Desert Island Tricks
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Desert Island Tricks
Stranded with a Stranger: Brian Lloyd
This mid-week edition of "Stranded with a Stranger" features the captivating Brian Lloyd from London. Influenced by icons like Penn and Teller and David Blaine, Brian shares his top eight magic tricks, including The Grail, Knock'em Dead, and Die-ceptive Do-plicity. We take a nostalgic trip to the vibrant magic scene in Covent Garden and savor iconic moments from David Blaine's Street Magic. Stick around for a mesmerising story from Scott Ratner about receiving praise from "The Professor."
In another enchanting segment, we dive into the whimsical world of young magician Scottori the Wizard and his 10-year-old sister Linda. Their Sherlock Holmes-themed magic act brings laughter and mystery, blending standard parlor tricks with a detective narrative. Thrill to their adventures as they perform under the scrutinizing eyes of legends like Professor Dai Vernon and Max Maven. We explore the high stakes of crafting a coherent and entertaining magic storyline, drawing fascinating parallels between magic and detective fiction. This episode is a spellbinding mix of personal anecdotes, historical insights, and the sheer joy of storytelling in the world of magic.
Find out more about the creators of this Podcast at www.alakazam.co.uk
Thank you for watching.
Speaker 2:Welcome to this week's Stranded with a Stranger. So this is our mid-episode episode. We have this in between our main episodes on a Friday and this is your opportunity to send in your lists. Main episodes on a Friday and this is your opportunity to send in your lists. Now. If you want to be a part of this, then please send in your list of eight tricks, one book and one non-magic item that you use for magic to sales at alakazamcouk. Please put in the subject line my desert island list In that list. Also, please put a bio about you, your eight tricks and why you chose those eight tricks, and we will get you on one of these episodes. So, yep, do get those sent in, because the more of these we get, the more episodes we get. That being said, now we're only I don't know like four or five into these at the moment, but we have had a reply to a previous episode, so I'm not sure if you remember, but Scott Ratner sent in his list and on it he mentioned having praise from the professor, and he said that there was a story that he didn't want to divulge. Well, he has divulged, so wait till the end of the podcast today to find out what his story was and the reply. But before that we have had another stranger land on the Alakazam Island. Today is Brian Lloyd from London. Now Brian hasn't actually given us reasons for his tricks. Brian hasn't actually given us reasons for his tricks, but he has given us a little synopsis about him as well as his list, but just not why he chose those. But that's absolutely fine. So Brian begins.
Speaker 2:I've been into magic since the age of nine, where I grew up watching Penn and Teller, doug Henning, paul Daniels, the Pendragons, siegfried and Roy the Great, soprendo, lance Burton and Wayne Dobson. I used to visit Alan Allen's magic shop and Davenport's every weekend when I was a teenager. I bought my first trick age 15, which was the Svengali deck Great trick. At the age of 19, I ran a Marvin's Magic stall in Covent Garden where we sold dynamic coins, svengali deck, wizard deck, cups and balls and the paddle trick and the magic colouring book. After watching David Blaine's Street Magic in 1994, I bought the Invisible deck, along with the Brainwave deck and Chuck Leach's Raven, all from Davenport's Magic Studio in Charing Cross Underground Station. In 2005, I bought my first Magic DVD from Alakazam. This was Carl Andrews' Table Hopping Cups and Balls, which used two cups, and not too long after that I bought the Grail when it came out an NFW by Gary Freed, and that's when my journey of buying from Alakazam Magic started. Long gone are the days where I walked out of a magic shop with the paper instructions and a newsletter in a plastic bag.
Speaker 2:Great, what an interesting past you seem to have had. Now you mentioned Covent Garden, and Covent Garden has had a really long history of magic, and still does today. Obviously, we have Magic Corner history of magic, and still does today. Obviously, we have Magic Corner. So if you're ever in London and you get the opportunity to go to Covent Garden, do check out Magic Corner. Now there are the occasional magic stall there, but they tend to sell gags and jokes. In fact, some of my fondest memories was when I was a teenager. There was a stall there, a magic stall called the magic cave, and it was run by Lee Hathaway, neil Henry and you always had just loads of great magicians there. That was the first time that I saw Angelo Carbone, who was incredibly gracious with his time when I was growing up and helping me develop ideas and, you know, still is just a wonderful human being. So there's always been a history of magic stalls in Covent Garden. So, yeah, if you're in London, please do go check out Magic Corner because there's some great, great magicians that perform there every single day.
Speaker 2:And you also mentioned David Blaine's Street Magic. I wonder how many magicians listening to this podcast right now remember watching that, because I certainly remember watching that. That was the first time that I saw the bitten coin, which was phenomenal, and that was the first time I saw the, the bitten coin, which was phenomenal. That was the first time I saw the add-on move, the pop-up move. There was so much wonderful, wonderful magic in there. But now I'm just babbling on.
