RECENTLY I WAS PASSING THE TIME in a Funky Pigeon shop in a mainline station in London. These are shops who go an extra mile to create birthday and greeting cards that are printed with your own photo or message. They are very progressive against say WH Smith, but sensing their captive audience waiting for a [...]
Posted on December 4th, 2012 by John
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WE ALL, MYSELF INCLUDED, ARE SEDUCED by a new trick. See a great demonstrator like Mark Mason (or years ago Ken Brooke) and you flew to your pocket to purchase the effect in the belief that what you have just seen is the way you would do it in the future. It ain’t necessarily so. How [...]
Posted on October 30th, 2012 by John
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I’VE HAD IN THE DRAWER FOR SOMETIME a set of gem sticks. You know – the black, three inch plastic rod on which appear and disappear gemstones that seem to have a life of their own. I’ve never found in the past a convincing storyline and certainly no climax that I thought worthy of presentation. Until [...]
Posted on October 24th, 2012 by John
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IF YOU STOP AND THINK of the magicians who have really impressed you, you will realise that in addition to their magic technique, they had that added something that made them special.. You know what I mean. The wow factor, that something that you can see but find it hard to describe, Think of Juan Tamariz. Excellent [...]
Posted on October 20th, 2012 by John
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A bold claim – but true. Not a brilliant new gimmick. Not a new routine from the Vernon archives. Not something requiring a big investment but a proven procedure that does really work. Group magic. Vernon and the greats used it. Fred Kaps used it.Peter Warlock, Jack Avis, Francis Haxton and other names used it. [...]
Posted on October 21st, 2009 by John
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MANY YEARS AGO I WAS WORKING IN SPAIN and one evening my wife telephoned to say that my friend John Styles, possibly Britain’s leading Punch and Judy worker, had called. It seems he had been booked to present the ages-old entertainment by a local council but that an objection had been raised by a ladies guild stating [...]
Posted on November 14th, 2008 by John
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YEARS AGO I USED TO GO TO CONVENTIONS AND BREAK A LEG trying to get to see everything. Every show, every lecture, every dealer item. No more. As a semi-retired magus, floating down the river and drifting towards the waterfall, I now pace myself somewhat and visit just the things that immediately interest me. Which [...]
Posted on October 3rd, 2008 by John
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I WAS BROUGHT UP IN THE DAYS OF VARIETY from the stages of the music halls in and around London. It is a genre that died at the hands of television and with it the bills that included a menu of singers, dancers, comedians, speciality acts, magicians and the like that compounded into the title – variety. [...]
Posted on September 15th, 2008 by John
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THERE ARE MANY VERSIONS AROUND but in a recent tv interview Groucho Marx of the famed Marx Brothers summed it up very succinctly. When asked how they became a great act with superb timing, funny material and sight bits he said ” Well, way back we did thirteen shows a day. If a gag went [...]
Posted on September 6th, 2008 by John
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MUCH EARLIER THIS YEAR I PUBLISHED A PIECE about sponge balls and many magi have asked if I could repeat the blog. Certainly! So – do you do sponge balls? Of course you do. Everybody does but I think we are all guilty of unwittingly revealing the secret. Let me tell you a story. When [...]
Posted on August 25th, 2008 by John
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