APPEARED IN A SHOW RECENTLY with busy professional Richard Pinner who’s always coming up with interesting and different presentations for standard effects. And in this show he had a winner with an invisible deck routine.
The normal score is to throw an invisible deck out into the audience and kid them into choosing any card then throwing [...]
Posted on March 29th, 2008 by John
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MANY MAGICIANS AVOID or are apprehensive in using the classic card force but that master of performing subtlety Patrick Page once showed me a typical Page touch that smooths out that problem.
Patrick takes a pack of cards out of their case and hands the case to the spectator to hold. He will always hold it in the [...]
Posted on March 27th, 2008 by John
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I MUST ADMIT TO BEING BIASED when asked to review the new DVD on Bob Read who was a close friend who I knew for fifty years and who was very kind in helping me back into magic when I retired twelve years ago. We dined regularly at Kettners which was always a delightful mix [...]
Posted on March 26th, 2008 by John
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RECENTLY I WAS ASKED TO JUDGE a close-up competition at the Ilford Magic Society, a club where I had lectured some time ago. As I was chatting with the two other lay judges before the contest, I remembered that the Ilford Magic Society was the club where some of our most famed professionals of today first riffled [...]
Posted on March 22nd, 2008 by John
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GOOD FRIEND LEWIS JONES emailed me a wonderful adobe clip called “Card Castle”designed by a man in the U.S. called Lewis Simonoff via Jamy Ian Swiss.
This is I believe a demonstration clip of what is possible with a new Adobe creative programme and it involves the building of a castle beside a lake but all portrayed [...]
Posted on March 22nd, 2008 by John
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FOLLOWING YESTERDAY’S PUZZLE found in a Jack Avis notebook – which did the guy light first, cigar, gas stove, burner or bonfire?
He lit the single match in the matchbox first!
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Posted on March 20th, 2008 by John
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JACK AVIS WAS AN AVID NOTE TAKER and as mentioned earlier he left masses of notebooks filled with his magic thinkings, ideas both original and observed also noted odd sayings, puzzles and literary ephemera both in and out of magic.
He is one item I found recently.
A man looked into his match box and found just one match [...]
Posted on March 19th, 2008 by John
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MAGIC AND COMEDY WERE HONOURED with the erection of a nine feet bronze statue of the late comedy magician Tommy Cooper in his home town Caerphilly Wales, unveiled by by one of his greatest fans, Hollywood star Sir Anthony Hopkins.
I didn’t know Tommy intimately but met him on many occasions in Davenports and Harry Stanley’s studio [...]
Posted on March 18th, 2008 by John
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I KNEW JACK AVIS FOR OVER FIFTY YEARS. Ten years after I first met him I married his sister and whilst we didn’t discuss much magic whilst I was in business, for the first ten years of my retirement and my return to magic we met every week, sometimes more, had holidays together and talked much [...]
Posted on March 16th, 2008 by John
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BOBBY BERNARD AND I have been friends for over sixty years. As teenagers we were in concert party together – he did vent dressed as a schoolmaster with a naughty boy pupil and I did magic. I remember it well.
“What’s your name?”
“Isaiah sir”
“Why do they call you Isaiah?”
“Cos one eyes ‘igher than the other!”
Later we were both members [...]
Posted on March 14th, 2008 by John
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