About
Fred Rowan
Comedian • Musician • Impersonator • Writer
MCs introduce him as a “stand up radio”. His stuff is music, characters, popular singers, FM DJs, and advertising voices.
For the singing impersonations go to the Audio page.
Fred has performed comedy since 1991. He stuffed around in amateur theatre for a few years, then he and friends Linden Compassi and Ian Stephenson started Crimestoppers, a stand up act, in 1990-3. Then stand up radio began. He wrote and performed stand up shows across Australia throughout the nineties. It included seven Melbourne Comedy Festival shows in seven years from 1994 to 2000. From 1995 – 7 he co-wrote and performed these shows with comedy legend Dave O”Neil. The shows included Comedy Festival charity galas – two Adelaide Fringe festivals, a Melbourne Fringe Festival, a number of Christmas festival shows and Happy Birthday Jesus with Rod Quantock and Linda Gibson in 1997. He also performed several shows in London in July 1996.
In 1998 Fred recorded the album Wrong Said Fred. Four of the songs were released on CD. He recorded on Backberner. In 2004 he had a guest role in Kath an Kim. At the same time he recorded a backing track for Backberner. In 2011, he staged Welcome to Fred World at The Butterfly Club. He also wrote and recorded the satirical song Beware of the Dog Whistle with Peter Grace; a take on John Howard. This became a You Tube video, My Name’s Snoop Dagg written with Gerard McCulloch in 2007. It got 8,000 views. In 2013, he wrote and recorded The Ballad of Tony Abbott.
Fred wrote, acted in and produced the show We’ll Kill ‘em Tonight for the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2009.
In 2002, Fred had a break from stand up.
In 2012, he stepped into the new, very different world of theatre. He wrote Death of a Comedian, which was produced and staged at La Mama in November-December that year. He has a number of other theatre works in the pipeline.
2017 saw a return to live work. He staged the Melbourne Fringe Festival show Fake Reality.
He currently works professional stand-up rooms such as the Comics Lounge, the Funhouse, corporate gigs. and performed at the Exford Hotel in the CBD where he-performed guest spots in the 2018 Melbourne Comedy Festival.
You can see alot of current originals and parodies on Twitter, Facebook and other sites. Otherwise, go to the Audio page.
Fred also performs a live Roy Orbison tribute act for private and public events.