Whether you’re an ordinary Joe Soap or a high-flying celebrity, everyone needs a best friend – through the good and the bad, to laugh and cry with. Irish Country Living, in partnership with Fisherman’s Friend, are searching for Ireland’s greatest friendship.

To give you some inspiration for this competition, Irish Country Living spoke to some Irish celebrities to see what is unique and special about their relationship with their best friend. Batman had Robin, Thelma had Louise and Tom had Jerry, so who’s your best friend?

Ciara King & Chris Greene

While working at iRadio, Ciara King and Chris Greene were thrown together. At the time, Ciara was presenting with someone else and Chris came in to cover. Nearly 10 years later, having since moved to 2FM, they are one of Ireland’s most famous broadcasting duos and firmly the best of friends.

Ciara explains that at first they were unsure what to make of each other: “I thought this guy was really weird and he thought this one doesn’t shut up talking. That was honestly our first impressions of each other, but I also thought he was very funny. Our sense of humour is very similar, so I think that’s why we hit it off.

“Both of us are from Connemara, but completely different parts, we had never met before iRadio. Chris knows what it’s like to grow up in the area I grew up in. We have very similar backgrounds. A lot of the craic and humour comes from the fact that we are from that particular part of Ireland.”

With evident on-air chemistry, Chris and Ciara are known for their hilarity. Ciara attributes a lot of their success on air to the fact that they have such a close relationship off air.

“The one thing that is always said about Chris and I is that there’s natural chemistry between the two of us. Chris would know basically everything about me at this stage. He’s been there through breakups, career disappointments and career highs. He’s been there for absolutely everything.

“There are things that myself and Chris say to each other off air that we wouldn’t want any other human being to hear. He’s a great support and I support him too in what he does in his career. He was very supportive of my book Ciara’s Diary.”

Chris and Ciara’s show slot was originally at night time, but they just recently moved to weekend mid-mornings. When they used to finish work late at night, they developed a habit of fine dining.

“After work we would be hungry at midnight, I would get into the car with Chris and we would go get fast food. We enabled that habit in each other. We don’t do it anymore because, obviously, we are older and wiser.”

Professionally, Chris and Ciara came together by chance but they are best friends by choice.

Stefanie Preissner & Rachel Yoder

Even though they live over 5,000km apart, writer Stefanie Preissner and her best friend Rachel Yoder are as close as ever. Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t always be physically near your best friend, but these ladies are proof that long distance can work.

“We talk every day,” explains Stefanie. “Sometimes just texts, sometimes calls, but we stay in each other’s pockets. She lives in New York, so we have to make an extra effort. When Rachel first left, I felt abandoned and our friendship was on hold temporarily, but because Rachel is so emotionally intelligent, she was able to read the situation and gently reel me back in. We communicated via snail mail for about a year, now we’re back to daily texts, calls and meme tagging. Friendship takes a lot of understanding and sustained effort to work, which we both put in, in equal measures. I get jealous when Rachel goes to the beach with her ‘other’ friends, because then I can’t facetime her for chats. And Rachel doesn’t get jealous enough, in my opinion, of my new friends or old, which drives me nuts.”

The girls, who like to refer to themselves as Yeissner (a combination of both their second names), met in college through a play they were both involved in. When Rachel fell asleep on stage, Stefanie kept her secret, cementing their friendship in mischief and mystery.

Stefanie and Rachel’s relationship is based on the fun they have and the fact that they ‘get each other’. They also have quirky traditions that they like to uphold.

“We have a birthday card that we have sent back and forth to each other for birthdays and Christmas over the last few years. We just scribble out last year’s date, update it and post it back again. The fun is in the constant repetition and it doesn’t matter that we aren’t taking the time to write a birthday greeting, because the effort involved in keeping up the tradition is more than enough.

“No friendship is perfect, but we try to be aware of the things we disagree on. You can only really learn from people you respect and I have endless respect for Rachel, even if she believes that being fashionably late is acceptable or that rules are made to be broken.

“Our friendship is the most robust relationship in each of our lives.”

Keith Barry & Dave Waldron

Each time magician Keith Barry and his best friend Dave Waldron go out for a drink, they dip their cheeks in the cream of their pints of Guinness. When it snows, they like to do penguin runs. This involves pulling your trousers down around your ankles and racing a predetermined distance. They are the rituals particular to them and what makes their friendship unique.

“They’re the two stupid things we do. Of course, we’re both married with kids, so we have a certain level of sensibility behind it all, but I suppose we’re still teenagers at heart.”

The pair met 20 years ago on their first day of college in Galway. Keith says Dave needed a loan of £50, the exact details of why escape him all these years later. Even though he didn’t know him at the time, he still gave him the loan and ever since they have been best friends.

“Thursday night was college night, so we would go out every Thursday and have the craic. We have remained best friends ever since. We were both messers in college, so luckily we were pretty smart. We were the guys everyone hated because we were messing all the time, but we’d show up and cram all of the work into a couple of weeks and then we came out with a 1.1 degrees at the end. We weren’t bookworms, let’s put it that way. We were the guys who used to go out, blaggard and act the maggot.

“He’s from Ballyhaunis in Co Mayo, so I spent a lot of time there over the years going to parties of his, spending time in the nightclubs and bars of Ballyhaunis.”

Keith’s new show, Magic Mad House starts touring at the end of December and Dave refuses to help him rehearse the hypnosis aspects of the show. Dave categorically won’t let his best friend hypnotise him and runs for the door every time Keith tries. Instead, Keith gets his own back by playing pranks and tricks on Dave.

Clearly, they are still messers at heart.

The Search for Ireland’s

Greatest Friendship is on!

To be in with a chance to win the first prize of €750 worth of Blue Book vouchers, here’s how to enter this FREE competition:

Check out Fisherman’s Friend Ireland on Facebook @FishermansFriendIreland for inspiration and competition T&Cs.

**By entering the competition all entrants grant the Irish Farmers Journal and Fisherman’s Friend the right to publish and exhibit their photographs and the right to name the entrant in print and on social media.