Early career
At the age of 21, Flanagan road-tripped around Australia and liked Western Australia so much that she moved there and lived in the Perth suburb of Cottesloe for a couple of years and later lived in Bunbury and Geraldton. [4] She occasionally read news and weather at a country radio station, waited tables [5] and lasted only three weeks cleaning and packing crayfish in a Geraldton crayfish factory before she resigned. [4] She trained and briefly worked as a physical education teacher before beginning a job in advertising. [4] [6]
In 1989, Flanagan began her five-year stint as an advertising agency copywriter, creating campaigns for products such as Quik chocolate drinking powder. [7] After five years as a copywriter, she was fired in June 1993. [5] [8] [9] Following her exit from advertising, she worked as a bartender at a hotel where there was an open mic night, so she decided to try stand-up. [10] Her first attempt was a success and she then started her comedy career in 1994 doing stand-up at an open mic night at the Harold Park Hotel in Sydney. [11] Her debut performance at the Harold Park Hotel led to a spot in the final of the hotel's Comic of the Year competition where she placed third and won a bottle of red wine. [5] Flanagan had been doing stand-up comedy for six months [12] before she was spotted in December 1994 by the producer of Full Frontal. [5] Flanagan joined the cast as both a writer and performer in 1995. [5] Flanagan left Full Frontal in late 1996 to concentrate on her stand-up while she continued writing and acting for television in Shaun Micallef's World Around Him , The Micallef Program , The 50 Foot Show and The Fat .
2001–2009: UK and the world
Flanagan moved to the UK in 2001 to further her comedy career and do more stand-up. She performed on television in The Sketch Show as well as making numerous stand-up appearances on The World Stands Up for Comedy Central. As well as performing, she produced a short film, Dating Ray Fenwick, in which she also had a small role and also wrote material for her former Sketch Show co-star Karen Taylor's sketch comedy show Touch Me, I'm Karen Taylor . [13] She also wrote for various other shows on the BBC, Channel Four and Sky Television. [11] She also worked with author and screenwriter Sean Condon to develop his screwball comedy script Splitsville as a hook for a television series, which later evolved into an e-book. [14] [15] During her time in the UK, she would regularly return to Australia for short visits and appear on television shows including Rove , Good News Week , Spicks and Specks and The Sideshow .
Flanagan took her stand-up internationally and performed at many major comedy festivals, including Edinburgh, Melbourne, Montreal, Kilkenny, Cape Town and Johannesburg. [11]
2009–2021
After eight years touring the world and performing stand-up in comedy clubs in England, she returned to live in Australia in 2009. [3] She had three months worth of work lined up in Australia and more kept coming in so she decided to stay. [9] She starred in the Comedy Channel's 2009 TV special I Can't Believe It's Not Better [16] before being contacted to join The Project for segments on trending news topics. [9]
In 2010, Flanagan began touring Australia with her stand-up comedy show Charming and Alarming. [17] She toured with her sister and show co-star Penny Flanagan and tour manager and former Full Frontal co-star Glenn Butcher, who is the founding member of the 1980s Newcastle comedy troupe the Castanet Club. [18]
In 2013, Flanagan toured Australia again in the stand-up show Hello Kitty Flanagan. [19]
In 2013, while in Montreal to perform her stand up show Hello Kitty Flanagan, she appeared as a guest comedian on a television special hosted by Wil Anderson called Wil Does Montreal: Just For Laughs which explored what goes on behind the scenes of Montreal's Just for Laughs international comedy festival and featured some of the world's best-known comedians. [20] Working Dog Productions asked Flanagan to work on their TV comedy series Utopia in 2013 and cast her in the role of Rhonda the public relations manager, [9] [21] which Flanagan played for three seasons. [22]
Flanagan resigned from The Project in August 2014 but stayed for four months to finish the year. Charlie Pickering approached her to join his new TV show, The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, where she created the segments "Spectacular Failures of the 21st Century" and "Problem Solver". [12] As the series progressed, Flanagan created two other segments, "Bandwagon Rider" and "Human Barometer".
For two weeks during the end of 2014 and early 2015, Flanagan was a stand-in for Annabel Crabb's weekly newspaper column for Fairfax Media. [23]
In February 2015, Flanagan was the third ambassador for the Adelaide Fringe, succeeding singer Katie Noonan and inaugural Adelaide Fringe ambassador and fellow comedian Paul McDermott. [24] She toured Australia with her third stand-up comedy show Seriously? in 2015, with her entourage of two. [19]
Flanagan is an advocate of writing and writers in the screen industry. She sponsored the Best Narrative Award at the 2015 Heart of Gold International Short Film Festival in Gympie and was one of the judges for the film scripts in that category. [25] [26]
In 2017, Flanagan and her sister Penny contributed as writers for the TV series Drop Dead Weird . [27] Flanagan began an Australian national tour of her fourth standup show named Smashing in the same year. [28]
In March 2018, Flanagan released a book of personal and professional autobiographical stories called Bridge Burning and Other Hobbies. [29] [30]
Flanagan announced her departure from The Weekly With Charlie Pickering during the final episode of season four (2018), but returned for The Yearly with Charlie Pickering special in December 2018. [31] [32] [33]
In August 2018, Flanagan presented a sketch on her "pretend" book called 488 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Idiots, as a joke inspired by Jordan Peterson's book 12 Rules for Life , on The Weekly with Charlie Pickering . [34] [35] This idea inspired a published book in 2019 called 488 Rules for Life: The Thankless Art of Being Correct. [36] [37] [38]
In March, 2021 Flanagan's sitcom Fisk , which she co-created, co-wrote, co-directed and starred in, aired on ABC TV. Fisk was nominated for and won two 2021 AACTA Awards , including Best Narrative Comedy Series and Best Comedy Performer for Kitty Flanagan. [39]
