Mary-Anne Fahey

Mary-Anne Fahey (born 19 August 1955 as Mary-Anne Waterman) is an Australian actress, comedian and writer.

Mary-Anne Fahey
Born
Mary-Anne Waterman

(1955-08-19) 19 August 1955
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
OccupationActress, comedian, writer
Years active1981–present
Spouse(s)Ian McFadyen
Morris Gleitzman (1994 – 2011)
Paul Jennings

Biography

Fahey has starred in and written for numerous comedy programs including The Comedy Company, Kittson Fahey (the first Australian female-only sketch comedy program), Get a Life and One Size Fits All. She also had roles in The Dunera Boys, All the Rivers Run II, Celia, Lucky Break and SeaChange. She has also received roles in theatre including Mary Lives. She is most famous for her work on Channel Ten's The Comedy Company especially for her school girl character, Kylie Mole, and three-year-old "Jophesine", the Play School Sketches with Glenn Robbins and the Bedscene sketches with her then real-life husband Ian McFadyen.

In the 1980s she appeared in an advert for David Reid electronics which was promoting the Commodore Amiga 500.

Kylie Mole

Fahey's Kylie Mole character – a scowling schoolgirl – was so popular she published the best-selling novel My Diary by Kylie Mole and also released the Double A-Side single with tracks "So Excellent"/"I Go, I Go", which hit #8 on the Australian ARIA chart in November 1988.[1] A music video for "So Excellent" was filmed. The Kylie Mole character was one of several iconic characters that appeared in the show, and her characterisation resonated especially with Australian youth. The Australian adoption of the word "bogan" was first popularised in the media by Kylie Mole, and other phrases she used also gained a wider currency.

As well as performing monologue comedy segments, The Comedy Company also featured Kylie Mole interviewing various celebrities, including Julian Lennon, Sylvester Stallone, the band INXS and Kylie Minogue on the show. Kylie Minogue also appeared in some of the comedy sketches playing Kylie Mole's second-best friend, Rebecca.

As well as appearing in The Comedy Company, Kylie Mole was also featured in the second series of the ABC's Kittson Fahey television show in 1993. In 2002, sixty minutes of footage of The Comedy Company was edited into a special called The Comedy Company: So Excellent, with the subtitle referencing a famed line by the Kylie Mole character.

Later career

Fahey is currently living in Melbourne and is now concentrating on writing and children's theatre. On 7 May 2007,[2] she published her first children's novel I, Nigel Dorking: An Autobiography about a Boy with an Unusual Vocabulary, a Suit of Armour and an Unshakeable Dream, Written by That Very Boy (Nigel Dorking), Grade Six (ISBN 0-143-30247-7 and ISBN 978-0-14-330247-6).[3][4]

Awards

Fahey won a 1989 Logie Award for "Most Popular Light Entertainment/Comedy Personality" for her work on The Comedy Company. She has also won an AWGIE Award[5] and an Irish-dancing trophy where she came second in a competition of two.[5]

Personal life

Fahey has two sons Thomas Fahey (from her first marriage) and James McFadyen (born 12 July 1990). Fahey and Ian McFadyen split up in 1992. From 1994 until 2011 her partner was children's writer Morris Gleitzman[6] (he too has a background in comedy writing as a former writer for The Norman Gunston Show and satirical columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.)

By 2014 Fahey had started a relationship with Paul Jennings, another children's book writer who had previously collaborated with Morris Gleitzman on two books series, Wicked and Deadly.

References
  1. Wikipedia article: Australian Singles for 1988
  2. Penguin Books (Australia) author bio for Mary-Anne Fahey
  3. I, Nigel Dorking, book description & details
  4. Book Review of I, Nigel Dorking: "My Life as a Loser", by Sue Bursztynski, June 2007. Accessed 11 August 2007.
  5. Melbourne Writers' Festival 24Aug-2Sep 2007: Mary-Anne Fahey Information page Archived 1 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  6. Fahey, Mary-Anne (7 May 2007). "Ask an author: Mary-Anne Fahey". The Age. Archived from the original on 31 August 2007. Retrieved 11 August 2007.
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