Anna Russell, who died in New South Wales on Wednesday aged 94, trained at the Royal College of Music and hoped to become an operatic diva; instead she turned her talents to comedy, becoming famous as “the Queen of Musical Parody”.Anna Russell bore a striking resemblance to Hermione Gingold in both her appearance and in her deadpan manner; her personality was once described as that of a “flamboyant society hostess in which stirs the soul of a fishwife”.But her comedy was based on a thorough familiarity with her raw material, enabling her to capture the idiom of a variety of...