So much so we’re now into a second printing of the book (allowing of course for complimentary review copies etc.) Keep a look out for further reviews or have a word with magicians who’ve purchased the book or seen it at lectures I’ve been doing at magic clubs. Give me a call email europro@tiscali.co.uk if you would like to arrange a KISS evening for your club.

Many thanks.

As confirmed by the enthusiastic reports from professional magician Tom Whitestone who recently pulled this item on the bride and groom at an Indian wedding reception. Tom reported that their excitement and comment continued throughout his close-up performance almost to the exclusion of the rest of his programme. Tom said “There is no doubt that this will be a permanent item in my show in the future. It’s visual, easy and very magical and was a talking point long after I collected my cheque.

The 132 page book “KISS” contains eight John Derris routines that formerly retailed at £100.00+ that were performed for over ten years as well as the unique “KISS” principle that has led many magicians to new levels of performance and creativity.

This is the awful legacy of the internet and DVD’s where magicians the world over are buying the work of a famed performer and repeating it exactly, rather than finding their own interpretation and injecting their own personality into a routine. It’s sad.

Paul Daniels always said he read the instructions of an effect he’d bought, threw them away and then worked out his own routine that echoed his personality. One look at his high speed chop cup routine will confirm the wisdom of personalising a trick around your personna. It’s unlike any chop cup routine that is done by the thousand every saturday night in a restaurant somewhere.

To be a successful magician you have to sell yourself first and hang your magic on your personality. Channing Pollock did it. Fred Kaps did it. Ken Brooke did it. (I once saw a London magician do a Ken Brooke routine and unknowingly slip into a Yorkshire accent Awful.)

So many magicians copied Don Alan’s magic routines and very personal patter and material that he abdicated from the magic world and didn’t appear at a magic convention for ten years To be succesful and connect with your audience you must develop your own personality. Read chapter 19 of the new book “KISS”

Club President Graham Harper said “It was a stunning lecture and members gleaned a valuable lesson in getting back to basics in magic and keeping the effects and presentation as simple as possible. The value of the evening and the information disclosed was proven by the fact the 50% of the membership purchased this new, unique book on the spot”

“I’d recommend John Derris’s KISS lecture to any magic club where members are seeking to lift their magic to a new level. Excellent!”

His series covers performers with a real talent for entertainment and comedy – people like Kenny Everett, Tommy Cooper, Les Dawson, Mike Yarwood, Terry Thomas and yes even Alastair Sim, Thora Hurd and Joyce Grenfell.
All great stars but many who endured awful privations in their early career. Dodgy boarding houses, gaps in their bookings, crooked agents and many other problems that went with being in variety. Watch it. You’ll learn a lot.

But the one virtue they all possessed was persistence. The desire to go on. It’s so important that I devoted a whole chapter “Persistence is your business ally” in my new book “KISS”. A book that shows how I adapted a system that brought me success for 30 years when I ran an advertising agency, but a system that I adapted when I turned to professional magic 15 years ago. Not only containing a programme of performance proven effects and routines but packed with all the know how of how to be ahead and travel the world performing magic and earning a profit. Forgive the boast but I did it! And only gave up a year ago due to illness.

So instead of buying yourself a couple more DVD’s of variations on the matrix effect, or a few packs of cards, why not invest in your future success and read how an ordinary middle of the road magician got bookings from St Petersburg to Buckingham Palace – all in 31 steps. It’s called KISS – Keep it Simple Stupid!

On retirement he adopted the system – KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid!) – to magic that led to engagements all over the world including Japan, Russia, Africa and all parts of Europe, This could be the book you’ve been waiting for ever since you took up magic!

Members were the first to see the new book and the presentation included a summary of the concept together with his unique performance-proven routines and effects that made the KISS programme so successful.

John Derris’s presentation can next be seen at the Nottingham Guild of Magicians on Thursday 21st April. Details frolm Andrew Morrison 0115 9605844. For further details about KISS www.magicderris.com

I wrote a book.

Many of you will remember that I lectured to around 50 magic clubs a few years ago. Intriguingly called KISS. Keep it simple stupid! It was all about how to sell yourself based on a proven business technique that I used for winning big business for my advertising agency for nearly 30 very successful years against many big international advertising agencies.

When I retired I turned full time professional magician and adapted the system and created a new magic programme that got me bookings in Japan, Russia, Greece, Europe and many other countries all over the world. It also got me to Buckingham Palace!

And as of two days ago it’s now here. A very unique book .” KISS. The word that got me magic bookings in Athens, Copenhagen, Istanbul, Marbella, Osaka, Paris, Rabat, St. Petersburg and Buckingham Palace” 31 ways to better magic magic, better bookings and bigger fees.Not just another book of tricks, but the real low down on how to be a better performer. And I proved the principle for 30 years in the hard nose business world of advertising.

Many magicians asked me to elaborate on the system and the effects I built into the programme. And so with an enforced stay of convalescence I sat down and wrote the book. 133 pages of it with all the subtleties of presentation, tips on marketing and selling yourself. Plus all the routines that I used, all the touches, the nuances, the funnies that got me class bookings for 15 years. It’s all here ready for you to lift your act to a higher level of bookings and fees.

Check out my web site www.magicderris and it will cost you no more than half a dozen packs of cards. Post free to any part of the world. Prepare to go one better. You know you’ve got a better performance inside you. Here’s how!

