Desert Island Tricks
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Desert Island Tricks
Joel Dickinson
From court jester to a magician in high demand, Joel Dickinson shares an inspiring tale of resilience and reinvention. After the pandemic shuttered his performing business and the Vanishing Cabaret, Joel discovered a new passion for magic creation. Now, he collaborates with magicians worldwide, crafting mesmerising tricks from his studio. Discover how Joel turned adversity into innovation, crafting a new path as a magic inventor while still enchanting audiences at select events.
Joel takes us on a whimsical journey, unveiling his top eight essential tricks. From the timeless linking rings to his unique routines, Joel reveals the magic behind the magic. His personal anecdotes and reflections highlight the transformation these classics can undergo with skill and commitment. The linking rings, once a source of hesitation, now become a symbol of versatility and powerful audience reactions in Joel's hands.
In this captivating episode, we explore the artistry in magic, how classic tricks like Cups and Balls can evolve through creativity and personal flair. Joel delves into the ethical nuances of mentalism and the profound connection it fosters between performer and audience. With insights into the influence of magic legends and the impact of books like Paul Harris's "Art of Astonishment," this episode promises to enchant listeners with tales of transformation, creativity, and the enduring allure of magic.
Joel’s Desert Island Tricks:
- Linking Rings
- Cups and Balls
- Thumb Tip
- Making Guesses
- Sponge Balls
- Acrobatic Matchbox
- Coin and Pen
- Professors Nightmare
Book. The Art of Astonishment
Item. Finger Ring
Find out more about the creators of this Podcast at www.alakazam.co.uk
Thank you for watching. Hello and welcome to another episode of Desert Island Tricks. We have a fantastic performer waiting in the wings. This performer I've known for maybe five or six years. It was pre-pandemic. When I used to talk to this chap If you didn't know, he used to. I don't know if he still does used to perform as a jester, a court jester, which I used to enjoy looking at the pictures of. I'm sure he'll let us know about that.
Speaker 1:So today's guest is an incredible thinker, an incredible creator. You will nearly definitely have at least one of his creations in your collection and a Warp Zag which recently came out. I just told him I've just seen it everywhere. It's been everywhere online. Everyone has been using it. It's done so well and I've just spoken to Joel about some of his upcoming things. One of them in particular I've actually made a note of. That's how excited I am for that one coming out, and by the time this podcast comes out, you may already be able to access that effect. So do keep an eye out. But today's guest is, of course, the incredible Joel Dickinson. How are you, joel? Good mate, I'm good. Thank you very much. How are you? I'm very well, thank you, and everyone won't see. But you've got a very, very swanky studio behind you as well.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. I spend a lot of time in here just creating magic and it's a nice little room to sit in, coming up with ideas and just creating magic. Um, you, I heard on the little intro there you mentioned about performing as a jester, um, which I don't actually do anymore. Um, in fact, to be totally honest, I don't do much live performing anymore at all. I'm kind of, uh, it's my own choice, um, partly my own choice. So you mentioned about us talking pre-lockdown and I'll be totally honest, that is one side of my business that I lost. My whole performing side of my business just went.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was like basically 20 years of history of performing full-time, close-up weddings, corporate events and all the stuff that magicians do, but with a huge clientele performing cabaret shows, occasionally for West End Magic, moncaster Castle, just big shows, cabaret clubs, just a whole life of performing. Set to have my busiest year ever and running the Vanishing Cabaret, which was a tourist attraction. Me and Sam and Aaron Calvert set up Sam Fitton, sorry and Aaron Calvert. We set this up and we lost that during lockdown as well the venue that we were working with. They went through bankruptcy unfortunately during lockdown and, as a result, we lost the Vanishing Cabaret as well, which was something that we put a lot of time and effort into, and I just lost the whole performing side of my business during lockdown.
Speaker 2:I wasn't performing online, doing online shows. I tried to do a few, but there's only a certain amount that you can be bothered performing for your friends and family for and trying to bribe them to buy some tickets to watch you doing a show online, and I just didn't really get into it but then just found that I just couldn't bounce back. Everybody's going, you're going to bounce back and all this and it didn't happen. I didn't bounce back, so I lost my performing side of my business, which was my business. That was literally everything to me, you know, and yeah, I, I lost a lot, um, during lockdown and I didn't bounce back, but I didn't try to make much of a conscious effort to actually bounce back.
Speaker 2:I still do occasional shows with friends, um, jobs that I enjoy, friends that I like to be with whilst performing, um, but ultimately I, yeah, I didn't bounce back enough to justify or warrant wanting to actually come with a full comeback and I think I just didn't want to do that anyway, um, because in the back of my mind and during the whole of lockdown, I was just focused on creating magic, and that, ultimately, was what I wanted to be doing, and I've made sure that that is what I've done, and now I have this place that I work in. This is a place that I'll rent on a business park, so I sit here in this little swanky room, as you call it, and just create magic tricks, and that is it. That's my living now just inventing magic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so from that sort of negative I guess there's no other way to spin it.
Speaker 2:You've had this new lease of life. So you told me that the place that you're in at the moment is only one of several rooms as well, so you've's like a really mini magic empire. I guess it's almost as a magic creator prior to lockdown Sorry, as I was a magic creator, I always had a vision in my head that I wanted to be sat in a room making magic, inventing magic, and it's almost like a bit of a story that I made for myself in my own head, and just over time I've managed to kind of make that work, really, and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And and I still, as I say, I do perform. I've got a lot of well, a heck of a lot of performing experience. I know what works in the real world to go out and perform. I send my routines that I create to performers all over the world to go out and perform my routines that I make and invent, and these are people that I trust. You know, I've got like a very small circle of people that I trust with my material, who can head out and perform it and come back to me with feedback, which is what happens.
Speaker 2:I've got Jay Rollins, matt Corp, rick Naylor, and these are all like full time performers who go out and do this for a living, you know. And then, of course, myself going to venues that I am performing in when I am performing, but, to be honest, I predominantly take the cabaret type work and festival work, and that's it, and that, as I say, is very kind of minimal at the moment. But yeah, so, just full time creating and that is it, inventing magic, and that's all I do now. So I really like it.
Speaker 1:Well, you are absolutely smashing it. Um and I'm sure everyone listening if you haven't seen Joel's creations and releases, please do go check them out, because I remember Joel's early day stuff. I remember he showed me a thing which I think Penguin ended up releasing in the end, which was a two cards that were paper clipped together and you could basically have a car picked and then it would be one of the ones that was paper clipped.
Speaker 2:And I remember when you showed me that it was so clever, it was absolutely genius thank you, I think, yeah, like a lot of my old releases I look at as like my career. Really like when I first started performing magic, I helped open up the first um house of illusions in salute. So I worked with Matt Edwards, oliver Tabar, scott Pepper and I was 16 years old and I was absolutely clueless. Is the truth? Absolutely clueless? I don't even know how I got the job. Is the truth? I was 16 well, actually, I was 15. When I went for the audition I was basically wearing some kind of shirt, trying to look like a magician. I somehow got the job.
