Freek De Jonge

Frederik Jan Georg (Freek) de Jonge (born 30 August 1944) is a Dutch cabaret performer. He was born in the village Westernieland as son of a pastor. His family moved to Workum, and later to Zaandam and Goes. At age 11, Freek had his first performance on stage. After barely making it through high school, he studied cultural anthropology in Amsterdam. During his studies he met Bram Vermeulen and Johan Gertenbach, and they formed a group of comedy performers, Neerlands Hoop. In 1978, Neerlands Hoop, by the show "Bloed aan de paal", became famous for its fight against the participation of the Netherlands national football team at the football world cup in Argentina. In 1979, Neerlands Hoop split up and Freek de Jonge started his solo career. Besides performing in Cabaret, Freek de Jonge has written the novels Zaansch Veem (1987), Neerlands Bloed (1991) and Opa's Wijsvinger (1993). He has been presentator on some television shows and directed two films: De Illusionist (1983) and De Komediant (1986). He also wrote a hip hop song with Dutch rapper Brainpower. In 1994, Freek de Jonge started to work with Nits. Under the name Frits, they performed covers of old Neerlands Hoop songs, translated Nits songs and newly written material. An album was released in 1995 : Dankzij de Dijken. Freek de Jonge continued to work with the keyboards of Nits, Robert Jan Stips : Stips released two albums : Gemeen Goed in 1997 then Rapsodia in 1998. A cover from Death is not the end from Bob Dylan reached the first place of the Dutch hit-parade in 1997. The musical co-operation with Robert Jan Stips continues to this day. From 1997 to October 2000, Freek de Jonge was a columnist of the daily newspaper Parool. He started a new experiment during the year 1999 : under the name "De Jonge", he gave ten different shows from every varieties of the cabaret scene. In February 2004, he went to Iraq for a week to perform for the Dutch troops. On 12 November 2005, he received the Groenman prize from the Genootschap Onze Taal; this is a society which works with the Dutch language. Freek de Jonge is married to Hella Asser, daughter from Eli Asser ; they have two children but they lost a third one at the age of three months.