The 29-year-old Galway musician, writer and actor believes the Dunedin Fringe Festival will soon be an established member of the international fringe circuit.
"I love Dunedin... it's perfect for a fringe festival,'' he said yesterday before his show, Around the world on 80 Quid: The adventures of an Irish fiddle player, opened in the Hutton Theatre.
"I love the vibe here and I'm delighted the fringe has gone annual. It was a bit of a risk for you, but it will be a good thing.
"Lots of international acts just tour Adelaide and Melbourne and then go home, but the Dunedin and Wellington festivals will encourage overseas artists to come here.''
Around the world on 80 Quid: The adventures of an Irish fiddle player won the Sweet Award at the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the best solo act at the recent Wellington Fringe.
"I think it's the Irish abroad edge to the story that brings it home to audiences. It's a very traditional Irish art form, sitting by the fire and telling stories, and people all over the world seem to enjoy that, too,'' he says.
De Staic, who has a masters degree in music, is also a past winner of Ireland's Galway Music Award.
"Originally, I wanted to be a rock'n'roll star, like Mick Jagger, but that's not so easy when you play the fiddle.''
The show charts the trials and tribulations of an Irish journeyman fiddle player.
"It shows just how much trouble a drunken entertainer can find himself in,'' he says.
"I've had this life as a travelling musician, lounging around pubs. I've been playing in places like Prague since I was 17. I've achieved my dream; working as an actor and a musician and a writer,'' he says.
"I love the fringe, because it has a risque element where you can just get out there and do it and tell your stories.
"You don't have to take yourself too seriously, and it's a great opportunity for experimentation. The fringe gives everyone a chance".
De Staic works in Ireland as a musician and an actor on Gaelic television soap operas.
"Gaelic is having a revival at home on radio and TV and in the printed press, because it's an endangered language,'' he says.
"It's funny being here, because whenever I mention Edinburgh on television back home I say "Dunedin'', because Dunedin is Gaelic for Edinburgh.''
While in Dunedin, de Staic plans to visit the royal albatross colony at Taiaroa Head, to research a proposed travel programme for Irish television when he returns home.
De Staic first visited New Zealand in 2003 "as a drunken backpacker with a fiddle on a 12-month visa''.
"While I was sobering up, I spent a week in Lyttelton, near Christchurch, trying to get a boat to Chile,'' he recalls, unself-consciously.
"All those stories are part of my show. There's nothing as funny as the truth,'' he says with a grin.
"The hard part about this show has been keeping it down to an hour.''
Around the world on 80 Quid: The adventures of an Irish fiddle player is on at 7pm in the Hutton Theatre until Saturday.
De Staic will then head back to Britain for the Belfast Fringe Festival on May 7 and the Brighton festival on May 9.
The Dunedin Fringe Festival has brought two warring old friends back together.
Sarah McDougall and Elsa McKeown famously fell out after a Jammy Cows performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1997.
They didn't speak for a decade, with McDougall turning to writing plays and films and McKeown directing plays and completing a teaching degree.
Now the two, who were members of comedy cabaret Hersterix in the 1990s, have put aside their differences to re-form the Jammy Cows.
Their material is typically no-sacred-cows, as they tackle do-it-yourself home autopsies, sexology and random swear-testing.
"Those Jammy Cows'' opens at the Playhouse at 7pm tonight and runs till Saturday.