Speaker 2:I had like a couple of years in Spain performing and but luckily I got to learn from people who knew what they were doing and were really really good. But even then, being so young, I was quite naive when it comes to actually performing and my real kind of learning curve was coming away from an experience like that and then learning from it. I came away from that and then I started to work in a lot of festivals with street performers you know, jugglers, acrobats, magicians of like big variety style performers, but on the street. So I was working with a lot of big personalities and being so young, but with that bit of experience that I got, that was like a real kind of I would say I've already said learning curve. That was like a real kind of I would say I've already said learning curve. So it was, yeah right, it was a really good learning curve just to learn from people who absolutely knew how to construct shows, put it all together in a different kind of way than what I was used to, and it was like this, like fresh approach to performing, and that was ultimately my like real learning curve. And from there I would say that that is where I started to develop as a performer. So Spain, in one sense, gave me a nice bit of confidence, maybe needed knocking down a peg, which I did when I left Spain, and then I managed to kind of, yeah, like just learn for myself and realize that actually performing is a personal experience rather than showing off you know, and develop yourself as a performer, rather than developing for what you think people want to see an experience you know, um. But the reason why I'm kind of saying that is because it's the same as what, um, where my career is now really like.
Speaker 2:I've got all these releases that I put out many years ago but now, like, I believe my releases are so much stronger than they were in the past. You know, and that's because of you go through a lot of magic, like I will create ideas and I will literally chuck stuff away or just teach how to make them on YouTube or something like that, like that. But yeah, I think, like my career in Korea, you know, in the early days it had a level where I would be releasing material. That wasn't necessarily the best of my potential, but at the time I believed it was. But over time we learned how magic works, what magic actually is and how to construct it properly.
Speaker 2:And I think, like, my releases at the moment are probably stronger than I have ever been. You know, and that's only because I'm fully invested and committed into studying my own ideas. And if I don't like something, I won't release it. If I think something's got potential, I'll shelve it and go back to it, and if yeah, and if it's good, I'll get excited about it myself, you know, and enjoy it.
Speaker 1:That makes me excited to see where your list is going to go. I think you might be disappointed if I'm honest with you. Ah well, it might be an interesting mix, because I know that you do parlour stuff, but I know that you're a big fan of like clever gimmicks and you're also a really big fan of clever mentalism, which, again going back to your early releases. So I mean it could go any which way, but there may be a mix of everything, I reckon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. Well, let's have a little look. I've made a list from eight to one. I know you've said eight items and I've tried to put them in reverse, but there's stuff there that we can discuss and talk about, you know. And, yeah, explore some ideas really.
Speaker 1:Amazing. So if this is your first time listening to the podcast, the idea is that we're about to whisk Joel away to his own desert island. When he's there, he's allowed to take eight tricks one book and one non-magic item that he uses for magic Particulars like who's there? Are there animals there, people, boats, whatever, we do not mind. It's basically the list of ultimate tricks that joel could not live without and, with that being said, we're going to whisk joel away now and find out what's in his first position. So what was your first trick, joel?
Speaker 2:right. So we're saying first trick, I'm going backwards, if that's all right. So in eighth position, I've actually gone for the linking rings. Yeah, so just a standard set of linking rings. And yeah, I think when it comes to linking rings, for me they're like something that I've really under explored, but only recently, probably like the past year or so I've looked further into the linking rings, and there's a lot that can be done with them A lot of existing stuff, a lot of stuff that doesn't exist, moves that you can make and moves that you can create, and, yeah, I've made like a variety of routines with them in the past and tried to put different angles and spins on them, and I really them.
Speaker 2:And not only that, though, but my previous experience with linking rings were I used to have like a fear in my own mind, um, that people watching me do these linking rings didn't enjoy it, and it's only like this thing, and I think it was because I was so underexplored with the linking rings, but I'd still go out and show them to people anyway, because I'd seen a magician perform the linking rings at one point in my life and absolutely loved it, and then, when I went out when I was younger and I didn't get the reactions or, you know and it's not necessarily the reactions the experience that I was giving to people wasn't, didn't echo the experience that I had, so I shelved them for like a really long time and thought, ah, the linking rings are a load of rubbish, I'm not going to go back to them. And um, yeah, I recently picked up some of the CCC uh, linking rings and just a basic set of linking rings quite small, um and I just started to really really enjoy them and creating different elements, creating routines and just coming up with like new things. Like, um, as an example, I in my routine I place one ring on one finger and one ring on another finger and the ring that's um, back towards my head, moves forwards and just gets linked on slowly onto one of the rings and you can see this on my YouTube channel and it just looks like absolute magic. You know, like you can see the whole of what appears to be both of the rings and they link on and it's just a standard set.
Speaker 2:I worked for years with Oliver Tabar, as I mentioned earlier on, and I saw him perform a lot with the Lincoln Rings and just loved what he did. I would watch him like fully captivated and, yeah, as I said, like I went out years ago, never got the reactions. In fact, when I was at a gig I put them in my pocket and he didn't come back out after performing them for the first time. Because that was just me, like my inexperience with them, and I wonder if this is why a lot of people put them away, because they're not quite getting the reactions with them.
Speaker 2:For me, linking rings are really, really magical. They're like they've got like a powerful feeling to them and since exploring my routine with them, I have performed them at events and they get reactions like really good reactions. But I found that I have to really commit to them and perform like a solid routine with them and they bring the house down. They really do, and what is really cool about them? With just this medium-sized set of rings, I find that I can perform them up close, at a table, or I can perform them in like a parlor-style setting, you know, and get the reactions from them and I do like a lot of my magic comes back to things that I can perform up close and I can also perform on stage, be in parlor or cabaret A lot of my magic has to fall into that category. Well, that's my thought on the Lincoln Rings. I really like them now, I didn't used to. There you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that's a great choice. It's an effect that's synonymous with the general public and a magician just as much as pick a card or soaring a lady in half. However, it's still one of those tricks that I don't think a lot of the general public probably have seen in person, up close, where they can interact themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah, you can get people holding on to the rings, smashing your ring through it, swapping the rings and letting them examine them. They're also the other really cool thing is that they're audible as well. You can hear the magic, you can hear the ching, you can hear different elements. There's even silence, when it comes out, which captivates people. You know, that's one thing. I used to see a lot of Oliver Tabar performing, where he would bang the rings through each other and he would make a lot of noise, but then when he did it silently, silently, that's where the audience would kind of feel that little bit of magic moment. How did he do it so smoothly? You know, um, yeah, anyway, man, that's like, yeah, yeah, linking rings, I think, uh, at number eight they're not number one, but the there has been something that need to keep being examined and explored, and the classics, for a reason I agree.
Speaker 1:I think it's a superb effect and a great choice. Nice that we're hitting in with the parlor slash sort of close up as well. So what's in your second slash?
Speaker 2:seventh position are you ready? So in my seventh position are cups and balls classic. Again, I'm getting rid of the classics and getting them out of the way. But the reason why with cups and balls is for a very similar reason to the lincoln rings. For years I've performed a chop cup routine and, man like, the reactions that my chop cup routine gets is like through the roof. Like anybody who performs a chop cut routine, you're going to get reactions if you construct your routine well, right, um, and it's been a staple in my like close-up repertoire for such a long time and, like I said with my lincoln rings, when I form the lincoln rings on stage, it gets a reaction. You know like I can perform it close up. I can linking rings on stage. It gets a reaction. You know like I can perform it close up, I can perform it on stage. But the one thing that I've never really done is took my um chop cup routine to the actual stage because my routine is an in hand routine. So I don't use a table, I don't produce a tennis ball at the end. I'm working with an in-hand routine, all right, and basically the way that. Should I tell you the ending of the routine now, because this is really cool, right. I've kept this. In fact it's actually on my Alakazam Academy and it's really really neat, right. Basically, before I perform my cup and ball routine, what I will do is I'll perform a card routine and I casually rip that card up and I throw it away and then I move into my next routine. I produce, I do a full routine where they have to guess if it's in the pocket, is it under the cup? I also use my hat where it appears underneath my head, and then basically they look under my head, my hat again when we come back to it and it's actually the cup that's under my hat and it's actually switched places with the ball. So it throws people big time. They think they're watching the ball, but actually they're watching for the cup that's balanced on my head underneath the hat, which just absolutely flaws them right. So then the final piece I will make a bouncy ball appear under it, and then I make a second bouncy ball appear under it, and then I make a second bouncy ball appear under it. I then say all good things have to come in threes, and when I lift it up for the third time, I've got before I pick it up. Remember I've got two bouncy balls balanced on my fingers and the cup on the palm of my hand. And when I pick this cup up to show what they believe is going to be a third ball and it's their signed card, to show what they believe is going to be a third ball and it's their signed card. So now they see this weird object that they don't actually instantly recognize Keep that in mind because it's this folded card and to that person it's like what is that? And then when I lift up the cup and I show that there's something there, the penny drops oh, hang on a minute, that looks like a folded card. Now you open up the card and it's their signed card that they'd seen you rip up and throw away. You know, um, and that just I did once have some performance, actual kind of like candid footage of it, and I can't find it and I remember the reactions were just like through the roof.
