I’VE ALWAYS BEEN AN ADVOCATE of the magic philosophy expressed by Pat Page and top TV producer John Fisher who both said “Magic isn’t about secrets – it’s about performances”
I was reminded of this when speaking recently with Roy Walton, he told me of one Saturday morning when we were all assembled in Davenports when someone told [...]
Posted on July 6th, 2008 by John
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WHILST ON HOLIDAY I PICKED UP A NEWS ITEM about Bill Gates, the man behind Microsoftt and one of the world’s richest entrepreneurs. He is just stepping down from running Microsoft to concentrate on his philanthropist interests and he recently gave a speech to an American High School where he complained that feelgood politically correct teaching [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2008 by John
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I’VE ALWAYS ACKNOWLEGED that there is magic you do for your friends and your ego and there is magic you do for the paying public. Demonstrators versus entertainers.
Nowhere was this philosophy more confirmed this week when I read that Nick Einhorn, one of our busiest, skilled and most successful performers did a high profile gig for a [...]
Posted on June 16th, 2008 by John
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Sebastian was fifteen years of age when he first put his hand up Judy’s skirt
A retired police officer encouraged him to do it, but it was not something in which he was particularly interested .The policeman, a rotund, avuncular, red faced man with a glued-on, symmetrical haircut under the name of Uncle Percy, ran a [...]
Posted on June 13th, 2008 by John
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I’VE PERFORMED THE DEVANO RISING CARDS for years and without going into detail I have, I believe, a stunning presentation and patter theme which has become a very successful highlight of my table and close-up work. It gets me repeat bookings.
I knew Mitch Devano, the inventor and bought many packs off him – he always had [...]
Posted on June 11th, 2008 by John
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FOR YEARS I RESISTED PERFORMING the ambitious card effect. It’s such a good trick that everybody was doing it but I found that the magical impact was such that I could just not leave it out of my close-up programme.
The routine I finished with is part classic, part Vernon, part Pat Page and for the closer [...]
Posted on May 30th, 2008 by John
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CRASHING A TABLE means walking up to a table full of ten or so somewhat inebriated diners, some of whom don’t know each other, all out for a good evening and you’ve been booked to show them magic of which they may be unaware. How do you break in?
In the Great Room at Grosvenor House in London there [...]
Posted on May 4th, 2008 by John
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SOME WHILE AGO I PUBLISHED in this blog an idea of Jack Avis whereby a stranger card with a large indice but matching back was introduced into a normal deck. The matching normal card was forced and shuffled back in the pack, the cards were fanned and shown to a second spectator with the request “Please [...]
Posted on April 2nd, 2008 by John
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I THINK IT IMPORTANTthat the performances of some of our greatest magicians are preserved on film or tape for future generations, to be aware of what made them the best. Nowadays with camcorders and widespread visual technology this is happening but it would have been wonderful had such facility been available years ago.
It would have [...]
Posted on April 2nd, 2008 by John
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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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