Keith Barry slams DJ Neil Prendeville after show snub: ‘I thought it was a wind-up’
The award-winning hypnotist was in Cork yesterday promoting his Brain Hacker show in the city’s Everyman Theatre in May.
He was interviewed by PJ Coogan on 96FM’s Opinion Line between 9am and 10am, performing several tricks and brain reading stunts for Coogan, his team, and listeners.
The main man @Keithpbarry hacked us senseless on @OpinionLine96 today! A great guy and a class act. Thanks Keith! pic.twitter.com/U7UYgr67w8
— PJ Coogan (@pjcoogan) April 11, 2014
Barry was then driven across the city to RedFM’s Bishopstown studios to appear as scheduled on The Neil Prendeville Show just after 10am.
But when Barry got to reception, a member of Prendeville’s production team told him that he wasn’t going on the show. Barry said Prendeville “was not even courteous enough” to personally face him.
Barry vented his fury to his 50,000 Twitter followers, accusing Prendeville of acting like a prima donna.
Writing on his Facebook page later, which has over 78,000 likes, the mentalist said he had “never met such unprofessionalism” in his career.
Barry said after his gig in Dublin’s Olympia on Thursday, he went home and worked until 4.30am on new demonstrations for his Cork radio appearances.
He left his home at 6.15am yesterday to drive to Cork for the promotional work.
“Had an absolute blast on Cork’s 96FM with PJ,” he said. “Then onto RedFm. Having been a professional entertainer for 15 years I have never met such unprofessionalism.
“I thought it was a wind-up at first as they had asked for no exclusivity and actually asked me two days prior to develop new material to perform on his fellow DJ KC which took me hours to do.”
In a reference to Prendeville’s incident on board an Aer Lingus flight in October 2009, Barry said: “It’s interesting to me how Neil quickly forgot that I was one of his supporters during his ‘unfortunate incident’ and my manger sent an email of support from us to the station manager at the time.
“The reason I write this is not to whine — it’s to warn other professionals away from amateurs like Neil as the same could happen to them when such egos are out of control.”
He threatened to text his showbiz friends to tell them to avoid Prendeville’s show “as we don’t have time for this nonsense”.
“Perhaps one day Neil will return to his professionalism and return back to Earth with a hard bump,” he said.
Mr Prendeville was not available for comment last night. Emer O’Hea-Martin, his senior producer, said he will address the issues on air on his show on Monday morning.
A spokesman for the Opinion Line said Barry was “an absolute star”.
“He performed a great set of tricks for us and he is welcome back at 96FM anytime,” he said.
