Thom McGinty known as the Diceman, was an actor, model and street artist specialising in mime

Mime artist

A mime artist is someone who uses mime as a theatrical medium or as a performance art, involving miming, or the acting out a story through body motions, without use of speech. In earlier times, in English, such a performer was referred to as a mummer...

.

He was born in Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

 in 1952 and was a member of Strathclyde Theatre Group before he came to Ireland in 1976 to work as a model. The name "Diceman" came from a (now closed) shop, located first in an arcade on Grafton Street and then on South Anne Street, that sold role-playing games.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, he became well-known and quite popular for performances on Grafton Street where he would sometimes work as a mime artist

Mime artist

A mime artist is someone who uses mime as a theatrical medium or as a performance art, involving miming, or the acting out a story through body motions, without use of speech. In earlier times, in English, such a performer was referred to as a mummer...

 or would otherwise perform in costume, advertising the shop. After its closure, he was hired to advertise various other establishments, including Bewley's

Bewley's

Bewley's Limited is an Irish company, established in 1840, that produces tea and coffee for sale around the world. The company is owned by Campbell Bewley Group Ltd....

.

He lived for a time in the early 1980s in Spiddal

Spiddal

Spiddal is a village on the shore of Galway Bay in County Galway in Ireland. It is west of Galway city on the R336 road. Spiddal is on the eastern side of the county's Gaeltacht near Connemara, and is a tourist centre with a scenic beach, harbour, and shore fishing.-The village:The Mac...

, County Galway

County Galway

County Galway is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the city of Galway. Galway County Council is the local authority for the county. There are several strongly Irish-speaking areas in the west of the county...

.

In 1989, he appeared in the Gate Theatre

Gate Theatre

The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by European and American dramatists...

 production of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

's Salome

Salome (play)

Salome is a tragedy by Oscar Wilde.The original 1891 version of the play was in French. Three years later an English translation was published...

, directed by Steven Berkoff

Steven Berkoff

Steven Berkoff is an English actor, writer and director. Best known for his performance as General Orlov in the James Bond film Octopussy, he is typically cast in villanous roles, such as Lt...

, which transferred to the Edinburgh Festival

Edinburgh Festival

The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...

. He also performed in The Maids

The Maids

The Maids is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. It was first performed at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris in a production that opened on 17 April 1947, which Louis Jouvet directed...

by Jean Genet

Jean Genet

Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...

.

In 1990, he was diagnosed with HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

 and died in February 1995 after a sudden decline. He was 43 years old.

In 1997, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr. Brendan Lynch PC, renamed a corner in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar as 'The Diceman's Corner'.

In 2005, Alan Stanford

Alan Stanford

Alan Stanford is a well known Irish-based actor and director.-Personal life:Stanford has lived in Ireland since 1969. He trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London....

 proposed that Grafton Street have a statue of Thom McGinty.

External links

• Some reminiscences of the Diceman
• A poem in memory of the Diceman by Liam O'Meara
• Erect a statue to the man who made Grafton Street stand still — Irish Independent
  Irish Independent
  The Irish Independent is Ireland's largest-selling daily newspaper that is published in both compact and broadsheet formats. It is the flagship publication of Independent News & Media.-History:...
  
  newspaper article, 19 August 2005.
• Remembering how he stood . . . still — Sunday Independent
  Sunday Independent
  The Sunday Independent is a broadsheet Sunday newspaper published in Ireland by Independent News and Media plc. The newspaper is edited by Aengus Fanning, and is the biggest selling Irish Sunday newspaper by a large margin ; average circulation of 291,323 between June 2004 and January 2005,...
  
  newspaper article, 29 April 2001.
• http://www.chaptersofdublin.com/books/chronology/1900-2000.htm