Speaker 2:It's's like such a good routine, but I've digressed a lot here because I did say cups and bowls. So I tried to perform that routine on stage and because of the handling of it all, it's on the hand like this and it just didn't ever quite get the reaction that it does when it's close up. So when I've tried chop cup routines on just a table, I've enjoyed it but it's never got the reaction that my close-up routine has. But there have been a couple of times where I've presented my cups and balls routine and it's got seriously good reactions right. I've got a lot of time to sit and study the cups and balls so much more further and give it that time and respect that it actually needs to be creative and figure out a lot of good elements and phases of magic.
Speaker 2:You look at gazo, where the melon appears underneath the hat, and it might not originate with gazo, I'm not sure if it does. I think there was a magician called Cellini from years and years ago who used to do a block of ice appears under a hat. It's just such a good piece of magic. It's traditional, it looks good. I love tarot cards and you see the magician performing with the. You know the cups on the table, the chalices, and it just looks really, really nice, you know. So I think it's got a nice visual on it and I would love to explore it a heck of a lot further than I have done.
Speaker 1:As a little bonus, if you're an Unlimited member, then the routine that Joel just spoke about from his academy is available to watch on there. So if you want to go check that out, then do go and check it out. But what I took away from that is just how quirky and interesting and different your routine is, and I remember harry spoke about your cup routine. He loved your one cup routine, I think, um, and I remember just thinking how interesting, how quirky, but also how accessible it is. I think the way that you did it took it from something that maybe had certain restrictions in the way that you perform it and you made it accessible for any situation parlor stage, close-up, whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of my magic that I perform over the years, from years and years and years ago, you, carol fox um, in his cool as a fox, he would always well, he wouldn't always, because it was a book he has. He has a section in one of his books that I remember talking about when you perform magic, try and keep it to your chest or to head height so that the magic happens in front of your face, so that people really connect and realize that it's you as a person that's performing these magic tricks. You know. So, as an example, if I was performing cups and balls, I would want to be really getting down to the table so that my head is almost hovering over the cups, so that my face is still there. And that's a lot of the magic that I perform is held like chest height.
Speaker 2:You know, I know a lot of magicians when they perform they'll take their hands down to the table.
Speaker 2:They stand up straight and the magic happens at the table, which is cool, it looks good and it's a performance and it's brilliant. But the one thing that I've always liked in magic is keeping it up nice and high, keeping it really visual, so that your face is there, you're seen as the person performing the magic tricks, and then people realize that there's a human element to this as well. Rather than just, um, you know, like, wow, this guy's hands are amazing, it's like, well, no, it's not just some guy, it's like he's the person who's doing this. I can see him, I can, you know, and your expressions cause the reaction as well. You can keep deadpan with your face while you're doing something and then, when that moment happens, you can slightly elevate your face or whatever it is that you do, just to emphasize that boom, that's the moment that this thing has happened, and it just helps control and add to the magic, because, at the end of the day, that's what magic is. We are people, we are the magicians.
Speaker 1:You know great choice. And that leads us to your second no, sorry, third slash sixth position. So what do you have in that position?
Speaker 2:well, I've got a thumb tip. I've got a thumb tip here. Um, obviously, again, it's a tool. It's a little bit like the cups and balls, the linking rings. The thumb tip is a tool that is possibly massively underexplored as well. There's a lot that you can do with it. Well, it's not underexplored I'm talking out of my pipe there. There's a lot that you can do with a thumbtip. There's a lot that's been released, a lot that you know, and I think, with what has been released with a thumbtip so far is just brilliant, it's massively underexplored.
Speaker 2:For me is probably what I should be saying. You know, look at some magicians who've created bill changes, even just a silk vanish. You know, like when I used to perform kid shows, I would take David Kaye's routine directly out of his book. I would make a silk vanish in my hand and I would make it appear in my T-shirt. Then I'd make the silk vanish again and it would appear. I would think it'd be in my T-shirt. Then I'd make the silk vanish again and it would appear, I would think it'd be in my t-shirt, but it wasn't there. It's now inside a kid's sock, which come on like if you're a kid in that audience and that silk has appeared in somebody's sock. That is magic, right? Think about when you were a kid and you watched, you know, a kid's magician, how amazing he was, like it sticks with you. It does Like I can remember when I was a kid's magician how amazing he was, like it sticks with you, it does Like I can remember when I was a kid at school, right, and I remember this, I can remember a vicar came up onto the stage and the headmaster brought him on In fact, our headmaster, he was called Mr Titcombe and he said okay, now, kids, this was high school.
Speaker 2:He said we've got a vicar who's going to come on and he's going to talk to you all about God. But I do believe you should all be very open minded, so don't take everything that he says seriously. Can you imagine that, like, we're all like high school kids going what Hang on? And this vicar came out and he opened up the Bible and it's set on fire. And everybody's reaction was just like, wow, his book's on fire. It was still Mr Titcombe's announcement. Be very open-minded.
Speaker 2:And then, when, anyway, this vicar finished his whole act and he walked off stage trying to convert a load of kids to become Christians. And then the teacher walked back on and told us all it was just a magic trick, don't take it seriously. It's just amazing. It was like this moment of you know, like it's probably what I would do, just, you know, like it's not real. You know, especially when we're talking about God with magic tricks, you know like, should it be combined magic tricks?
Speaker 2:I can remember my brother. He used to go to like some Sunday school, my little brother I was an adult at this point I've got a little brother who's a lot younger than me and I remember he came back and he told me that he believed in God and it was all because he saw the vicar turn water into wine. He saw the vicar turn water into wine, but he believed it. And okay, yeah, right, he was seven, something like that, seven years old, and he came back and he really believed it. But bear in mind he's seen me as a magician performing magic, but he still came back and believed this element of this. What was definitely a magic trick he believed was real.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm not, don't worry, I'm not some guy who's kind of saying that, yeah, not to use magic. Well, I am saying don't use magic to brainwash kids. You know it's quite important, isn't it? But yeah, I remember seeing that as a kid and then to have your little brother come back and telling you that he believed in God now because he saw this. It's quite magic's powerful, isn't it? Do you know what I mean? It's like yeah, you've got to be careful with it. You've got to be really careful with magic, because if you connect it to the wrong kind of story, it becomes far too believable.
