Perry, actress, was born on June 28, 1907. She died on February 19, 2008, aged 100