Peter Charles McCarthy Robinson (9 November 1951 – 6 October 2004) was an Anglo-Irish comedian, radio and television presenter and travel writer.

[2] His Irish mother had moved to England during the Second World War to work as a nurse[1] and met her future husband at a dance.

[3] McCarthy was educated at West Park Grammar School in St Helens, a Roman Catholic institution run by the Christian Brothers.

[2][3] As a child, he spent his school holidays in Drimoleague in West Cork, Ireland, and stayed with relatives on the farm called "Butlersgift" where his mother had grown up,[1] a place that he later described as "straight from a story book".

[3] He moved into comedy, co-founded Cliff Hanger Theatre with friends Robin Driscoll, Steve McNicholas, Tony Haase and Rebecca Stevens, and discovered a talent for verbal repartee.

The company toured the country performing in pubs,[2][3] and their first show, The Featherstone Flyer (1978), was premiered in the Hope and Anchor in Islington, North London.

[2] For the 1987 Brighton Festival he created Boredom and Black Magic in Hove, a three-hour coach tour and pub crawl.

The Brighton Argus reviewer wrote, "The hour-long tour-de-force begins with an apparently hungover Peter in bed, surrounded by empty bottles, and transfers to the living room, where he sports a revolting 1970s stretch burgundy outfit, threatens a striptease and then fortunately changes his mind....In between he delivers a quick-fire monologue which develops from the perils of drinking to tragicomic stuff touching on loneliness, death and unrequited love.

He wrote and performed in a two-man comedy show with the Liverpudlian poet Roger McGough which toured in Britain and Australia.

[2][3] In the 1980s he began writing television scripts and gags for the comedians Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones.

McCarthy recalled: "We travelled to Zanzibar and China, Fiji and Corsica, Costa Rica and Laos, stood on the edge of volcanoes, had lunch with heroes of the Crete resistance, and got caught up in a military coup in Vanuatu".

For BBC Radio 4, he presented Breakaway, First Impressions, X Marks the Spot, American Beauty, and Cajun Country, as well as appearing as a regular guest on Loose Ends, Just a Minute and The News Quiz.

[2] After the success of his previous books, he was planning to write a third travel work exploring the six counties of Northern Ireland.