Rosenstock first came to the attention of the Irish public playing the role of Dr. David Hanlon in the soap
Glenroe in the 1990s. However, he is now best known for the popular
Gift Grub segments which have featured on
The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show on Today FM since May 1999, which Rosenstock created alongside
Paul McLoone, a radio presenter with Today FM and also frontman of the Northern Irish pop-punk/new-wave band
The Undertones, which occurred in 1999 and when McLoone served as a producer for
The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show.
Gift Grub is a series of comic sketches, impersonations and parodies that have featured Rosenstock assuming the personae of
Bertie Ahern,
Ronan Keating,
Colin Farrell and
Roy Keane amongst many others; he also provides the manic voice of Right Price Tiles radio spokesperson "Daft Dave". Rosenstock performed an impersonation of
José Mourinho in a parody of a song from the musical
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. This spread on Internet message boards and eventually it was played on a
Sky Sports broadcast. Mourinho had heard the song and enjoyed the impersonation so much he asked Rosenstock to perform a private show for him and the
Chelsea squad. Rosenstock later released, with Mourinho's blessing, a single version of "
José and his Amazing Technicolor Overcoat". He also released another song ("
I Sign a Little Player or Two") on the internet with a parody of Mourinho in an interview then breaking into song. In 2005, he starred as Keano in the comedy musical play
I, Keano, which concerns
Keane storming out of the
Republic of Ireland national football squad during preparations for the
2002 FIFA World Cup. In 2005, Rosenstock achieved the
Christmas number one single in the
Irish music Charts, with a parody of
Will Young's song
Leave Right Now (which itself was a Christmas number-one in 2003). The parody concerned Roy Keane's
controversial departure from
Manchester United and his falling-out with
Alex Ferguson. Between December 2007 and May 2009, Rosenstock worked on a puppet comedy series entitled
Special 1 TV (originally ''I'm on
Setanta Sports''), which was presented as a parody weekly football talk show hosted by "José Mourinho". Rosenstock voiced all the puppet characters on the sketch, with the exception of "Rafael Benitez", who was performed by Keith Burke, including the main character Mourinho, his studio co-hosts "Sven-Göran Eriksson" and "Wayne Rooney", and regular phone-in callers like "Alex Ferguson", "Arsène Wenger", "Roy Keane" and "Mick McCarthy", as well as the non-football-related characters,
Nelson Mandela,
Willie Nelson,
Barack Obama and
Tom Cruise. He won the Outstanding Achievement Award at the 11th annual PPI (Phonographic Performance Ireland) Radio Awards. In November 2012, his new show called
The Mario Rosenstock Show started on
RTÉ2. A second series of the show began to air in September 2013. ==Family==