Deirdre O'Kane

Deirdre O'Kane (born 25 March 1968) is an Irish stand-up comedian and actress. Originally from Drogheda, County Louth, she attended Loreto High School Beaufort, an all-girls Catholic secondary school in Rathfarnham, Dublin. She became a stand-up comic in 1996 and reached the finals of the BBC New Comedy Awards that same year. She has played at the Edinburgh Festival every year since, including 2001, where she performed her own solo show, Deirdre O'Kane is Crystallized, as well as the two-hander Tis Pity She's Anonymous. She has also played the Melbourne, Adelaide and Kilkenny Cat Laughs Festivals and toured the Middle East, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Prague, Brussels and London.

O'Kane began her career as an actress and has played every major theatre in Ireland, with leading roles including Mary in Juno and the Paycock at the National Theatre, Miss Funny in At the Black Pig's Dyke for the Druid Theatre Co., and Daphne in Present Laughter at the Gate Theatre. On screen, she portrayed Noeleen in the 2003 motion picture Intermission, directed by John Crowley, and played the lead role in the 2014 biopic Noble as Christina Noble, a children's rights campaigner and charity worker who founded the Christina Noble Children's Foundation in 1989.

Her television work has been extensive. She hosted the ten-part stand-up and sketch series The Lounge on RTE, which featured guests such as Rich Hall, Adam Hills, Jeff Green and Dara O Briain. In 2001 she played the leading role of Helen in Paths to Freedom, a spoof documentary for RTE/BBC Choice, and in 2012 she took on the part of Debra Moone in Sky's comedy Moone Boy. In October 2021, The Deirdre O'Kane Show launched on Sky Max, and that September she became a judge on the Irish talent show The Big Deal. In 2024 she was a contestant on LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland, reaching the final but losing to Jason Byrne.