Paddy Kelly

Date of birth: December 5th, 1977 Place of birth: Dublin, Ireland On a stormy night in the winter of 1977, Michael Patrick Kelly (Paddy) was born in a camper in the south of Dublin, Ireland. Growing up as the 10th child in an artistic family - "The Kelly Family". He started performing and presenting his brothers and sisters as a young host at concerts and tv shows. Due to the musical environment in his early youth, songwriting and performing became a natural part of his life and at the age of 15 he wrote "An Angel" which was the first self-written big hit and breakthrough song for "The Kelly Family". Others followed like "Fell in Love with an Alien" or "One more Song" and at 19 he became the leading producer in the studio and musical leader of the band which has sold 15million records to date and received 48 gold and platinum albums across Europe. In addition to music, Paddy's second artistic passion is drawing (see art). Paddy is a "health nut" living from organic grown foods and fasting regularly on water only. Inspired by his brother Joey's passion for sports, he has become an enthusiastic runner taking part in marathons as well. Through the early travels with his family he picked up French, German and Spanish in addition to his mother tongue English. He plays guitar, piano/keyboards, harmonica, congas, percussion, penny whistle and drums. Politically, Paddy recently engaged himself in various peace activities bringing 500.000 demonstrators to a minute of silence in Berlin before singing a song alone with his guitar prior to the war on Iraq. About a month later, his arrest with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire in New York which was covered by international media attention, lad Iraqi civilians to place posters with pictures of his arrest in Baghdad with the printed headline "If this is how you deal with your celebrities, we don't want your kind of democracy" Since his conversion in 1999 Paddy is a confessed Christian and established a charital foundation by which he personally supports humanitarian and cultural projects throughout Europe, India and Africa.