Castledaly magician to wed fiancée he met while performing

Castledaly magician Oisín Foley, who met his fiancée while performing at a Christmas party, is looking forward to a local show in Athlone later this month.

Oisín recently bought a house in Newbridge, Co Kildare with his fiancée Dublin woman Edel Greer, and they are in wedding plan mode ahead of the ceremony in September in Ballymagarvey in county Meath. The couple, who have been together for the last five years, met at a Christmas party that Oisín was performing at, which he said is a fun story to tell people.

Speaking about his upcoming show in the Brazen Monkey bar, Athlone on Saturday, April 20, Oisín said that he has spent the last number of months reworking a show that he had created prior to lockdown to make it more up to date by mixing magic, mind reading and hypnosis.

The Westmeath man was contacted by the Brazen Monkey team a few months ago who asked if he would be interested in doing a show there. Oisín is looking forward to his headline show but said that he's also “very nervous”.

“With hometown shows, people know you the best so you won't really get the wool over their eyes, so you really have to go back and work your hardest,” he commented.

Despite this, he added that attendees will have a “fun night out” and that they're “guaranteed to have a couple of laughs”.

Oisín performs regularly at weddings and corporate events which have “snowballed from there and gotten bigger and better over the last year".

While working on his current show, Oisín looked at material from other performers in years gone by to examine how he could modernise it by bringing in new ideas, new methods and new psychology. “What I've started doing is really changing up my material and making sure that I'm bringing great entertainment, great fun and great value to people.”

The Maynooth University graduate remarked that one aspect of his shows that he really enjoys is getting everyone in the audience “involved in some shape or another, whether they're on stage or they're not".

"It's very interactive that way, which kind of brings out good laughs all around,” said Oisín.

One of the highlights from his previous shows was bringing people up on stage and hypnotising them into thinking they're Conor McGregor.

Speaking about dealing with sceptics of his work, Oisín stated: “One thing is I'm very open and honest that I'm not psychic. I'm using kind of magic and psychology with showmanship and comedy”.

“When it comes to the hypnosis side of things, I find the people that are the most sceptical tend to be the ones that it works the most on which is really funny when you think about it. People show up and they go, I can't be hypnotised. Two or three minutes later they're forgetting their name.”

Oisín admires the work of many Irish magicians such as Aiden Murphy, Conor Breen and Keith Barry, along with comedian Neil Delamere.

“I'm always on the lookout for new and exciting opportunities, whether they're new and bigger venues or whether they're just something that interests me in terms of a different style of performance when someone approaches me with that,” concluded Oisín.

The local man was named the Wedding Industry Awards 'Wedding Magician of the Year 2023.' Oisín performed his first public show in 2017 in Tuar Ard Arts Centre in Moate and has done many shows in Dublin and the midlands since then. The former Moate Community School student has also worked abroad in the UK and Spain and worked with Irish Ferries for a number of years travelling over and back to France.

Oisín first started performing with Centre Stage Youth Theatre when he was just six years old and began performing magic a few years later. He also performed on the Late Late Toy Show as famous fictional wizard Harry Potter.

Oisín's MINDREADER show will take place in The Brazen Monkey bar in Athlone on Saturday, April 20 at 9pm. Tickets cost €5 each and can be purchased on Eventbrite at www.eventbrite.com/e/mindreader-oisin-foley-tickets-870953083117.

Anyone interested in booking Oisín for an event such as a birthday, wedding, corporate event or private party should email foleymagic@live.ie or call him on 085 131 7324. For more information or to see some of Oisin's magic tricks follow his Facebook page, 'Oisin Foley Mindreader' and find him on Instagram @oisinfoleymindreader.