I KNEW AL WHEN HE WAS EDWARD DOE  a gentleman’s hairdresser at The Ritz Hotel in London. That was in the ’50’s when he used to meet up with our group – Jack Avis, Alex Elmsley, Roy Walton, Ted Danson,. Bobby Bernard and myself on Saturdays when we hounded the magic stores. He was mad about magic and always had a new idea to show around. Cards, coins, mental magic, stage, close-up, anything; he had a demon inside him that compelled him to try everything.

Jack Avis would show him a trick and he’d go away , worry the life out of the idea and turn up the following week with a whole raft of variations. He was always experimenting. Trying this, trying that and he came up with some outstanding ideas. The Miracle Card Stab with a borrowed deck, a borrowed penknife and a banknote, a baffling secret he kept to himself a long time before he released it. The Hanky Panky routine, stringing together a whole batch of coin and handkerchief effects.

The locked box, in which a word was written in chalk on the bottom of a mahogany box which was locked, placed on a slate and covered with a cloth. Not only did he reveal the name but he vanished the large mahogany box at the conclusion of the trick (Recognise the old vanishing bowl of water effect!) That was cute but that’s what he was good at – taking tricks and giving them an original twist.

He floored us when he he first showed Ring Flite in which a borrowed ring vanished only to be found hanging inside his key case. In those days he experimented with many very powerful reels ripping many of his shirts to pieces in the process before he got it right. He came up with a second version of Ring Flite in which the borrowed ring finished up mounted in a velvet cushion inside an engagement ring presentation box.

He was very excitable in his conversation and enthusiasm for magic and stuttered very badly, something he never did when performing on stage. It was said that this affliction was the result of injuries sustained in the war during his time as a paratrooper in the battle of Arnhem.

In his quest for magic success he tried everything. There is a picture of him wearing a fez, a slick moustache and a glove puppet monkey picking a card from a fan. Another time he created an act called “Song and Sorcery” in which he sang and did magic at the same time. I remember a miser’s dream routine with him singing “Zip-a-de-do-dah” producing silver coins all the time. When he came to the line “There’s a bluebird on my shoulder” he produced a bird at his finger tips. He was always striving to find more and better magic. He rang the bell when he developed a mental act, adopted the name Al Koran ( would there be a fatwah out on him if he was alive today?) and began to secure regular bookings with agents. The act developed, improving all the time and he got appearances on television enough to give up the daily grind of cutting patrons hair at The Ritz.

He then had a regular series on television and national fame with a mental act that was not only skillful but totally audacious. He achieved impact by living on the edge and taking chances. Witness the courageous working and carefully stage managed routine with the Gold Medallion in which a prediction is ostensibly engraved on a gold medal. Audacity was his friend and he used it mercilessly in his act.

With national success and fame in Britain he sought an international and wider audience and moved with his wife Kath to the USA staying I believe with his brother in law in Chicago. He made an impact with U.S. magicians and secured bookings but never I was told with the same success that he had enjoyed in Britain. And then in is fifties he succumbed to cancer and died, cutting short what could have been a glittering career in the new world.

The last person to see him alive was Billy McComb. Remembering that Al had always harboured an ambition, never fulfilled, to play the London Palladium, Billy, one of magic’s true gentlemen secured some of Al’s ashes after his cremation, brought them back to England and scattered them on the stage of the Palladium In our magic village there have been many such generous acts of kindness; after Al’s death his widow was left with a massive bill for his medical treatment whilst in hospital and it was Ken Brooke who organised a collection from magicians all over Britain who generously cleared the outstanding debt.

I am warmed when I recall over the last sixty years many similar acts of kindness, often unannounced, by fellow magicians who prove the true fellowship we have in our art.

Filed under: Magic Biographies, Magic Miscellanea