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June Rodgers
June Rodgers (born 24 June 1959) is an Irish comedian, singer and actor.[2][3] Much of her repertoire consists of multiple character skits, mainly focusing on working-class Dublin themes, including the characters of 'Jacinta O'Brien'[4] and 'Oliver Bond' (named after the Oliver Bond flats).[5] Her 2014 Merry Month of June Tour alone required 20 costume changes.[1] Rodgers' shows frequently include elements of song, dance and cabaret.[5] She appeared as Fat Annie in the film Agnes Browne (1999) and played the same character in Mrs. Brown's Boys D'Movie (2014). She has also portrayed various characters in the BBC sitcom Mrs. Brown's Boys, before taking on the regular role of Birdie Flanagan in 2023. Early lifeRodgers was born on 24 June 1959 in the suburb of Tallaght when it was "still a sleepy rural village in County Dublin".[6][7][1] In a 2014 interview, she recounted her earliest memory of sitting on the garden wall watching tractors and cattle passing by.[1] There was no tradition of theatre in her family, although Rodgers recalls that the family would "go on Sunday drives and my mother and father would be singing in the front, and we (herself and her sister Linda)[8] would be falling asleep in the back".[9] She attended Rathgar National School, and St Patrick's Cathedral Grammar School, where Bono was a classmate for a few years before moving to Mount Temple Comprehensive School.[10][8] Rodgers notes that she was "laughed at" in school due to her weight,[9] but won the Miss Tallaght beauty pageant in 1978.[11] She and her parents moved to nearby Brittas when the suburb of Tallaght began to be heavily developed.[9] Shortly after the move, her mother died aged 56, and Rodgers and her father moved back to Firhouse, in the vicinity of Tallaght. Within a short space of time her father also passed away, aged 63.[9] CareerDuring the 1980s, Rodgers worked for nine and a half years in a Fujitsu factory in Tallaght, where she spent "eight hours a day looking down a micro-scope at cells on microchips".[9] Fujitsu started a society where employees could perform together at the John Player Tops Of The Town talent contest, and Rodgers joined as a dancer in the back row.[9] Eventually, she succeeded in making a higher billing, and began doing comedy as a hobby. Rodgers claims her big break came when performing at a talent competition at the Clontarf Castle Hotel,[9] at which she was spotted by television host Gay Byrne who presented the Irish chat show The Late Late Show.[4][1] The following week, she received a phone call at her factory from The Late Late inviting her to perform three minutes on it that coming Friday.[9][4] As part of the performance, she presented the characters 'Bridget the Beangharda' and a Henry Street dealer.[9] She credits this first break on The Late Late Show as "pure luck".[1] Rodgers appeared numerous times on the programme over the following years, so much so that when comedian Tommy Tiernan made one of his first appearances on the Late Late, he quipped "I'm delighted to be on the show, June Rodgers must be working".[4] Rodgers spent several years on the pantomime circuit in Ireland in the early 1990s. During this time, she, along with Eileen Reed, played the Ugly sisters in Cinderella.[10] The comedy writers Martin Higgins and Tom Roche helped Rodgers to develop the characters for which she would become known.[10] Rodgers credits Irish comedian Brendan Grace as an influence on her style, and used to watch him perform live at cabaret shows in a pub in Terenure during the 1970s and 80s.[5] She also credits Lucille Ball as an influence, stating "She was one of the first ballsy comedians on our screens at a time when women were portrayed as demure and ladylike".[11] Rodgers notes that she got her sense of humour from her father.[1] HealthIn 2019, Rodgers revealed that she was left unable to work for 18 months after an incident in which a fall had cut off the blood supply down the right hand side of her body resulting in the collapse of her hip bone over time.[4] After a successful diagnosis by a Dublin orthopaedic surgeon, she received a hip replacement.[4] By October 2019, Rodgers reported that she was "100 per cent pain free", and ready to return to the stage.[5] Personal lifeIn the mid-1990s, Rodgers met her future husband Peter Lane at one of her shows in Clontarf Castle.[1] As part of her act, she would perform as a character who sold cheap bananas, and every night would throw a banana out to the audience. On the evening in question, Peter caught the banana.[3] They married in September 1997.[9] The Irish former rugby union and rugby league player Ian Dowling is married to Rodger's niece.[10] She lives in Firhouse, County Dublin.[1] Filmography
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