What happened to the ‘not happy, Jan!’ boss from the 2000 Yellow Pages advert?

‘Not happy, Jan!’ – It’s the catch phrase that entered Australia’s cultural vernacular in 2000 thanks to a hilarious Yellow Pages advert. 

Comedian and actress Deborah Kennedy was the woman who delivered the famous line Aussie now use to express discontent.

Now two decades on, viewers may have seen the once-grumpy boss in far more cheery roles on TV and not even realised.

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Deborah, now 68, had been acting for 24 years before taking on the commercial role that she’s now most known for. 

In the advert, she played an angry boss who had discovered her employee, Jan, had not placed her company in the Yellow Pages – a telephone directory of businesses.

She yelled the line ‘Not happy, Jan!’ out of her office window as Jan escaped the building and ran down the street in a hurry to get away from her boss.

Starting her career in the 1970s, Deborah had actually performed in various stage productions and acted in television shows before landing the Yellow Pages gig.

The commercial appeared to give Deborah a boost in her career, as she went on to land more prestigious roles in local dramas and soaps.

She had a stint on McLeod’s Daughters in 2002, a recurring character in Neighbours in 2006, part in ABC comedy Laid in 2011 to 2012, and a small role on The Secret Daughter in 2016.

In Neighbours she played Lou Carpenter’s Russian partner Mishka Schneiderova, whom he met online.

Deborah later joined historical drama A Place To Call Home from 2013 to 2018.

In 2019, she revisited her famous role and catch phrase in an advert for Darrell Lea.

The actress who played Jan, Rhonda Doyle, also rejoined the recreation.

However, instead of yelling ‘Not happy, Jan!’, Deborah’s boss character ate some chocolate, calmed down and yelled out the window: ‘No worries, Jan!’ 

Darrell Lea’s unofficial sequel was later dump from television after Yellow Pages complained about the ‘rip off’.