“Top of the mornin’ to you” exclaims Freddie the Leprechaun. “You’re looking mighty!”
Freddie is on hand to entertain tourists in Temple Bar Square, posing for photos in his bright green costume, looking every inch the professional Irishman and ready with a song and a joke – he tells us he’s 500 years old, “give or take a century”, and of course he hails from Tír na nÓg.
With the mask off, Louis Wilson is no less genial and he clearly enjoys his job. “It's unusual and a little bit off the Richter scale but it's good,” he smiles. “I suppose you do what you're good at, and I'm good at it. So it works.”
However, Louis is candid about how he ended up donning the suit for the first time five years ago: “The recession - it helps pay the mortgage,” he says.
Dublin Lives: Tell us your story
He says he’s done all sorts of jobs in the past, run his own businesses and spent time in America, and in an ideal world he’d probably live abroad. But needs must. “It's a living,” he says. “You have to make the money and that's it. If I had the choice, I suppose I'd be in Spain permanently. But who knows? One of these days...”
Still, as a card-carrying actor with an infectious personality, Louis seems to suit this line of work. He also has plenty of ideas on what Dublin needs to do to maintain its status as a tourist Mecca.
“I hope that things like what I'm doing on the street will continue and that we don't cleanse the streets,” he says. “Keep them open for the tourists – they love to see the flower sellers, Moore St, the likes of [what I’m doing] and musicians. There has been a bit of interference with that in the past, and I think we've had enough of that now. Leave it as it is and let's get on with it.”
