Born in Scotland of Irish parentage, McGinty spent much of his life and career in Ireland, where he became a landmark living statue and one of the country's most popular street performers.

[2] He was a member of Strathclyde Theatre Group in the early 1970s before moving to Ireland in 1976 to work as a nude model at the National College of Art and Design.

[2] McGinty specialised in standing in the street – stock still, in complete silence, and in costume – for long periods of time like a living statue.

When the Gardaí (police) told him to move along for causing an obstruction in the street when crowds gathered to watch him, McGinty developed an extremely slow-motion walk that was really immobility in motion.

He was charged with breach of the peace and with wearing a costume which could offend public decency, on 15 June 1991, for a street performance in which he wore nothing but a skimpy loin cloth that failed to cover his buttocks.

[13] In 1989, he appeared in the Gate Theatre production of Oscar Wilde's Salome, directed by Steven Berkoff, which transferred to the Edinburgh Festival[12] and then to South Carolina.

At Halloween 1994, a tribute and benefit event was held in his honour at the Olympia Theatre at which he was crowned High King of Ireland, and money was raised to buy medicines, and to pay for his funeral.

[10][13] There was a tribute to McGinty in May 2001 when an exhibition of twenty of his most creative and colourful costumes, made mostly by Aidan Bradley and Kathy Kavanagh, was held during a music festival in Dublin Castle.