Fred Cooke’s a musical treat

HE describes his comedy as “physical musical storytelling” and he has rapidly become a unique stand-up delivering a style of comedy that simply cannot be imitated. Fred Cooke has already contributed to a variety of successful Irish TV shows, both as a writer and performer, including RTE’s Republic of Telly, The Cafe (as The Crazy Chef) and The Savage Eye among others. He has also regularly been the warm-up act for many different television chat shows including The Late Late Show and The Podge and Rodge Show.

His stand-up routine utilises guitars and twin melodicas as a self styled “dillusional pop star” takes music requests and brings the audience into his surreal skits but most people will recognise Fred as “Fergus” from a series of recent Spar ads. Cooke commented to Limerick Post on what he thinks has endeared Fergus to the nation, “I think the Fergus character is such a rogue and he just takes advantage of accidents for his own benefit, I think we Irish are good at that, the ads are a good laugh they are not overdone”
Fred has frequently been invited to perform at the largest and most successful festivals both here and abroad, including the Cat Laughs Comedy Festival, the Carlsberg Comedy Carnival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He will take his place this weekend among the star comedians performing at Comedy Central Killarney. Fred will be on the main stage at INEC, Killarney this Friday September 16 with Ardal O’Hanlon, Neil Delamere, Andrew Maxwell and MC for the evening, Limerick’s Karl Spain.