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At the tender age of seven, I was told I was to play the uilleann pipes. Not knowing anyone else my age doing that at the time, I was quite surprised and not terribly enthusiastic.

Over three decades later I am a very happy lad indeed. I have close friends the world over and have visited every continent except Antarctica – all thanks to a little bag of sticks, seven reeds and some very smart parents!

I was taken under the various wings of the old masters who showed me quickly what was nice - and what wasn’t! While my heart is most definitely set on playing old flat pitch uilleann pipes (often with Peter O'Loughlin), I love to throw myself headlong into anything new which comes along. I have been involved in over 75 album recordings since my first venture into the studio in 1982 and have collaborated with many top artists playing traditional Irish music, classical, pop, jazz and country.

As well as playing pipes, flute and whistle, I make up tunes for film and television all on my own, creating strange (and sometimes very loud) sounds on computers in my recording studio An Tubar Fuaime. My music has appeared in many Hollywood films including Circle of Friends, Rob Roy, The Secret of Roan Inish and The Gangs of New York.

To non-musicians I am best known for my membership of the diminutive cult super-group CRAN and as the original piper with both Riverdance and the Afro Celt Sound System.

I live in Conamara in the west of Ireland in a lovely bright dry house with my partner, son and daughter, some small wild cats, a few foxes and pheasants, a huge heron and a herd of hares. It has recently been put about that I may be the tallest Leprechaun in the world, almost twice the height of Ireland’s smallest piper! I like to eat ice cream and to go flippering in the sea on hot days.