Speaker 2:Like you, jamie, you've done a lot of mentalism over the years and you know as well as I do that you might be taking your craft seriously as a mental performer, but sometimes it can be perceived to be so serious that you are actually the real deal, because I've had it myself where I've performed at a table performing just magic tricks, and all of a sudden I find myself, I'm at my residency, I'm performing-up magic. I've been performing close-up magic for two hours. I'm not particularly bored, but I'm wanting to explore new ideas, so I'm starting to cold read on people and now, all of a sudden, somebody believes that I've genuinely got this ability to be able to do something you know and that's like that is magic. How it can you know, it can be perceived by people to be so much more than it actually is, which is, at the end of the day, a magic trick. But that is the ultimate secret. You know connecting people can connect their beliefs.
Speaker 2:I remember once performing at an event right, I was literally performed to just do close up magic and entertain people. I went up to my first table and I introduced myself Hi, I'm Joelle, you don't mind if I show you all a little bit of magic, do you? And this lady instantly announced that I was the devil. Not to go near her. And she was really aggressive at me in front of everybody that I'm the spawn of the devil himself. And I'm not kidding, this was this. I was basically being verbally attacked by this woman and I had to explain no, this isn't. You know, I'm just a conjurer and you tell yourself you whatever you want. And I was like no, I'm literally just here doing magic tricks, like calm yourself down, I'm not claiming that this is real or anything like that, I'm just doing magic tricks for people having a nice time. And she carried on.
Speaker 2:You know, you're connected to this and what you're doing is witchcraft, and yeah, so people have vulnerabilities and when magic it connects with people, doesn't it on like a, on a deep level, you know? So we as performers have to be careful with it. Um, I don't know how I've managed to get to this talking about a thumbtip, because I don't think a thumb tip necessarily has that impact on people, does it? We all, as people, have different roots. How we have developed as people, we've had different experiences, different, uh well, experiences, like you know, um, to different things, different reactions, and that's what basically creates us as people, you know, and some people do react.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, it is a difficult one, you know, when it comes down to and I'm going to say it, when it comes back to religion, when performing magic, I haven't frequently experienced what we're talking about right now. It's not a regular occurrence and it never really was, but when it did, it hit me and it really did, it was this moment of it hit me and it really did, it was this moment of whoa. This is something different here, like I'm not only performing magic tricks, but I'm inside somebody's mind way too deep than I should be, but it's not because of me, it's because it's what they want to be experiencing and what they believe in already. So there's no adjusting. That, you know. And that is where it comes back to talking about my brother. You know, um, about him being seven years old and experiencing somebody turning water to wine, which was just cordial in a glass, having water poured into it.
Speaker 2:That was it, you know, and it's like, yeah, like, for me, that experience could very, very easily link some kind of and I hate to say this, but mental health problem, because it is experiences that develop and that's the root of mental health, right, our actual experiences, you know. So, to be using magic and conjuring as something to actually create somebody's experience and tell them outright that what you're seeing now is real, this is real magic. In fact, this isn't magic, this is something else, this is spiritual, this is, you know, and it's like that is dangerous, that is hazardous and it is it. This is, you know, and it's like that is dangerous, that is hazardous and it is, it's like it has to be. Like, I think, with my magic and I do perform mentalism, but I'm always cautious of explaining that what I'm doing is not real, you know, I won't explain how it works, but I will kind of you know, know, say that I'm just going to show you else this, I'm going to try this and we can call it an experiment. It's, but it's a magic trick, you know, let's try this and I'll never kind of present any mentalism that I do as, um, you know something to be the real deal, which probably, oh, actual trick, sorry, with a thumb tip.
Speaker 2:I remember seeing h' clock years ago basically just vanishing sand in his thumbtip and then making it reappear in his other hand, and I remember watching that and it was just so cool, such a brilliant magic trick. It's always stuck with me and I think when you go up to a table and you make some salt vanish and reappear in your hand or in a cup, it never quite resonated. The way that I watched Hans Klok do it on the beach, which was, yeah, just basically making some sand vanish in his hand and reappear in his other hand, it just always looks so, so good. So it's got like a nice visual. I'm stranded and marooned on a desert island. I want to make some sand vanish from one hand and reappear in the other.
Speaker 1:I think it would just fit the bill quite well, you know, um, so yeah, superb, great choice, and I think, at the time of recording, that has to be creeping into our top five for the most commonly selected item. Yeah, we've had so many people, certainly the last maybe four. I've recorded everyone's chosen it, so it has to be creeping up there. But that does bring us to a number five on your list and four on everyone else's. So what do you have in that position?
Speaker 2:I've got a really interesting one here and this is something that a friend of mine he passed away, um a couple of years ago, but he used to always do this and what I'm about to explain is something that I urge everybody to try. Right, basically, to your events that you perform at, take a notepad and pen. Right, and sorry, this is my friend, adam Hudson. All right, so, not Alan. I know there's an Alan Hudson, I don't know Alan. This is Adam Hudson, and one thing that he used to do in close up events that he performed at stage events, he used to take a notepad and pen and he used to constantly take notes, right, what was really interesting was that the audience did not realize that he was sat making notes as he was performing. Right, he performed like a lot of mental, arithmetic based, uh, magic so, and it was all genuinely like very arithmetic based, um, a lot of mental maths, and but everything that he did came back and it was very, very strong magic. And I was having a chat with him, like you know. I noticed that you take notes, but I've never really seen him performing close up, because we don't really get to watch each other perform close up, right, it's not something that naturally happens unless you're performing at multi-gig people, multi-magicians at events and stuff like that. But to be honest, in my line of work that was quite rare, few and far between. So I wouldn't watch Adam perform.
Speaker 2:But when we spoke about it he told me what he actually did. He would be putting down a lot of guesses right so to the audience it looked like he was just making notes and putting his notebook back down, very casual, almost invisible and forgot about. But what he would do is make outright outlandish guesses that he would be jotting these notes. And he wasn't really jotting notes down, it just looked like he was and what he would actually do is just write a lot of guesses of like people's star signs. He would be guessing numbers that people were going to say he would guess um, I don't know somebody's house number, the last couple of digits on a telephone number, so that if he did get a hit he would reveal it. And then when he did get a hit, he had the most incredible, most powerful moment that could be created. And it's a little bit like how many times have you performed at an event where you've just taken guesses or something incredibly lucky had happened, such as you ask somebody to name a playing card and it just so happens to be the card that is already palmed in your hand, or it's the card that you've just seen on the bottom of the deck. Or you've got a card that's in your pocket and you know that it's the Queen of Hearts, so they've named the Queen of Hearts. You now make the Queen of Hearts vanish from the deck and it's now the card that's in your pocket.
Speaker 2:There's a lot more than that. There are so many moments in magic that us as magicians manage to fluke, and we utilize well, a notepad and a pen is your savior to create those moments and make more of them. So a notepad and pen is a tool which can really create such strong moments in magic that we've actually rarely looked at. You know, and these would be very, very incidental moments of just you've got this notepad, you jot it down. Nobody would ever mention or ask what's that notepad for, by the way, because it just if he missed everything, he just put the notepad in his pocket and it'd be forgot about. But when he did hit, he hit with some incredible magic. People would experience it as magic. So, yeah, a notepad and pen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great, great point and I know that psychological subtleties and sort of naked mentalism both talk about, you know, almost manufacturing these outcomes and exactly what you said. I remember years ago doing a tarot reading funny enough and one of the lines that I use is I get this idea of the butterfly effect. I'm not sure if you know what that is, but it's this idea that one eventuality or one choice or one decision that we make can actually make significant impact to our lives further down the line. And this woman literally just burst into tears and said that's the belief that I've lived my life on. And she had like a top on and she pulled it back ever so slightly and on her shoulder she had a butterfly tattooed and it said the butterfly effect underneath it.
