Catherine Deveny (born 1968) is a comedy writer and stand-up comedian, and was a regular columnist in The Age newspaper between 2001 and 2010. She has performed on all Australian TV networks, in Australian comedy venues and on radio.
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Deveny's television work has included Network Seven's Tonight Live with Steve Vizard, Full Frontal, The Eric Bana Show Live, All Star Squares, Channel 9's Midday, In Melbourne Tonight and The Super Debate Series, ABC TV's Something Hot Before Bed, Good News Week, The 7.30 Report, BackBerner, Q and A, SBS's Mum's The Word and Network 10's Unreal TV, Unreal Stuff Ups and Unreal Ads, Rove Live, The Wedge, skitHOUSE. She is a regular fill-in broadcaster on 774 ABC Melbourne and has appeared on ABC TV's Q&A and Network Ten's 7pm Projec t.
She has written for the Logie Awards and the Aria Music Awards and co-wrote the 2005 AFI Awards with Russell Crowe and appeared at the Sydney Opera House in the Festival of Dangerous Ideas [1] where she took on Roman Catholic Cardinal George Pell.[1]
Deveny is the author of Rank and Smelly (1997), Babies, Bellies and Blundstones (1999), and Our New Baby (2005). Collections of her column It's Not My Fault They Print Them (2007) and Say When (2008) and "Free To A Good Home" (2009) are published by Black Inc.
In April 2009, she returned to stand-up in Mother of The Year as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.[2]
Deveny is self-described as "a serial pest and professional pain in the arse".[3] In March 2009 she conducted a one-woman strike with her employer The Age newspaper [4] after they cut her wages in a restructuring of the paper.[5] On 18 March 2009 in a radio interview on ABC 774 with Jon Faine, the editor of The Age newspaper Paul Ramadge was ambushed by angry supporters wanting Deveny back writing her regular column.[4] She subsequently returned to writing her column for The Age.[6]
Deveny appeared with Daniel Burt in "An Evening Of Insight And Filth" at The Butterfly Club. Due to its popularity the show was extended by six shows.[7] She appeared at the 2010 Global Atheist Convention Melbourne, Australia 12–14 March with Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer, Phillip Adams and PZ Myers [8][9] and her one-woman show God Is Bullshit, That's The Good News part of the 2010 Melbourne Comedy Festival was a total sell-out.
Catherine Deveny has been named in the Top 100 Most Influential Melburnians by The Age (Melbourne) Magazine. She is an atheist [10] and a dyslexic.[11]
In April 2010 Deveny caused controversy by posting comments on Twitter including: "Anzac Day. Men only enlisted to fight for the money, for the adventure or because they were racist." and "An Australian Flag in your front yard tells everyone you're only a couple of Bundy and Cokes away from lynching a wog, slope or Arab."
In May, a similar controversy arose when Deveny posted a number of comments on Twitter during the Logies Awards night about a number of people, including Bindi Irwin ("I do so hope Bindi Irwin gets laid") and Rove McManus and wife Tasma Walton ("Rove and Tasma look so cute ... hope she doesn't die, too", in reference to Rove's deceased first wife, Belinda Emmett).[12] The Age fired Deveny two days later.[13] This caused a "Twitter ban" to be enforced during the 2011 Logies Awards.[14]