Shawn Patrick Micellef (born 18 July, 1962 in Adelaide, Australia) is an Australian actor and writer of TV shows The Micallef Program, Micallef Tonight, and NEWStopia, host of Talkin' 'bout Your Generation and Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell along with starring in and producing Mr & Mrs Murder. Australia's answer to Stephen Fry, he makes frequent use of wordplay, non-sequiturs and subversion of audience expectations.
Though initially keeper of a small but loyal fanbase, he has in more recent years risen to the public attention in Australia.
With his frequent collaborators, his roles typically involve him assuming the role of 'Shaun Micallef' (quite successfully), a pompous and self-obsessed man who is a satire of whatever role he is taking on at the time. This is however not a case of Adam Westing because Shaun isn't widely believed to be like the Micallef character.
He is also known as an actor, having starred in the short lived Welcher & Welcher series, the final series of SeaChange, Mr & Mrs Murder, as well as several films. He also had two cameos in Danger 5.
His first novella, Preincarnate, was published in 2010. It stars Tom Cruise, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, Jack the Ripper, and the Loch Ness Monster.
Provides examples of
- Catchphrase
- "Freak me sideways"
- "See you in the monkey-house, Australia."
- "Ja hasrah, and goodnight."
- "Thank you, Verity."
- Author Appeal: Shaun is a big fan of classic cinema, and his skits and writing frequently features references and homages to Charlie Chaplin, Fred Astaire, the Marx Brothers and similar entertainers.
- Cloudcuckoolander: His Twitter posts
can be a bit...weird. - The Comically Serious: Mad as Hell and Newstopia being standout examples.
- Deadpan Snarker
- Large Ham: His alter egos Milo Kerrigan and David McGhan
- Metaphorgotten
- Precision F-Strike
- Screwed by the Network
- Micallef Tonight was cancelled shortly after being renewed for 20 episodes.
- Silver Fox: He could give George Clooney a run for his money.
- Sophisticated as Hell: Just listen to him talk about any bureaucratic issue. He'll make the whole thing sound insanely convoluted before arriving at a point far more reasonable than what his guest is trying to raise.
- Stylistic Suck: The Roger Explosion shorts manage to invoke Murphy's Law to the nth degree. David McGhan forgets lines (when he's not accidentally reading other people's lines), can't emote, misses cues and wears garish makeup.
- Take That!
- The Unpronounceable
- It's Mih-kaah-leff. Not Me-kay-liff, Mick-err-laff, McCauliffe, Jessica, or Mer-karl-aff. The correct Maltese is Mee-kah-leff, but Shaun took his mother's Australian pronunciation over his father's Maltese. Why? "Because he has an accent." Shaun adopted the Maltese pronunciation for the first two seasons of NEWStopia presumably to give the show a typical SBS multicultural flavour.