Speaker 1:Now, to her that was an amazing, incredible moment and I totally took credit for it. But the truth is it's just a very, very well-known theory amongst the general public that maybe they don't think other people think is specific. So by putting that into my little spiel during, the routine feels really significant and specific to that person. But the truth is lots of people know about it.
Speaker 2:So it's a great way to manufacture a moment definitely, definitely, and, like you said, well, when you get the hits, you capitalize on it as much as you possibly can and build that moment up. You know, and that that's that's what I envisioned adam doing with his notepad and pen, and it's the one thing that I've tried and has hits with and just really enjoyed it and just found it so funny. You know, it's like, it's like one of those things. I remember cold reading, and I used to have this residency years ago in my early 20s, and I used to perform in this Italian restaurant and the one thing I used to always do was I've done every single card trick on every single body a million times, because I've been working here for the past five years and it's the same customers coming in over and over and over and over again. So there aren't actually any more magic tricks that I know that I could do. So the one thing that I used to do was a lot of cold reading, and I remember cold reading on this couple.
Speaker 2:A young couple told them that they needed a holiday and reacted Wow, it was like this, oh, and from their reaction I instantly felt hang on a minute, there's a little bit more here. They're going on holiday. So then I capitalized in on that and said actually, hang on, I'm sorry, I don't think it's that you need a holiday. I think you possibly already booked this holiday. That's true, right? And they said yes, and then somehow I managed to basically tell them roughly the date that they were going away and told them where they were going to.
Speaker 2:And from their experience, I've just told them that they needed a holiday. That's why they booked a holiday. They're going on this day. I've just told them that they needed a holiday. That's why they booked a holiday. They're going on this day. I told them where they were going and then managed to finish up and wrap up with some kind of mental magic trick which encompassed everything and made it all seem like this real strong experience. And it's like you said, just capitalising on what are basically guesses and turning them into tricks and experiences Experiences, not just tricks experiences Like turning water into wine.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
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Speaker 1:So that brings us to your halfway point. What's in your next position?
Speaker 2:Well, I have. Are you ready for this? Sponge balls Dum dum dum. Some magicians love them, some magicians hate them. Um, but to be honest, they've always, always served me incredibly well. They're like something that you can perform on adults and you get reactions. You can perform them on children you get reactions. You can perform them in a show you get incredible reactions.
Speaker 2:Spin balls are just a brilliant tool to work with, and the more you explore them again, the more you can create and come up with. You know, like you look at Kent and Nepa's routine. Kent and Nepa's Spongeball routine is just fantastic, absolutely brilliant. It's a very psychological Spongeball routine which sounds ridiculous, but you go and watch him do it and it is absolutely brilliant. You can check it out. It's online. Just put Kent and Neppa Spongeballs and I think it might still be there on YouTube or something like that, but it's brilliant.
Speaker 2:And one routine that I've come up with that I really enjoy doing with this is basically, I have a Spongeball routine where I start with two red balls. I place one in their hand, one in mine, and we just do all the gags Bang, it's travelled, it's travelled back. Open up your hand. Oh, look, it's gone. Then I would do the little move where they believe I'm holding on to mine. They're holding on to theirs. When I open up my hand, mine has vanished and it's reappeared in their hand. That's reaction number one. I then take my ball back and then they hold on to theirs again. Now, when I open up my hand, mine's become green, so it's turned from red to green and they're holding on to their red ball at this point and now I squeeze mine. But now when I open up mine, it turns sorry, mine vanishes, and when they open up their hand, they're now left with one red and one green. So it's like it vanished. The first one vanished and reappeared in their hand.
Speaker 2:I'm telling them doing the same thing again, but they see mine change colour. So now, when they open up their hand, after mine's vanished and changed colour, the one that's appeared in their hand has also changed colour. Does that make sense? So it's like an extra little kick. You've just done what you did originally, but now you've changed color and it's traveled into their hand. I've kind of convoluted that with the explanation, but yeah, it just adds like this extra layer of really cool magic. You know just like I'm doing the same trick again, but I'm gonna make it change color and open up your hand. Boom, my one, that is. You know you get the idea. I'm still going on. I'm still waffling the same trick. Can you just jump in and stop me?
Speaker 1:no, I think it's perfect and I'm enjoying listening, but so one thing that I'm learning is that you're taking a lot of these classic routines and putting a bizarre twist on it. So, for example, you mentioned your chop cup and the the kicker is a callback moment to a playing card that was torn up and thrown away. With this, you've got this whole thing of a different color ball and it's the different color ball that travels over. So it's it's interesting to see how you're taking these classic tricks, but you're making them bespoke to you and your style and giving it your own twist yeah, and and just still using classic methods.
Speaker 2:Still using classic methods. When it comes to this particular spongebob routine, you're just doing what already exists, but changing a little bit with the tools that we've already been given yeah, it's a great choice and I love the green ball idea.
Speaker 1:I think that's superb. I think that's really really nice. Um, yeah, and it brings us over your halfway point now, so we're on number three, but that's gonna be one, two, three, four, five, six to you okay, um.
Speaker 2:Well, that takes me to. Are you ready? Just because I'm marooned on a desert island, now I'm trying to think of a magic trick which connects a memory, something that I've seen that I know if I was to perform for somebody will get a reaction. Right, but not necessarily about the reaction, probably more about my actual experience with it and watching it for the first time. And it was actually the educated matchbox. Yeah, so it was my friend who I mentioned earlier on, adam.
Speaker 2:Um, it was in the actual magic club that we would meet at and he just before, I'd never seen it before, I was really young. Um, he was obviously really young as well, but you know, we have different elements of magic that we study. Uh, and he just performed this really really cool routine where he just had a matchbox, he placed it on his hand and he told it to roll over, and the matchbox rolled over. Then he said stand up. And this little matchbox just stood up, um, and it just did like a variety of little tricks, but the the like crescendo moment for me was when it stood up again. And then the match box just opened up and he took the props that he was using before that trick and put them into the match box, closed it and put it away and it just added this like really cool moment of wow. That was almost appeared so incidental, because it was just a matchbox, which is a regular day item, everyday item and it just animated and it came alive.
Speaker 2:You know, and like now, as a magician, I'll be honest, I haven't performed educated matchbox to the public. Be honest, I haven't performed educated matchbox to the public. But I know that I could sit and entertain myself on my dying moments marooned on a desert island, just watching this matchbox spinning around and creating little moments and maybe trying to get it to jump from one hand to the other and playing around, you know, and just using your imagination to animate a box and come up with some interesting things that it can do, maybe a backflip, or, you know, it might climb up and land on your shoulder or, you know, jumping at your pocket or anything. You know where you can just add your own little touches. And I think for me I didn't know how it worked, like it was the early days of my magic and my experiences in magic, so to watch that happen close up and then to learn that it was such a classic magic trick and the one thing that I'd always been interested in is the classics in magic. Like I acquired old, old Abra magazines when I was a kid.
Speaker 2:Like I was brought up in a little shipping town called Barrow-in-Furness and at the time all we had was a library. There was nothing else in Barrow. It was like heavily poverty-strucken town and it was like you can check this out, it's a shipbuilding town and when I was a kid there was absolutely nothing there, like to the point that my teachers were telling me that I couldn't be a magician and I was going to work in a shipyard. That is what I was told, you know. So to be a part of this magic club as a kid was like this real getaway, you know, from the actual reality of life in Barrow at that time, which was tough, tough place to grow up in. There's there's nothing. There's like nobody was interested in magic other than your friends who were in this magic club, who traveled from all over you know, the Northwest to come to this magic club and you know, and yeah, I think, like to watch.
