One man will swallow several swords. Another will balance a teapot on a stick. A 30-foot pig will
show up. Most of it is dangerous and all of it is free. No wonder the Street Performance World
Championships - taking place in Dublin this weekend - are a runaway success, writes Peter Crawley.

HOW'S THIS for a boast? The website of the Space Cowboy, an astonishingly gifted juggler, unicyclist and sword-swallower (among several other talents), proudly proclaims him the "only performer to have won the Street Performance World Championships (SPWC) more than once".

This is true, of course, but it neglects to mention that the Space Cowboy, a 30-year-old Australian with a wide smile, elaborately tattooed torso and a pierced everything, is the only performer to have won the thing at all. There have only been two festivals so far.

To launch the third year of the rapidly expanding free event, which fills Merrion Square with the finest displays of comedy, magic and death-defiance for one weekend each June, the Space Cowboy (some people call him Chayne Hultgren) set a new world record by temporarily ingesting 27 swords simultaneously. This, he told me, not only beat the current Guinness World Record of 17, but "blow it out completely of the water".

Incidentally, the previous world record was held by the same Chayne Hultgren, thickening the suspicion that the peerless Space Cowboy is now simply competing with himself.

In the spartan office of the SPWC, the two festival organisers consider the possibility of the same performer dominating their competition for the rest of his natural life. Mark Duckenfield and Conor McCarthy, two enthusiastic, good-humoured and generally laid-back men in their late 20s, stiffen slightly at the prospect. It was not something they foresaw when, inspired by similar festivals in Canada, New Zealand and Japan, they abandoned their day jobs to found Emergent Events and conceived of Ireland's first "busking" festival (they have always been slow to use the b-word) as "the Olympics of what they do".

In the beginning, Duckenfield concedes, there was something audacious about making such a claim, but, with no world governing body to contradict them, the festival has gained international recognition among performers. It has become known for the generosity of its spectators and the fun of its experience; or, colloquially, as a place where the 'hat' is good and the 'hang' is brilliant.

It helps too that it has attracted a range of sponsors, has swelled from two days to three, and from 10 acts to 16, while its popularity has been overwhelming, attracting 26,000 people in its first year and 40,000 the next - despite last summer's biblical deluge.

Charlie Caper is one performer ready to brave the elements. The astounding Swedish street magician certainly travels light, arriving to Dublin with his act, his lore and little else. I am told that he owns only two changes of clothes and squeezes his life into carry-on luggage; that he has no fixed abode; that his only indulgences are swing dancing and a collection of hats. An affable 29-year-old, who felt burnt out by the computer industry in London, Charlie (née Carl Berseus) fell back on the magic he had been practising since childhood, eventually choosing to tour the world with his show. "So I threw all the junk away and kept what you really need," he says. "Since then, I've never really had a base."

I'm not quite sure which of Charlie Caper's feats is more impressive - the fact that he can produce a full can of Coke from his shoe, or that he can fasten a bowtie in two seconds flat, but he offers to teach me the latter: "I learnt it off the internet." (And they say a magician never gives away his tricks.)

But for all his magnificent illusions, it's Caper's crowd-pleasing wit that seals the deal. "That, by the way, was five years of my life for three seconds of magic," he says after one jaw-dropper. "It's a bit like a marriage . . . "

Ken Fanning, who, with his partner Tina Segner, makes up the aerial artists Tumble Circus, one of only two Irish acts contesting this year's festival, agrees. "It's hard to say my life is difficult, because it's not," he says "I've got the best job in the world. I get paid to go to all these fantastic places."

Fanning was speaking from Italy, en route to Croatia. "Some people can get down. I've got a girlfriend and a kid and I don't get to see them a lot. But at the same time, I'm very privileged that I have this job and this lifestyle. We can go to any country in the world and communicate with people. Make them laugh and be amazed at what we do." They are also an act with something to prove.

"Nobody in Ireland knows who we are," says Fanning, "but we're touring the world performing to thousands of people . . . Now people can see the standard we're at."

He sounds as though they're taking the championship pretty seriously. "Ah, it would be nice to win," he replies, "but whatever. If more people come and see what we do, and like it, that's more important really. The competition part of it is all a bit controversial."

It's certainly getting that way - particularly with the un-toppable feats of The Space Cowboy. But even the reigning champion is sincere when he offers his performance as a gift to those who cannot afford to pay for it.

"As long as people are smiling and having a good time," he says, "it's worth it." Whether Chayne Hultgren can be dethroned this year, or any year, that's why he will never go home empty-handed.

As every world champion knows, it's not whether you win or lose, it's the taking part that counts.

The Street Performance World Championships take place today, tomorrow and Sunday in Merrion Square and Dublin Castle. www.spwc.ie