Molly, despite her unusually wide hips, has more than just the ''hard-won working class wisdom'' recognised by her superiors, as she guides them through social situations they find increasingly inexplicable.
The family matriarch has her own wisdom, with such timeless maxims as ''boys aren't attracted to moist girls''.
The Stage South collective last night hosted a reading of Huber's radio play script, Country Life, or Up, Down and Over at the Abbey.
The event was part of Marginalia: A Fringe Celebration of a City of Literature, the first of four events at the Morning Magpie Cafe, held as part of the Fringe Festival to celebrate Dunedin's City of Literature status.
The Dunedin playwright said the work, read to an audience at the cafe, and including some terrific sound effects, was a satirical version of Downton. Dunedin Fringe Arts Trust co-chairman Cr Aaron Hawkins said after the City of Literature designation came through, the trust decided as the Fringe Festival was the next festival on the calendar, the designation should be acknowledged.
The trust concluded the best way to do that would be to ''pull together a group of fringe-friendly literary groups locally, to present a night each of what became a four-night programme''.
''They've been given free rein.''
Marginalia continues tonight and for the following two nights, covering subjects from comedy to the writings and musings of post-graduate English students at the University of Otago.
