The temptation to rifle off some pun's tenuously linking the age-old practice of butchering to the ageless-seeking art of shedding pounds and staying fit proved to much when speaking with Ken O'Reilly.

The Turners Cross native and former Christians Brothers College student does after all boast an unlikely alliance with both professions. Having initially plied his trade as a 'traditional' butcher, Ken traded in selling flesh by the pound, to shedding pounds of flesh as a gym instructor.

Jovial, talkative and easy-going are three terms that could easily describe Ken. He's got all the air's and graces of that local shopkeeper ensconced in his small community – that is to say he genuinely seems pleased to be making your acquaintance and, whatever the purpose of your visit may be, he's there to help in any way he can.

And so it seems you can take the boy out of the butcher shop, but you can't take the butcher out of the boy. But while he's still dealing in pounds of flesh, he's firmly focused in addressing the new tasks facing him as Manager of the Trabeg Fitness Centre, Douglas.

How Ken went from carcasses to cardiovascular is a question of his upbringing as he told the Cork Independent. "I attended Christians and, like so many others I got into sports in a big way. It being Christians of course it was rugby that I started playing. I was 13 around the time I started playing competitively and my position was tight head prop. My son is attending the school now and he's into rugby in a big way to so you could say he's carrying on the tradition. But I suppose that's how I really started getting into the whole area of fitness to begin with."

Away from the scrums, line-outs and mauls of junior and senior rugby, Ken was being drawn, almost inevitably, to the practice of butchery. "Both sides of my family worked in the butcher trade so I soon found myself following in their footsteps. I did my apprenticeship in Michael Kidney's of Carrigaline and within two years I had opened up my own butchers in Blackrock. It was roughly another two years before I opened another butchers in Ballinlough and I ran both of them for a year before selling the one in Blackrock."

Ken continued to run the Ballinlough operation for another seven years, but, times were changing fast. "I was probably at the wrong end of butchering. The supermarkets were really beginning to come into their own around that time and what I was offering was a more traditional kind of butchers, the sort where I knew all my customers. For many of them it was routine, coming into my store and ordering whatever it is they were having. It was good times but around the time I was 28 I started to finish up."