Look Into My Pies

Yowsa! The fecker’s in Greydstones!

s if The Happy Pear wasn’t magic enough already, to have Ireland’s top alchemist gracing the Greystones eaterie with his presence just about rips a hole in the space-time continuum.

About to bring his Hypno Magick show to The Parkview Hotel on Friday, May 19th, we managed to grab a few words with the mischievous Keith Barry as he prepares to work his sweet sorcery on us yokels.

Having broken through internationally in 2003 with his TV series Close Encounters With Keith Barry, the Waterford-born Barry has been working his magic all over the world ever since. As well as further TV specials here, in the UK and the US, plus appearances on everything from Ellen to Xposé, cameos in CSI: Miami and the international box-office smash Now You See Me, plus a record-breaking TED Talk,  it’s live that Barry truly comes into his own.

As the title suggests, his latest offering, Hypno Magick, is a show of two distinct halves, with the fine art of hypnosis contrasting nicely with the magic tricks that have made Barry an international star.

Later tonight, we’ll have a groovy Facebook competition where you can win two Premier tickets as well as pre-show dinner-for-two and meet the man himself. In the meantime, we try and play some mind games with a man who, clearly, is far more mentalist than even GG…

It was at the tender age of five that you first got interested in magic – when did you know that this was more than just a hobby, but a lifelong passion…?
A part of me thinks I always knew, but, when you’re young, you never truly know what you might end up doing with your life. I was always convinced that magic is what I wanted to do, but my parents – as supportive as they were – would have been quick to point out that it’s a tough business to be in. So, I never stopped practising, learning and loving magic, but I studied chemistry too.
My parents were keen that I would have the back-up of a regular job, and I really enjoyed chemistry. I was getting ready to do a PhD, in fact, when the magic just became full-time. It was a difficult choice, given that you end up in serious debt when you start out trying to make a living from doing magic, but I never lost faith in the idea that I would make it one day.

The Road To Paul Daniels moment happened when you were fourteen, and you learnt every magic trick in the book – that book being Magic For The Complete Klutz – and then started performing…
That book changed the way I viewed magic, and I started doing birthday parties, then the boat from Rosslare to Cherbourg. It just started to grow and grow from there…

What about that mentalist side of your act? I’m guessing that’s a little bit trickier than pulling the two of clubs out of a rabbit…
I got into hypnosis early on too, and again, it was all down to just studying a book on the subject until I reckon I had it licked. The first person I ever hypnotised was a guy called David Burke, in Irish class, back when I was 15. I ended up giving him a loan of the book afterwards, and Dave’s now a professional hypnotist, working down in Waterford. Never saw that book again until about two years ago, on The Late Late Show, when Dave came out of the audience to return it to me. He found it in the attic after all those years.
As my interest in this side of magic grew, luckily for me, my girlfriend – now my wife – was at college, studying psychology, and that just increased my interest in how the mind works. I started learning a lot from Mairead’s psychology books, about the human psyche, and it opened up that whole mentalist side of magic to me. Shortly after college, I began to take that side of act seriously…

It wasn’t long after you turned professional that Close Encounters With Keith Barry came along. After 10 years of hard grafting, you became an overnight sensation.
That show definitely changed everything. It allowed me to do theatre shows, which is where I’m always most comfortable. I think magic works best when you’re right there, in the room, and Close Encounters just opened up the world to me. Other shows followed, but, more importantly, the live tours just took off.

You’ve been all over the world with your magic, and appeared on stages and TV screens in just about every country. Given that level of success, are you relaxed about your career, about your reputation, or is it always about the next show, the next big trick?
I don’t think you can ever sit back and feel like you’ve arrived. There’s a hunger and a fear that, in truth, needs to be there. It gives you the energy and the drive to keep on pushing for a better show, to become a better magician.
So, no matter how successful you get, you still feel, deep down, that you can do better. Being on Ellen so many times, on Conan and all the rest, it’s a kick, but there’s definitely this need to be planning something new and exciting for your next big moment. We’ve just completed recording Hypnotize Me for the American market. It’s another version of You’re Back In The Room, which we did on ITV, with Philip Schofield, and this time out, I’m working with Taye Diggs. I’m off to Vegas soon too, and then a week in Cannes for a festival there. You have to keep moving forward…

Before we go on, I should ask, have you ever been close enough to David Blaine to punch him in the face?
I actually know David Blaine, and, although I have been that close to him, I could never punch the guy, in the face or anywhere else. He’s a magician that people either love or hate, but there’s no question that he’s done a lot for magic. It was really David who reinvented magic for the modern television audience, and he’s helped all of us by breaking through the way he did.

