Rodney Rude
Rodney Rude (born Rodney Keft in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia) is an Australian ‘blue’ stand-up comedian, poet and writer. He is infamous for his bawdy humour. He has released 12 albums and 5 videos throughout his long career, all of which are distributed by EMI Music Australia. To date, Rodney has sold well in excess of 2 million CDs videos and DVDs. Rodney has also been nominated for an ARIA award for Best comedy Album for almost every album he has released.
As a teenage musician Rodney started changing the words to songs to create parodies, later becoming an Elvis impersonator. Rodney’s later career was heavily influenced by his time working on showgrounds in a carnival act then in the early 1960s Rodney worked as a busker in Sydney and went on to busk all over Europe. Canada and the U.S. became Rodney’s base and he spent fifteen years working in bars-rooms and strip clubs, releasing five independent stand-up comedy albums featuring a large repertoire of original comedy songs.
After years of working in North America, Rodney was offered a job to set up the Sydney Comedy Store; under Rodney’s expertise it reached its peak in the 1980’s. This was one of Rodney’s proudest accomplishments; the style reflected his carnival beginnings and incorporated his experience of performing comedy in North America.
Rodney Rude’s comedy is sexual, insulting and explicit. As a result, despite some early television appearances his act is restricted to live performances. He did appear in a number of advertising campaigns including Big Ben meat pies during the 1980s.
He was arrested by Queensland police in the mid-1980s after offending officers during a show. He fought several long and expensive court cases defending his right to perform his show to adult audiences. His legal battle continued after police brought further obscenity charges in Western Australia where the case finally went to the full bench of the Supreme Court. Rodney won his court which set a precedent that allowed future performers to enjoy freedom of speech in public performances. After the Fitzgerald Inquiry against corruption (1987-89), set up to investigate police corruption in the state of Queensland, the police officer leading the case of obscenity against Rodney was jailed for corruption in an unrelated matter. Since that time Rodney performed without incident in all states of Australia. He was also a pioneer in fighting for the creation of designated smoking areas in clubs and hotels and from there, non-smoking concerts.
Having hit sales figures within the millions, Rodney Rude’s impact on stand-up comedy through vinyl, tape, CD and DVD, has been enormous, with twelve highly successful live stand-up comedy CDs and five DVDs all achieving gold and multi-platinum status. In particular, his album ‘Rodney Rude Live- I Hate That’ went to number one on the national album charts. This was a phenomenal result considering that it was pure stand-up comedy with no radio airplay. Rodney has also enjoyed much international success with five independently released stand-up comedy albums overseas, bringing a career total of twenty two releases.
