CELEBRITY FANS:The idea of catching a fish and then three hours later putting it on your plate is very appealing, says KEITH BARRY,magician, 33

When did you start fishing?

I started when I was about 11 or 12 with my dad down in Dunmore East, Co Waterford. He used to take me me down to the rocks there. We’d fish regularly for mackerel. I remember one year when not one, but two shoals of mackerel came in and we probably caught a couple of hundred between the two of us. We went around giving them away to the neighbours. It was a case of anybody who’d take one.

In the last couple of years we’ve started beach casting down in Kilcoole, Co Wicklow. We’d be looking for anything from sea bass to plaice. What I love about down there is that I’ve yet to see anybody else fishing, which is great. It’s great to find your own little hideout.

Lure fishing for bass is great fun. Basically, you just throw a lure on top of the water and you jig it around and it looks like a fish, struggling to survive, which is when the sea bass will come up and take it. It’s amazing you could be there for five or six hours and suddenly this big sea bass comes up and swallows your whole lure – the lures are quite big – and you reel it in.

What do you love about fishing? I love the idea of catching something and three hours later putting it on your plate, having done all the work yourself. Also my life is so hectic. It’s all go, go, go, and I never stop. Even when I’m at home, I could be up until three o’clock in the morning developing new material, so I never tend to switch off.

Even watching TV my mind goes back to magic but I find that the only place where that doesn’t happen is when I’m fishing.

And the areas that I go to you get to see a lot of sea life – a lot of seals, dolphins. You’d see unusual birds like kingfishers. It’s very peaceful to watch nature go by.

What’s frustrating about it?

The most frustrating thing is when you might think you’ve a fish on the line and then you go to reel it in you find that you’re caught in weeds or rocks or something. Then you’re losing your tackle and your gear, and you’ve to re-rig the whole thing.

Other times, when the weather forecast would show the weather to be quite good – the winds might be low or whatever – and then you could drive an hour, an hour and a half, and then you could walk for another half an hour to get to the spot that you need to get to, and when you get there you find that the sea is really rough, that the wind has gone up, and that there’s no point in even fishing, really.

Sometimes I get frustrated when I buy some live bait in a tackle shop but you’ve no way of knowing – you can ask them, but they can always lie to you – if they received those worms that morning or the morning before. Very often, you could get a bag of worms, they’d look okay in the shop, and by the time you get down to the sea they could be dead, and dead worms are no good to you.

The other frustrating thing is seals. They’re like pests to fishermen. They know exactly where to hang around. They just lie in the water chilling out, relaxing for the day, but they’re actually watching for any signs of mackerel being on the line, and they just come in and snatch them off your line. They know exactly how to get fish off the line without hooking themselves.

You could be down in Dun Laoghaire, where you can fish off the rocks, or often in Bulloch Harbour in Dalkey, and you could be fishing for four hours, let’s say, and nothing happens and then you could catch a line of mackerel. You’d reel in your line and all you’re left with is three fish heads.

What’s the most unusual thing you’ve seen while fishing?

Last year, there were a couple of Polish guys fishing next to me and as one of them cast out, he snagged a seagull – who was flying overhead – on his line. The guy had to reel the seagull in and as he was taking the hook out, the seagull attacked the guy. The seagull went nuts, obviously because it had a hook in it. It was pecking like crazy at the guy. It was quite dangerous because the fisherman was half falling off the rocks, which were at quite a height.

Do you ever use any magic?

No, no. There’s no way to hypnotise fish unfortunately.

Keith Barry appeared at the Olympia Theatre from June 30th-July 25th.