Speaker 2:So let's find out what Brian's top eight tricks were. So in at number one he has put the grail Excellent choice. Now I've seenete dem this at conventions and I've not seen many people dem it, but I guarantee that there are very few that do it quite as smoothly, swiftly and slickly as pete does. And watching magicians react to this trick is just a joy, because they just don't contemplate that it can be that clean and it definitely has to be one of the cleanest, if not the cleanest, card at number that's currently available, because it's just so well thought out, it's great. In at number two we have Knock'em Dead, another great choice. And number three, the Extractor. Number four is Random 2. Very interesting, we've not had that one before, but another really great effect. Fortuity is in at number five. Now the next one.
Speaker 2:I had to do a bit of research on so deceptive duplicity. Now, brian has not put on here who these tricks are by, but in my research the only one that I could find was by Stuart James. So I'm not sure if this is the same one, but it says by Stuart James. So I'm not sure if this is the same one, but it says a prediction envelope is placed in full view while four dice are rolled. The total of all the dice are used to deal two packets of cards. The top two cards of the packets give a value, while the top card of the deck signifies a suit. The arrived at card is found missing from the deck and in the prediction envelope. So I'm hoping that's the one. I've not actually heard of it. I'm not sure if this is just one that's passed me by and it's really well known, but I think it sounds really interesting. I'm going to see if I can find more information on it and do let us know if that's even the same trick.
Speaker 2:In at number seven we have shuffleboard. Yep, we spoke about a version of this last week. It does seem to be one that we're probably going to have quite a few of, I should think, because it's just such a wonderful trick. And in his last position we have Ultimate Wildcard by Jean-Pierre Valerino Great choice, it's very Alakazam in there, which I'm not complaining about at all.
Speaker 2:There's some wonderful, wonderful tricks in there. Here's one magic book, brian, put new monica by juan tamarez, which presume which I presume, means, brian, that you have a memorized deck in your little, uh, memory bank, which is always a great skill to have, one that sadly I have yet to master. And your one non magic item. I particularly like this because he's found a slight loophole Tall, dark and gruesome Sir Christopher Lee's biography. So he has taken two books, but one of them is a non magic book, so it does get to go in the non magic category. Magic book, so it does get to go in the non-magic category.
Speaker 2:So excellent, really great list, some really clever methods in there, and ideas as well, and again, I always love having one that I can research. So deceptive duplicity also, I should say, if you do want to check this one out and you also are going to research it like me, it's actually spelt die, as as in die D-I-E, as in a dice, a dash and then septive, and then the second word is doe, with a dash and then plicity, so it's die-septive doe-plicity. So, yeah, do go check it out. But that's an absolutely brilliant list, brian. Thank Brian.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for sharing it with us and, with that being said, we are now going to go to a previous guest who came onto this podcast and wrote in Scott Ratner. Listen to his episode. Essentially, he spoke about a time that the professor Divernum praised his magic, but he said that he didn't want to divulge the whole story. But, very thankfully, he has given us the story in depth. So I'm going to do my best to read this out and make it as interesting as it is to read, because it's such an interesting story and I bet it was great to be there when your classmates I don't know if that's your colleagues, your friends was there when this happened. I bet it was really interesting. But I don't want to give anything more away. So this was the reply from Scott.
Speaker 2:In early 1977, I auditioned for and was accepted into the junior magicians group at the Magic Castle. At the time, the beginning age requirement for the junior group was 13, and though I was a few months shy of my 13th birthday, they made an exception for me, almost inarguably for the same reasons. I received complimentary words from Vernon, and I'll emphasize that those reasons had nothing to do with my technical proficiency or the deceptiveness of my magic. Indeed, I would say I was almost certainly the least technically skilled magician in the junior group at the time. However, the act with which I auditioned and was eagerly requested to perform there several times was not only cute but strong in concept, theme plots, symmetry and amusing if hokey in its final punchline. Stay tuned for the punchline. I quite liked it, for which I will take immodestly credit. My dad helped me with the writing, but I came up with nearly all the ideas, having, even at the time, a strong sense of plot structure.
Speaker 2:The only explanatory contextual info needed here is that a little over a year earlier, the very Mel Brooks-style Sherlock Holmes parody film, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother, written, directed by and starring Gene Wilder, had been released to reasonable box office success, and its title was still fairly familiar at the time by the general public. I was dressed in a purple velvet wizard's robe and my 10-year-old sister, linda today a successful Southern Californian orthodontist with three young adult children dressed in an oversized tuxedo, t-shirts, tights and a top hat was my assistant. The act began as follows Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Skatori the Wizard and today, aided by my lovely assistant Linda, I would like to dazzle your eyes and baffle your senses with a few feats of magic, le jardin main and prestidigitation. At this point I looked over to my sister, who gave a very deliberate look over to the left and then to the right, and then gave me an all-clear signal. Ladies and gentlemen, please forgive this deception. No doubt many of you have heard of Sherlock Holmes smarter brother. Well, linda, here is Sherlock Holmes's dumber sister, for she is my sister and I am, in truth, not Scatori the wizard, but that master sleuth himself, sherlock Holmes. I then took off my wizard's hat, placed a deer stalker on my head and picked up a Meerschaum pipe. I am currently in disguise on the trail of my arch-nemesis, Professor James Moriarty.