Speaker 2:Anyway, to go back to that trick was just a really cool moment of wow. Hang on, this is animated. This is like something in magic that I've never seen, like this box is moving around and it's doing stuff. This box is alive and it was, for me, just something that always stuck in my mind as being a really cool trick and massively like to this day, I believe it is not underexplored, but underused by magicians, you know, because it's so good. And then imagine just switching that matchbox out and giving it away to somebody you know like, does magic actually get much better? Well, yeah, it does, but it's still a good trick.
Speaker 1:It's a great one and I know Eugene Berger teaches his version of it and I'm not sure Someone will have to correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure he has a detachable hookup so it can be handed out after. Or I've certainly seen someone with that. I'm not sure if it's his, but I do remember watching him do it with his sort of low graspy voice, um and and seeing this thing just come alive. There's something so magical about it.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot more, like you've got the spirit side, if you want it to be connected, to go. So it's just this box that's animated and alive. It's just a really cool trick and it is. It's just a really nice little thing. I think, um, yeah, like the idea of the idea like I just come up with then, where you animate this box and it jumps into your pocket or something, would be quite nice. Like you know, there's the, the vanishing silk, where you see it, it vanishes and you go to vanish it again, but it's there on your hand and it jumps into your pocket as if it's happened a bit late. I don't know if you've seen that, um, but it's such a good routine and it's like that entertainment and really entertaining moment where whoa the silk's just come alive or it goes up your sleeve and you see it fly across your chest and come down to your other hand.
Speaker 2:As you've explained it, I feel like the matchbox, the animated matchbox, the educated matchbox, has this like element to it which is just really magical. Just, it's like, um, it's a little bit, almost cartoony bit, um, disney fairy world, where it's like this really magical thing. In fact I'm saying fairy world, um, me and a friend, years ago we used to have a double act called the fairy catchers and we only created this concept because we were booked by a council to walk around pretending we were catching fairies and making people miserable and the one thing that we knew that we could instantly jump to was the educated matchbox, because I claimed that I trapped this fairy in it and, um, this box was moving. We had as characters, we had these really big noses and hoods and we just looked a little bit menacing and we used to have to basically do like a travelling almost clean circus, really, in the sense that it was just off the imagination and yeah, that's like. Anyway, man, I'm talking about characters behind the Educated Matchbox.
Speaker 2:There we go. Number three educated matchbox. Because of my memories associated to it as well.
Speaker 1:Yep, great choice. And that brings us on to number two.
Speaker 2:Number two. So this is something that I as being like in my career practically forever, which is just a coin and a Sharpie pen. That's it. So these two objects, just a coin and a Sharpie pen, as magicians can create so much dynamic in a visual set. But for years, I mean I would For years performing at tables. I would take a Sharpie and a pen sorry, a Sharpie pen and a coin to a table and I would do a lot of improvising. So I think they call it jazz magic. Is it when you improvise? You've got a lot of different things that you can go to.
Speaker 2:I never really looked at it as jazz magic as such, but somebody watching would have probably recognized that it was jazz magic. Anyway, I would have certain things that it would do, but I'd never particularly routined it as such. I just had moments that I knew I could finish with, or open with, put in the middle and finish with, because for me, like I think a lot of jazzing with your magic is it's all about trying to take it further. I hope that makes sense. Like when it comes to magic, the way I've always broached it is learning about the term jazz magic, like I'd spent a lot of my career performing without magicians. Like, I spent, honestly, I would say, eight years of never working with magicians, never interacting with magicians. I didn't know the term jazz magic. So I would be doing jazz magic, but in my own mind I wouldn't want to be just improvising. I would always be trying to take it for myself to another level and try to do things with it.
Speaker 2:You know, and whilst I was improvising I would be going to, like, make the coin vanish and then it would appear on somebody's shoulder and then I'd put the pen in my pocket and I would take the coin off their shoulder and put that in my hand. But then I'd realize that the pen's vanished Sorry, the pen's gone, and that's now on their shoulder or tucked under their armpit. And then I'd go to get that and as I put the coin in my hand, I go to get the uh pen from underneath their armpit and I'd be loading the coin back onto their shoulder and vanish the coin again, and I would just be trying to kind of take it as far as I possibly could. You know, uh, and to the point that, like you know, the, the the coin would vanish as a, as a wave, the the pen over it and then I'd say it's back on your shoulder. And they would look and it isn't on their shoulder and I'd say, oh no, sorry, stand up, you're now sat on it. And they would sit, sorry. They would stand up and they would look and they would literally be sat on the signed coin that they just signed themselves and then I would go in and grab the coin and then the pen would vanish again and they had said that you sat on the pen. They would stand up and they're now sat down on the pen and just constant movement and constant rhythm of constantly tricking and moving and moving and moving to just captivate people so that this guy like I, would be moving at a pace that was almost like a lot of my magic quite early on, so that I could then get into the magic.
Speaker 2:Because, like a rule for me in magic has always been to be nice, be you and make sure that you're likable. That's like an obvious thing, like when you're performing if you're going to go into an event to not be likable, then you're not going to be liked. It's quite easy to not be liked, but I believe that I'm a normal, nice, decent person. So I would try and express who I am nice and early so that I could move into the magic. Because for me, performing magic was always about giving people a good, strong, powerful magic experience, and that is honestly like all these tricks that we've spoke about, everything that I've done In fact the list that I've just spoke about I've made this like 10 minutes before we were talking just to list stuff, you know, but for me magic has always been about giving people a really strong experience in magic.
Speaker 2:Like I always took the role of being a magician very seriously, it was never about me. I would like to express nice and early on that I'm just me and I'm a person doing magic so that I could then put myself away and almost put myself to the side, so that I could then just do magic tricks and people would get to see the magic happen. It was only as time went on I guess of mixing with people that I realized that it's about me as a person that people have to be interested in as well whilst I'm doing the magic, if that makes sense. But even then, I didn't always, I never do and still probably wouldn't want it to always just be about me as the magician. I've performed with magicians over the years and, to be honest, there are a lot of magicians in closeup environments that I've worked with and the magic has been about them far too much. It's it's like it's it's overtook and it's like I'm now this person who can talk really loud and stand on a table while I do a magic trick and, you know, gather everybody's attention because it's me. I'm like, I'm the attention seeker and my magic was never that, particularly whilst performing for people, it was about what they're seeing happen, about the magic and about the memory that they can take away, you know.
Speaker 2:So the coin and the pen was always just something where you could create some really cool elements, and I would take the Sharpie lid off as like one nice little thing that was a part of it, and chuck the coin out of the Sharpie as like one nice little thing that was a part of it and chuck the coin out of the Sharpie.
Speaker 2:But then one thing that I used to like to do, because I'd seen, obviously a lot of people would change a regular coin into a jumbo coin, but what I would do is tap the lid and the jumbo coin falls out, bump onto the table and just add, like you know, elements of magic, and just make it as interactive as I possibly could. You know, and that was it. And then, but vanishing the pen, the pen would constantly vanish. You know, like flip sticking it and you know loads of stuff would be happening that it's gone completely. And then I'd finished the whole thing, so everything had vanished. I'm saying I'd finish it, so everything had vanished. I don't know how I'd finish it. It would just be that moment that felt like the biggest moment of the reaction that everybody enjoyed. That'd be the point where it would stop.