Group magic.

Vernon and the greats used it. Fred Kaps used it.Peter Warlock, Jack Avis, Francis Haxton and other names used it. And I’ve used it together with Alex Elmsley, Jack Avis, Lewis Jones, Bob Read and others. So what is group magic?

I’m not knocking the magic clubs, the conventions and celebrity lectures but to get to the real meat of magic free thinking and creativity you assemble a group of magic friends who you admire, are talented and with whom you can talk freely without inhibition. You meet in someone’s home say once every six weeks on an evening. You talk, show things, ideas, discuss dvds, other magicians, the latest magic items but you talk freely. Everyone has to show or discuss at least one item during the evening, It can be a trick, a move and even just an idea and everyone says truthfully what they think. Nobody takes offence – nobody is offended if someone says it’s not as good as so and so. It’s a very free discussion on your magic, the magic scene, anything and the criticism is not personal but genuine. And the presenter accepts the comment in good faith,

The results are outstanding. Just a little suggestion about the handling of a move, or an idea that takes a trick in another direction, or a recollection from something seen in the past. In Jack and Alex’s day some wonderful thinking came out of these group meetings that helped create outstanding magic.And I can personally testify to many genuine ideas that have made all the difference in my own presentations of a stage or close-up effect. Just someone seeing the idea from a different direction can make a world of difference.

There are really only two rules. Pick a group of six or seven magic friends whose work or thinking your really admire (and they of you) and be very open in your discussion and throwing out any ideas.

Whilst Jack and Alex and Bernard Weller, all former members of our group have passed on we currently have six like-minded magi, but each with different interests and skills. They are Lewis Jones, Tom Whitestone, Angelo Carbone. Michael Symes, Don Wyatt and myself.

And whilst we all enjoy magic club life we are all agreed that some real valuable, in-depth magic and ideas has resulted from these meetings that would not have been possible in the everyday social atmosphere of the average magic club. Noel Britten has said that you are not as good as you think you are and he’s right

I promise you, this is a really valuable concept that will improve your own magic. And it costs nothing but effort.

Firstly – I’ve been persuaded to record many memories and sometimes hitherto unknown facts and magic ideas about many of my colleagues of earlier days. Friends like Alex Elmsley, Jack Avis, John Ramsay, Cy Enfield, Al Koran, Hugh Scott and many others with whom I mixed over fifty years ago. In relating these tales it was pointed out that when I’m gone much of this intruiging information will be lost forever. Consequently I’m writing a series of 2,500 word essays  called “Yesterday” about these magicians many of whom fashioned some of the magic we treasure today. These will be available as a pdf downloaded from your computer, with the added bonus of a magic effect or item from the subject of the essay. The first of these will be Alex Elmsley and watch this site for details. If you love the romance of magic and magicians of the past, you’ll love this new series – “Yesterday”

Did you know for example Alex Elmsley’s nick name? Did any one ever tell you that Jack Avis, a most polite and modest man publicly stormed out of a convention in a rage? Did you know that Cy Endfield, a most creative man in all directions once made a chess set that fitted inside a magic wand? And off stage Al Koran stuttered very badly, struggling with words and screwing up his eyes as he tried to speak – there was a reason for this.These and many other interesting stories, magic ideas and tips will be the subject of this new series on this site, to be announced shortly.

And secondly – and I’m really excited about this. I’m shortly putting out an effect I’ve used that truthfully is a blinder. Not for the method necessarily (although it’s quite ingenious) but for the effect on an audience, particularly at a wedding reception. It’s called “Welded Bliss”. In one hand you show a ladies diamond wedding ring. In the other a gentleman’s gold signet ring. You speak about your own personal and successful marriage happiness and openly drop the two rings into a wine glass. Nothing in the hands. Continuing the dialogue you tip the rings into a spectator’s hands – and the two rings are seen to be permanently linked together. And everything can be examined. I’ve done this at weddings and cocktail receptions, sometimes dropping the rings into a half empty flute of champagne, drunk the champagne and then tipped out the joined rings. The audience impact has been amazing.

I’m just working out final details as to how I am going to distribute this but check this site for future announcement. That’s all for rhe moment. Play your cards right!

I’ll not go into a listing of the effects but just to say that what Guy added to his outstanding teechnique (performed in a slow, natural style a la Dai Vernon) was a brilliant playlet that told the story of the ubiquitous Erdnase whose book “The Expert at the Card Table” has defined card work around the world for over a century. Presented by Guy in full evening dress and setting with just a card table, some chairs, a desk with mirror, tumblers and other ephemera, he wove an intruiging tale of the legend of Erdnase interspersed with card deals, card routines and other effects including his amazing torn and restored card, in a manner like an unfolding plot by Raymond Chandler with an ending that had a  touch of Alfred Hitchcock.

It was sheer theatre and the packed, largely non-magic audience were clearly enthralled and the performance restored one’s faith in the belief that magic for the public should be an entertainment and not a demonstration of digital skill. For me Guy Hollingworth has crossed that line that separates the thousands of demonstrators from the true artistes of magic that in the present day can be counted on the fingers of two hands. Guy Hollingworth has added an extra finger.

In the audience was one who in my view is part of that select coterie – Richard McDougall. As we left the theatre together, it was he who uttered the single word that summed up the performance, Sublime!