Gretel Killeen

Gretel Killeen is known as a stand-up comic, one of Australia’s top advertising voice-artists, a radio host and host of one of the nation’s most controversial reality TV shows, Big Brother.

She is also a best-selling author, a journalist, humorist, film director, documentary maker, travel writer – and live performer in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Gretel Killeen’s career began shortly after she dropped out of law studies at university and accidentally performed stand-up comedy at a poetry reading. This led to comedy writing for Australian radio station 2JJJ and regular spots on national television as a humorist, commentator and actor. Since then she has worked continuously, making Australian audiences laugh.

With her well-known warmth, wisdom and wicked wit, Gretel Killeen is the perfect MC or host for an awards night or corporate event.

Gretel Killeen has written more than twenty books, including the My Sister Series, My Life is a Toilet and My Life is a Wedgie for younger readers, the teen romance, I Love You Zelda Bloo, and the hilarious memoire, The Night My Bum Dropped, for adults.

Gretel has also written for many of Australia’s leading publications, was a regular columnist with The Australian newspaper’s magazine and a weekly columnist with The Sun Herald. While a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF Gretel wrote and directed TV commercials for unexploded ordnance awareness in Laos and the need for financial aid in Bangladesh, and wrote and directed a documentary on AIDS Orphans in Zambia.

On television she was the host of Big Brother for every series from 2001 until 2007. Gretel has featured as a ‘Beauty’ on Beauty and the Beast and appeared as Ray Martin’s wife for three years in the cult classic ‘A Town Like Dallas’ (The Midday Show). For seven years Gretel hosted the Logie Award-winning Big Brother for which she received a MO Award, and during this time she also hosted TV broadcasts for The Logies, The Sydney Mardi Gras, the Sydney New Year’s Eve Concert and several Australia Day Live broadcasts. In the world of theatre and stage Gretel has been a producer at Sydney’s 90’s cult venue, The Harold Park Hotel, performed as the narrator in The Rocky Horror Show, and entertained the troops in the Middle-East, the Solomon Islands, East Timor and Egypt.

In 2011 Gretel travelled to Afghanistan where she was the host and producer of segments for the ABC Australia Day live telecast and an Australia Day Ambassador. She also wrote and directed her first feature film, Jimmy and Gret Don’t Do Sex.