Speaker 1:The magic would stop great, excellent, and it's one that we've not had, but I I think that's superb. Um, I know that in london we have a guy called brendan rodriguez who is very well known for his pen and coin routine. Um, and seeing it firsthand, I mean, I've not had the opportunity to see yours, but I'm sure it's phenomenal. But going from someone who's witnessed it firsthand, it's just phenomenal because they're such opposing items as well. They're different in every way one's small, one's larger, one's metal, one's plastic, one's shiny, one's dull. They're so easy to distinguish from an audience. So if one happens to change places, it's not just that they've changed places, it's almost like they've changed form. This metal round small thing has now become this big, long plastic thing. How on earth has has that conceivably happened? There's no way for the brain to work that out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah, and that's it. It's like when you have skills with sleight of hand, this is like the perfect thing to showcase that, because it creates some amazing visual moments and, like I said, like non-visual moments as well of making a coin appear on their shoulder and then they sat on it. Well, it's got the element of it vanished. That was visual, but now it's reappeared in a completely impossible location and I think, like using the pen to sign the coin and then having this like validity or validation that it's the signed coin that has vanished, and then it's reappeared in this impossible place, just always added yeah, like a good extra layer, like a natural layer, you know.
Speaker 1:And that leads us on to your final item. So what's in your final position?
Speaker 2:My final position is a routine that I've performed Again. I've mentioned it close up and stage but it's the one thing that I feel has been the staple routine of my career and it's basically just a three rope routine with small, medium and long right. So I put this routine together over the years of working with Matt Edwards and Oliver Table, and I started on the routine I'm talking maybe 20, 22 years ago or something like that and gradually, over time, it's just become this like three rope routine that I just love performing, and I perform it up close, I perform it on stage and I know that the moment I bring this routine out, I've got an incredibly strong piece of magic and it's something different that people haven't necessarily seen, because we all have our rope routines and you know things like that. But for me, the ropes to show a combination of classic and also impressive magic and for people who are watching, rope is rope. I remember watching rope magic as a kid and just absolutely loving what I was seeing. So you know, I think a lot of my magic has been from my experiences as a kid and what I've seen that captivated my attention. You know, and I think that's one thing I probably learned from going through this list. A lot of the stuff is the things that I've seen over time and you know the rope routine anyway is and you know the rope routine anyway was gradually, you know, like as time progressed with this rope routine, new material would come out and become available to magicians. I remember picking up Fiber Optics, extended by Richard Sanders, and adding some of the moves from that. Oh, brilliant, that can fit into this, because I'm doing this.
Speaker 2:And now I just feel like my rope routine is just such a strong piece of magic that now, when I perform it, like I finish my show with my three rope routine, um, and I stand on, uh, on top of my case, my suitcase, and I play a little bit of music in my show and I just perform this routine with a little bit of talking and about it, about my experiences of magic, and I feel like when I perform this routine and finish the whole routine, when it's done, that the audience have probably like connected with me, like at this point, because they've seen what I have said is going to be the strongest piece of magic that I know and I'm going to save it till the end and show you it. But then I tell them at the end why it's the strongest piece of routine and explain that it's been a piece of magic that I've been working on practically throughout my life. And this is where it's at, and hopefully, in 10 years time, when you see me in the future, this piece of magic will be even stronger and even better than it is now. Um, and then I thank everybody for watching the show and hope to see them all again, or whatever. You know, obviously there's more than that. I'm just kind of paraphrasing it.
Speaker 2:Um, but that that's, like you know, just one bit of magic. That's traditional, it's visual and it's got so many like amazing moments that are just. Oh, it starts off with three pieces of rope now that are all the same size. So, three pieces of rope that are all the same size. They all change sizes, the ends become the middle, the middle become the ends, and you pull the ends off, you throw the ends back on, you put the ends in your mouth, you spit them back on, you connect that piece to that piece. That's all over your shoulder and when you pull it off, it's now one long length.
Speaker 2:You can show the length of rope, and it goes on. It all intertwines, as rope should, because rope itself is intertwined and we can see its movement, its rhythm and for me, like when you move rope, we've just finished recording for a doc, a documentary for netflix, and, honestly, the crew who were working on this documentary all they wanted was me stood on this bridge, on the millennium bridge, performing with the rope, because it was just so visual for the camera, you know, and it's like that. That's the way, the way they Sorry, the camera crew perceived the rope routine that I was doing is exactly what I've had in my mind and the reaction that it gets when I finish performing it for people, be it close up or be on stage, it just gets the reaction and it feels like what I want to be presenting to people.
Speaker 1:So rope is my number one Amazing choice and again, it's one that we've had quite a few times and no doubt we will have many, many more times. Um, because it's just such a wonderful trick and looking at your list, you know there's tons of classic routines here, but the way that you put your own twist on it and your own unique charm to each routine is really refreshing to see. That, really, um, and it just shows that you really can take some, you know, time-tested pieces of magic and still make them feel relevant and fresh and new I think it has to.
Speaker 2:Um, I think magic has to. Um. There's one thing that I stick to being, which is magic. All right, I don't want to get slated for this with what I'm about to say, but magic as an entertainment form, not as an art form as an entertainment form, is exceptionally easy to learn, to learn. And it is right. The ultimate skill of magic is presenting it and making that be the thing that stands out. And you know, obviously, as an example, I've talked about the educated matchbox. Well, you know, it's all about how we form something is the ultimate secret to the actual magic trick.
Speaker 2:The personality and the person behind what it is that we do is important, all right, and what we are actually doing with it is the thing that is important. And we all know this as magicians, right, but over the years, when I've seen performers who literally copy other performers, acts word for word, it's just pointless. It's like what's the point? Why are you even doing that? Like it's fine, okay, you've chose to do that and that's what you're doing. But ultimately, if you break it down, what is the point of you pretending to be somebody else? One, probably because you know that it works. Two, it made you laugh and three, it entertained you. So therefore, you've got something that you can go out and you can perform because you've seen it entertain somebody.
Speaker 2:But now, if you take that concept and you just remove what it is that that person did and be yourself with it, it's easier. It's easier because you don't have to pretend to be somebody else, you don't have to learn their script. You don't have to pretend to be somebody else. You don't have to learn their script. You don't have to pretend to be somebody else Because, at the end of the day, magic is already pretty easy to learn, and obviously I'm talking about not all magic. A lot of magic is incredibly difficult to learn. It's exceptionally hard to learn, of course. But a lot of magic that people head out and perform is very easy. You can go to a shop Alakazam, you can buy a magic trick and you can head out and you can perform it at a paid event and you're still going to get really good reactions, right, of course, like that's the thing you know. But what ultimately does work and just makes it that little bit more personable is putting yourself behind it rather than somebody that you've already seen, and becoming that person. So be yourself rather than being that actual person, you know, because I believe that if you're interested in magic, you've got life experiences, you're a person, you can put yourself behind it, you can make something entertaining.
Speaker 2:You know, I think, like a lot of the material that I see performers do, the best stuff is the original and unique stuff that's unique to them.
Speaker 2:Everybody can create their own magic and their own presentation behind something, even if it starts off incredibly basic, like look at my rope routine.
Speaker 2:That started years ago and, to be honest, what I say to my audience is true.
Speaker 2:I'm always looking at my rope routine and trying to make it better, trying to add moments to it.
Speaker 2:And you know, you can ask, like my friends, matt Cope, jay Rollins, who I perform with, and they'll tell you that I've performed that routine forever and I have and I'm always trying to add, adapt, change, be it the presentation, be the. You know, and I'll never really be happy with it because in my own mind it's like an ongoing routine. You know, and, yeah, I just think like, even if you, if somebody wants to go out and wants to create their own routines, just go out with a very basic idea, go out and perform with a simple, simple premise and build on it over time, because I guarantee that if you don't feel like it's ready to be seen, it is, it will be ready. And then when you start to get your feedback and through your own personal exploration of going out and actually doing something it's only going out and performing it in the wild, to real people that you're going to be able to process it and start to figure it out and make it a better routine.
