Keith Barry

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Keith Patrick Barry
Born	1976 County Waterford, Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Occupation	Television Illusionist

Keith Patrick Barry is an Irish illusionist, mentalist, and close-up magician.

Born in County Waterford, Ireland in 1976, Barry's interest in magic began at the age of fourteen when he purchased a book entitled Magic for the complete Klutz.

Since 2003, Barry has performed on his own television show in Europe entitled Close Encounters with Keith Barry. The show has been played in 28 countries worldwide.

In 2004, Barry had an MTV television special entitled Brainwashed. 2005 ended with Barry performing a live Christmas special in Europe. Keith Barry Live With Friends featured various celebrities such as magician Billy McComb, Jim Corr of The Corrs, and The Conway Sisters ^[1].

Barry's success throughout Europe coupled with his MTV special led to a four year multi-special deal with CBS. His first special with CBS debuted on May 12, 2006 and was entitled Keith Barry: Extraordinary. ^[2] The special later aired on The CW on New Years Eve 2006 and on New Years Day, 2007 on TV3 in New Zealand and Australia on the Arena channel.

In the Keith Barry: Extraordinary special, he performed various pieces of illusion and interesting mental feats. In one trick, which he referred to as "Black Ops Hypnosis", he made a host from Entertainment Tonight forget that he had torn a specific page from a book and sealed it in an envelope, in the span of roughly five minutes. Another "trick" is that he made a man lift his arm when he thought others stopped touching him. His eyes where covered. Barry first used suggestion to make the man "concentrate" and lied that he was touching the man. The man imagined the touch and lifted his arm, but Barry and another member of the audience only moved their hand afar.

His television acts were done with the use of A- and B-list celebrities, which side-stepped an oft-cited criticism of David Blaine, namely, that he edits out the tricks that don't go well for television. While his show did not receive much press or promotion, the CBS special garnered many fans in the blogging world.^[3]

Following on from a successful week in Dublin's Vicar Street, Keith was injured in a car crash on the Belfast to Armagh road on March 1, 2007. He suffered severe trauma to his left leg and only returned to the stage in July of the same year at Vicar Street.

As an actor, he performed in the "Open Water" episode of CSI: Miami.

On December 29, 2007 Keith performed in a live special on ITV in the UK titled Keith Barry - The Escape Live.^[4] The finale of the show featured an escape from a shed rigged with explosives. Keith was tied to a chair with very thick ropes by two male members of the audience, one of the volunteers was called Glen Gathard, who was noted for hoping that Keith Barry wouldn't make it out of the explosion. The chair was carried to the shed where initially six workmen were seen to be hammering additional wood to the exterior of the shed. A fuse had been lit and a two minute countdown was in progress. After one minute, seven workmen left the scene. After the countdown was complete the fuse fizzled out and a few seconds later the shed exploded. Keith was safely on top of a gantry some distance away.

On January 15, 2008 Keith performed live on The Ellen Degeneres Show replacing a musical act that was regularly featured on her show.

Keith made an appearance on the Paul O'Grady Show on the 26 May 2008.