MacCarthy's Bar

This was the title of chapter six in the late Pete McCarthy's best-selling travel book, 'McCarthy's Bar', first published in 2000. In that chapter, he told of his hilarious adventures in Castletownbere and his visit to MacCarthy's Bar. 

    Pete changed the spelling to that of his own name when he used a photo of himself in the doorway of the pub for the book cover (Bailey the pug managed to get in on the act, just by chance).

    A stand-up comic and comedy writer before becoming a travel writer, Pete was born in Warrington, Lancashire, to an Irish mother and an English father. He was the writer and performer of many series for radio and TV.

    'McCarthy's Bar', his first book, told of his journey in Ireland, over a six-month period, from the south to the north-west of the country. 'Never pass a bar that has your name on it,' was one of Pete's rules of travel. Hugely popular, the book has sold more than a million copies.

    Sadly, Pete suffered from cancer, and died in 2004, aged only 53. Adrienne and Niki MacCarthy still remember him with affection. He wrote an introduction for a new edition of Dr Aidan MacCarthy's book, 'A Doctor's War', published in 2006.

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