Speaker 1:Great. And that leads us on to your two curveball items, mainly because we don't know where either of these is going. You only have the chance to have one book on one item, so what did you put in your book position?
Speaker 2:In my book position is I've been battling over this. I've gone for the Art of Astonishment by Paul Harris yeah, and I would let you pick any one of the chapters. So I love Paul Harris's material. Paul Harris magic for me is just I love it. I love like all of the magic is released, everything that I see him perform over time. So I've owned all the chapters of the Art of Astonishment. I've lost them, I've gave them away as gifts to magicians, I've re-bought them, I've gave them away again as gifts and I need to re-buy them all. I absolutely love them.
Speaker 2:For me, the art of astonishment is still the pinnacle of magic because you can always look through it. You can find incredible magic tricks. The plots are well thought out. There's a huge dynamic range in there, from mental ideas to close-up magic tricks with nice little psychological broaches and touches um. For me, the art of astonishment and just I. I like reading books. So I'm glad like books was a part of this and for me, reading books over the past 30 years. I started magic when I was like seven years old but I was like really lucky. I have, like old friends, an old magician called Terry Crawford who when I was like seven, eight years old, he brought round like a huge library of amazing magic books and I spent all my time just reading them and learning lots of magic. And yeah, so the Art of Astonishment has just been like a collection of books. And yeah, so the art of astonishment has just been like a collection of books. And I know we're only limited to one book, so I'm happy with any.
Speaker 1:So you just got onto what I normally do, but I found a new way to go down this route. So normally, if someone picks a collection of books, obviously we're only allowed one. So that's cheating. So normally I would say which copy. So, instead of only allowed one, so that's cheating. Um, so normally I would say which copy.
Speaker 2:So instead of doing that because that's too difficult, I've decided so let's pick one trick from that collection and then that way people can explore that specific book if they want to oh man, there are just so many cool tricks, um, but one trick specifically that I remember or have always just enjoyed performing is where you I can't remember the name of it, so we'll, we'll find it and we'll stick this in but you take some baker foil, some tin foil, and you put it on top of a coin and you mold the shape of one side of the coin and you keep molding it in. It takes a little bit of time, obviously, to get the image to kind of process through the foil. And then you ask somebody to hold the hand and you trap it in between the two hands. You take the coin and it's now on the same side as the indentation that you've just made in your tin foil and you turn it over in your hand and then when they open up their hand, that has also changed. So the image that you created has also transposed through the tinfoil or bakerfoil, whatever you call it, and that's just one really strong piece of magic that I've always just enjoyed, like the premise of really more than anything, and I think when I read, when I read it, it just kind of it stuck quite a lot as being like such a cool trick. In fact I think it's one of the bonus tricks in one of the books. Um, I could say about another trick as well that is really nice in there. Um, I mean, like the whole collection, man, let's just go for the whole thing.
Speaker 2:Um, the unscrewed, where you you've got like a whole routine with a packet of cards that you turn in half, um, and then you finish by unscrewing the deck of cards and putting it away. I think it's called unscrewed. Uh, it's just a brilliant visual, like the concepts. For me, the concepts of these books are what get the imagination going. One thing as well was a, and I absolutely love this. It's like a combination of Warp Zag with Torn and Restorned Cad. It's just absolutely brilliant. You, you basically perform, perform a warp zag and then you take it and you can rip the, the warped card in half, but it's not warped, so you put it back together and you show it in two halves and then you restore the whole thing together on the inside and you can pull, pull the what, what was previously warped card back out and hand it out to be examined and it just looks absolutely brilliant and like. The concepts of these are just like just interesting concepts that have magic really well hidden behind it.
Speaker 2:And I think, another really cool trick. Can I say one more? Um, so I think these are probably all in different chapters, but one that has to be looked at and has been massive. And again, I can't tell you the name of the trick, but you take a bill, a banknote, whatever you want to call it. You have one of them signed and you sign the other and they're rolled together in a tube and you put the tubes together and somebody pinches the two separated signed notes and then when you pull and expand it, they've just morphed right back together and it's like just a mad moment of restoring some notes.
Speaker 2:It doesn't work particularly well with british currency. I don't even know now if it works particularly well with um. You know, like the, the plasticky notes that we have, but there's nothing wrong with like adapting it with um paper. You know like you can perform that with just paper and it looks as equally amazing just two separate pieces of paper and performing that actual routine. You know just, yeah, there's just so much stuff up. I haven't even scratched the surface, have I really, with the art of astonishment. It just goes on and on and on.
Speaker 1:The whole thing is just a brilliant trilogy so the coin trick is called, uh, the shape of astonishment from book three. But very, very good choice. Great books, um, and again, if people haven't checked them out, I think they're still readily available. Um, so, do check them out, do, do, get hold of them. Um, and that takes us on to the final thing, your item. What is your non-magic item that you use for magic?
Speaker 2:okay. So my non-magic item again is a routine that has just been a staple of my close-up sets and it's a ring, just a ring, a finger ring, and I have a routine that I perform and the whole routine that I perform is based on Divorce. Is it Divorce or Divorced by Justin Miller? I think it's Divorce by Justin Miller, his routine. I think you can purchase it through Illusionist. For me it's like just such a cool bit of magic and you can play around with that a lot as well and experiment and create variations of the handling. But ultimately, I think even sticking to Justin Miller's Divorce is a real good place to stick to, because it's so well figured out and structured and I think the routine's really really cheap to buy. It's like nine dollars, ninety nine or something, and you've got what is, I would say for me is like the ultimate close-up routine of a ring. It's just perfect.
Speaker 2:You know, and when I perform this I will do all the phases I've added little bits in myself, I think, over time or maybe just add a couple of the extra phases in again, to repeat some of the phrase phases, um, and I will do this with a borrowed finger ring so you can borrow somebody's ring off them as you perform the routine. But if they're not wearing a ring you can do it with a coin. So you can borrow a coin off somebody and perform the routine. So it uses like a finger ring and a coin. So my item anyway is a finger ring and just for all the visual phases and the kickbacks and the little bits that there's just a big let's base this on Divorce by Justin Miller, because if I start talking too much about adding my own little bits in, that's all actually happened just over time and my experience of going out and performing it. But for me it's just a brilliant, brilliant piece of magic. So yeah, Great, excellent.
Speaker 1:So that brings us to the end of your list Again. Very diverse, loving the twists that you have on things, but if people want to find out more about you, joel, where can they go?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a couple of different spots. I've got themiraclestudiocouk where basically I list all of my releases and physical products and things like that. So I've got books that I've written, released, individual tricks products and that kind of thing. So themiraclestudiocouk. I also run themagicians1.net, which is an article based website. You can sign up to that for free and just basically I share a lot of my experience over time, little bits of philosophy, uh, share routines and things like that as well. So you can join that for free. Um, and I also have patreoncom forward slash miracle studio, um, which is my like little mini subscription service, if you like, where I share just creations. I don't so much uh, articles and things like that, I just send share magic creations there of tricks that I've come up with and yeah. So there you go three little websites there the miracle studiocouk, the magicians, onenet and patreoncom. Forward slash the miracle studio and that's it amazing, great job.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, joel, for giving us your time um and giving us your list as well you're more than welcome.
Speaker 2:Thanks a lot for having me on. I hope that wasn't too boring.
Speaker 1:Not at all. It was brilliant, full of great advice and insights into the way you think and, more importantly, the reasons that you chose those things.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks, hope that was alright for you. Thank you, cheers.
Speaker 1:And thank you all for listening. We will hear from you again next week on another episode of Desert Island Tricks. Goodbye.
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