Speaker 2:The rest of the act consisted of a small series of the most standard, familiar parlor tricks of the time, professor's Nightmare and what's Next? Spot card some basic half-dollar manipulation. The Grant Temple screen all used to illustrate my pursuit of Moriarty and his evasion of me and the police. For example, the Professor's Nightmare the professor's nightmare illustrated the inconsistent witness testimony that exonerated him in court, that kind of thing. It ended with the temple screen representing one of Moriarty's secret London warehouses which was found by the police to have an entirely empty of all loot. However, I said, I am confident that the more careful investigation will reveal evidence of a long. However, I said At this point my sister suddenly cried out and then ran up to me and whispered in my ear.
Speaker 2:I continued my ear, I continued Ladies and gentlemen, I've just been informed that Professor Moriarty has been sighted in this very building and then exchanging hats back again. So I must quickly resume my disguise as Katori the Wizard and you, my dear sister, must return to school. School, what's school? Why? Elementary, my dear Linda, elementary, there's the joke. I quite like it as a 10-minute spot in the Sunday brunch palace of mystery shows.
Speaker 2:After one of these, walking out of the castle, I found myself face to face with the professor himself sitting at the bar with one of his cronies. People have suggested to me it was probably Charlie Miller, but outside of Vernon, whose face I knew well those were just the white-haired guys that hang out with him. Knew well, those were just the white haired guys that hang out with him. Young man, he said I saw your act. It was the best magic I've seen all this. Last week. This was witnessed by several people, including a couple of the other junior members, who were no doubt irritated by the fact that their pipsqueak colleague of obviously inferior talent was being praised by the great man himself.
Speaker 2:Even at 13, I was, by this time, 13, I knew that, far from being the best magic he'd seen all week, it was almost certainly the worst. On the other hand, on a certain level, I understand what he meant. After all, skilled as they were, what was the chance that my 16 or 17 year old junior pals would be good enough to fall divernum? My act was at least offering something that was even rarer than it is today A magic act with a logical beginning, middle and end, structural symmetry and a perfect comical closing line. Of course, I soon ruined this whole triumph. About a year later, I told my assigned mentor, jeffrey Seymour, who was always very supportive, if rather wryly condescending, that I was ready to prove that I wasn't limited to that kind of cute act At the ripe age of 14, he arranged for my request to have me scheduled at the Parlour of Prestidigitation for a mentalism act. You surely know about all of those highly credible 14-year-old mentalists. Of course, I can partially blame Geoff Seymour for what had happened that day, as, minutes before I went on, he mentioned to me that Max Maven was in the audience. Well, the result was probably the worst thing to happen at the Magic Circle until the 2011 fire. 47 years later, I still haven't quite gotten over the humiliation. There were many witnesses to my catastrophe of the day, and I can only comfort myself with the statistical probability that a significant percentage of them, like Maven, are probably no longer with us.
Speaker 2:As for your comments regarding the Golden Age detective fiction, you're right. The similarities are abundant, with the notable exception that the mystery writer has the added burden of making the method or solution as satisfying as the effect. Mystery, something I'm not sure even the great Hake Talbot fully understood, though David Renwick seemed to, with Jonathan Creek clearly emulating John Dixon Carr more than Talbot. When it comes to methods of deception, however, the correlation is exact. For instance, nearly every magic plot that entails the Mercury card fold is just a variation of the basic plot of Israel Zangwill's 1893 whodunit the Big Bo Mystery. So there we have it.
Speaker 2:It's a really interesting story, and you know what's interesting there is. It just shows you the level of people that would have been around you, and it must have been so intimidating I mean to have Max Maven there when you know you're 14 and you've got that show, and then you had Divernum watching your act as well as you know whoever else was there. It must have been incredibly intimidating. So fair play for getting up there and doing it at such a young age.
Speaker 2:But that being said, that brings today's episode to a close. Thank you again to Scott ratner for that reply, but our stranger who is a stranger no more was brian lloyd. So thank you, brian, for sharing your list with us. Remember, if you want your list read out, please send in your list of eight tricks, one book and one non-magic item that you use for magic to sales at alakazamcouk with the subject line my desert island tricks or list, and then that will come through to me and then we can get you on one of these. So, that being said, we're going to be back this friday with our main episode. Thank you all for listening and we will see you again next week on stranded with a stranger. Goodbye, goodbye.
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