Can anyone fill me in on Dicky Deegan?
Droner,
Depends on what you want to know!
I don’t know DD personally although I did meet him once at Whitby folk festival and I have heard him play. Excellent piper (he was playing a C# Woofe set at the time) and I bought his CD from him which is also excellent. He’s obviosly influenced by the late Seamus Ennis if his CD is anything to go by 
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From what I have heard he is also a very good reed maker and plays his own reeds in his Woofe set or so I was told.
He also has (or had) his own web site.
Oh aye, one other thing. He wears one of those swivel hats that has the peak at the back 
Joseph (the UK one) 
Here are some DD links:
http://www.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/Dicky_Deegan/
http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display.php/520
Thanks lads…someone told me he didn’t start piping until late in life? Is that true? Does he come to any of the festivals in Ireland?
He was at WCSS once during the 90s, possibly 96.
Apparently, Dicky is working on a couple CDs, even as we speak. A collection of past recordings, and one of new work, both of which should come out this year.
Dicky is one flat out amazing piper, whose playing, I for one, just love.
I remember sitting in a pipe class given by Kieran O’Malley in the mid 90’s (probably the same year Peter refererred to above, although possibly '95) at the Scoil Acla (Achill Island, Co. Mayo) music school in August.
In the middle of the morning the door opened and in walked a character carrying a pipe box, wearing plus-four tweed trousers, tweed jacket and tweed cap! Quite an entrance 
. He introduced himself as Dickie Deegan from Tasmania. Class was abandoned as he began chatting with Kieran. He played us a few tunes on his pipes and he was very acomplished: time has dulled my memory of his pipes, but I think the set had a double-bass regulator which nearly lifted the roof off the building!
He also had a lot of manuscripts in the box into which he had transcribed the music of various pipers. For instance he had the entire Robbie Hannan album notated tune-by-tune, including every lick of ornamentation-I’d say there are plenty of pipers who would love to have a copy of that!
Overall he was a great fellah, pure eccentric and steeped in the pipes.
I was thinking 95 to begin with but I took a load of pictures of him and the only prints I made were done on a particular batch of paper and of a quality (yuk) that made me think they were from the first batch printed in the cottage in Clare, where there was no water or anything in the house for over a year,so I arrived at 1996 but I could well be wrong. Definitely one of those two years anyway.
Dickie Deegan was also at Miltown in 1999 or 2000. I met him outside of Fahey’s and I remember he had a very small box for his pipes. Mine was even smaller at the time. Never heard him play though.