American actor, comedian and talk show host Rosie O’Donnell has been touring Australia with her one-woman show, Common Knowledge. She performed at the Sydney Opera House last week, and takes the stage at Hamer Hall in Melbourne on Sunday afternoon.

Fitz: Welcome, Rosie! Now, when America’s Great White Fleet visited in Sydney in 1908, one of its sailors was so exhausted by the tumultuous reception that a few days later he was found asleep on a bench in Hyde Park, with a sign on his chest saying, “Yes, I’m delighted with the Australian people. Yes, I think your harbour is the finest in the world. But I’m very tired, and I’d like to go to sleep.” Is that how you feel after a week in Sydney Town?

Rosie O’Donnell: “This is the best country in the world.”Credit: Getty Images for Tinderbox Productions

RO’D: [Laughing merrily.] It has been amazing. I do love the people. I do love your harbour. And what an honour to have appeared at such an iconic venue as the Opera House. I so loved it that I got a tattoo of the Opera House sails put on my right thigh, near the hip, because I never want to forget the beauty. Listen, I’ve had a great time, and I have looked forward to doing this since I was a young girl. It even exceeded my wishes because I didn’t know how warm the people would be. This is the best country in the world.

Fitz: We are honoured. But that’s enough about how great we are. Let’s go to you. I did love your show on Tuesday evening, but confess surprise. I thought in a one-woman show looking back at your life and times you’d give in to the obvious, and it’d be filled with the Rosie O’Donnell Show, The View, the staggering highs you’ve known in your career, the titans of the entertainment and political world you’ve interviewed and befriended, and your famous fight with Donald Trump. But instead, you gave a compelling, moving and very funny account of raising your fifth child, Clay, who has autism?

RO’D: Well, the last 12 years, I’ve been immersed in autism because it’s a very interesting thing to have had four children and a couple of foster children, and then, in my 50th year, adopt a baby who, two years later, was diagnosed with autism. So for a decade, this is all I’ve been doing. And initially, when I did my show, some people, said, “Well, aren’t you going to talk about your career?” I’m like, “Not really, because this child takes precedence for me.” I left my very successful talk show to be a parent to all my children because my mother died at 39 and by the time I was 40, I had sort of retired, because I didn’t know when my own final day was going to arrive, and I didn’t want to miss my kids’ baseball games and their performances at school. I wanted to get to do all the things my mother had never done. So being a celebrity and having fame and all that is not the most interesting part of my life.

Rosie’s newly inked tattoo was created by artist........

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