Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, 5th Earl of Ickenham, commonly known as Uncle Fred, is a fictional character who appears in comedic short stories and novels written by P. G. Wodehouse between 1935 and 1961.
As a child he gambolled at Mitching Hill, his Uncle Willoughby's estate just outside London, which later became the suburb of Valley Fields; it was there that he shot the gardener in the trousers seat with his bow and arrow, and threw up after his first cigar.
He was a younger son, and therefore not expected to inherit his present title; he spent much time in America, working variously as a cowboy, a soda jerk, a newspaper reporter and a prospector in the Mojave Desert, before a number of deaths in the family left him heir to the Earldom.
In later youth, he became a member of the riotous Pelican Club, and a good friend of Galahad Threepwood, in whose stead he is occasionally called to Blandings, to help Gally's brother Lord Emsworth out of a jam.
His home is in Hampshire, where he lives quietly with his sponge Joyeuse and his American wife Jane, who at first permits him the occasional day or two in town, but later takes control of the family finances, leaving him only enough for "golf balls, self-respect and tobacco", and insists he stay in the country.
In an oft-referenced but never detailed anecdote, Uncle Fred once dragged his nephew Pongo to the Dog Races and was arrested within ten minutes of arriving ("I still say a wiser Magistrate would have been content with a mere caution.")
In Uncle Fred in the Springtime, when we next meet him, he cons slow-minded Lord Bosham out of his wallet just for the sake of it, and heads merrily down to Blandings Castle in the guise of Sir Roderick Glossop, with Pongo taking the role of his nephew and secretary, Basil.
While there, he wraps up the affairs of Polly and her man, and Pongo's money worries, with a panache only Gally himself could rival; he even avoids his wife's finding out he has left home while she was away (tending her sick mother in the South of France), despite the wrath of his niece Valerie.
His other exploits include shooting an old classmate's hat off with a Brazil nut with the precision of an Amazonian hunter (in Cocktail Time), and happily breaking up an engagement between his nephew Pongo and the quite unsuitable Hermione Bostock (in Uncle Dynamite).
In his last outing (Service with a Smile) Fred visits Blandings to help Lord Emsworth with his woes: his bossy sister Lady Constance Keeble, his scary secretary Lavender Briggs, his obnoxious houseguest the Duke of Dunstable, and a group of Church Lads permitted to camp on the property.