In a long career Pakie O’Callaghan has worked on stage, TV and radio. In his native Cork, with the Everyman Theatre, he appeared in a wide variety of productions including lead roles in Translations, Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf, One for the Road and many others. Pakie also worked for several years with the highly innovative Cork Theatre Co.
In the mid-nineties Pakie featured in the RTE radio sketch series Shortt Circuit and subsequently played a lead role in the TV series Bull Island in which he is remembered fondly for playing, among others, the then minister for Finance Charlie McCreevey. He did many of the political “voices” on Tonight with Vincent Brown and also appeared in Browns TV series Midnight Court. In 2004 Pakie joined Joe Duffy’s Funny Friday Show as a writer/performer and has been there ever since.
With the late and much lamented Frank Twomey Pakie co-wrote and starred in the hit stage show Santa Ponsa with two follow up Shows, Surviving Santa Ponsa and Life after Santa Ponsa. Following sell out shows at the Everyman Palace Frank and Pakie toured the Santa Ponsa Trilogy to every corner of Ireland.
Pakie has written and performed three one man shows, In the National Interest, The Last Brown Envelope and No more Brown Envelopes, all of which toured nationally.
Eamon Kelly has been one of O’Callaghan’s theatrical heroes since O’Callaghan’s teenage years, ”. O’Callaghan remembers being transfixed by Kellys performances in his one man shows “In my Fathers Time”, “Bless me Father” and “Stonemad” which won widespread acclaim both in Ireland and internationally.
A celebration of the stories of Eamon Kelly will be a trip down memory lane for many but O’Callaghan is hoping to also develop a new audience for these stories which he describes as universal and timeless and always very, very funny.