Those death-defying but strangely boring stunts make me think he should change his name to Whydini though…
David is incredibly talented as a magician, and he knows how to do close-up magic, illusions, and those big Houdini stunts. If it wasn’t for David, I probably wouldn’t have gotten half as far as I have on TV, and the likes of Dynamo and myself owe him a great deal.

A mentalist I have a lot of time for is comedian Tom Binns, whose comic creation Ian D. Monfort: Spirit Medium sets out to do for the psyhics industry what Alan Partridge did for TV chatshow hosts.
I love that Ian D. Monfort character. I’ve watched him so many times online now, and it always has me in tears. I’ve been very outspoken about my aversion to that whole psychics industry, to the point that I feel I’ve probably said enough about it, but having someone like Ian D. Monfort out there helps to get the message across. A lot of these people are just con men.

You challenged Ireland’s mighty Psychic Wayne to a showdown, but, bizarrely, the man behind the controversial TV3 infomercials didn’t see that coming, and went into hiding. Do you ever feel like going Full James Randi on this multi-billion-dollar industry that seems to be all smoke and crystal balls?
Yeah, haven’t seen Psychic Wayne for a while. I’ve went Full James Randi there for a while – for about two years – and most real magicians will have a problem with these so-called psychics. Mainly because we’re educated in the techniques that they use, and we can see the strings. We can see how they’re fooling people, but their manipulation leaves a bad taste. Especially when it means that they’re duping vulnerable people out of a lot of money.

And what of the horoscope harlots? Someone like the late Jonathan Cocainer became a multi-millionaire through his astronomy phonelines, his brother, Oscar, admitting that it’s the same message, day after day. ‘Things aren’t great now, but they’re going to get better’…?
Once you start investigating the world of psychics, and beyond, it all starts to fall down, swiftly. I was out at a psychic’s show in The Civic Theatre in Tallaght, and he really wasn’t that good. People there really pushed me afterwards to tell me what I thought of the show, and I decided that the best way to answer was to give them a reading, but make clear that I wasn’t actually getting in touch with their dead relatives. I wanted them to know that it was completely fake.
I gave this one woman a reading, and stressed that I wasn’t actually talking to her dead mum, Caroline, but she was still in tears as I revealed details about her. I got all the names, details, etc, and they left very happy, realising that they’d had their eyes opened. Of course, some people get great comfort from such things, but, I believe that psychics are really just interfering with the natural grieving process. Some people end up mortgaging their houses, believing they’re getting in touch with a lost loved one…

You’ll be 41 on October 2nd, and you’re a family man now, with young kids to think about. Does that sit well with the literally dangerous positions you sometimes put yourself in for your shows. Do you think about putting your Paddy Knievel days behind you…?
I certainly had to rethink that part of my act when I became a dad, but, three weeks after my daughter was born, I came up with the idea that I was going to get tazed by a cop in LA. Get hit in the wrong spot with one of those things, and you can die. And then I’ll find myself hanging upside down in the air, wrapped in cling film, inches away from death, and think, hmmm, is this really something I should be doing?
The thrill is a big part of the attraction for me, and for the audience, so, for now, whilst I’m still fit and healthy, and able to bounce back from injuries, I’ll continue to push the boundaries…

It’s important that the thrill is always there…?
Absolutely. If I’m not feeling that rush of excitement, I really can’t expect the audience to feel it either. At heart, I’m just a kid who loves magic, and I want that feeling to hit the audience too. That’s what makes the live shows such an incredible experience. It’s like we’re all lifting off up into the air together, and just flying around the moon. Only, you know, we’ve got comfy seats. And a bar nearby.
What more could you ask for…?

You can also find out more about the great man himself on his official website here.