Nothing Is Impossible: The Real-Life Adventures of a Street Magician (10 page)

I’ve met some of the most interesting magicians in Vegas, and it’s also a place where I have learnt the most about magic – not from watching it, necessarily, but from listening and talking to other magicians who are masters of their trade.

On that first trip, for example, I finally got to see Apollo Robbins, one of the world’s most famous pickpockets. He describes himself as a ‘gentleman thief’. He was the first person I met who really understood the power of communication.

He worked in Vegas as a host at Caesar’s Magical Empire; he was the guy who greeted everyone before they had dinner and took them through to the dining room. It was quite amazing to see; all these unsuspecting diners who suddenly found their watch,
wallet and phone in the hands of the mischievous host. Obviously he returned everything at the end!

When the former US President Jimmy Carter went to Caesar’s for dinner, Robbins was told he was allowed to do anything, apart from touch the President; so he stole every single gun from the Secret Service, the President’s security detail. Not long after, he was asked to work as a security consultant for various law enforcement firms.

I didn’t meet him that time, but later in the year we were both at a conference in Vegas. I managed to sidle up to him and we started chatting. We immediately got on and he invited me to a nearby twenty-four-hour diner, where he really broke the art of magic down for me.

‘People follow straight lines, they don’t follow curves,’ he told me. I didn’t know what he meant at first, but he continued. ‘When I’m onstage, if I want to do something, but I don’t want people to see it, I use an arc with my hand because people are less likely to notice anything. Because there’s no straight line, there’s nothing for them to follow. If you’re doing anything as a straight line, and there’s an off moment, people will notice it.’ His analogy was much better – it made a lot more sense! But it was an invaluable lesson; using an arc and avoiding a straight line, literally and metaphorically, is key in magic.

We talked for ages after his show. He, I, and a few other magicians just sat in the diner until six in the morning, talking. It was the first conversation I’d had with people about magic
where it wasn’t about the ‘tricks’. That’s when I really started to understand that it’s about the people you’re performing for, and the way you communicate with them. Those magicians in Vegas showed me about the power of showmanship and stage presence, the kind of things that you attribute to superstars like Michael Jackson. There are so many things that Michael did which are now synonymous with him – like the Moonwalk for example. He didn’t start off doing that, he wasn’t born knowing how to do it; it’s something he created and then practised and practised until he made it seem effortless.

It really made me think about my approach to magic. I realised that I don’t perform magic; what you see and how your mind perceives it is the magic. Magic only happens in the spectator’s mind. I’m presenting what I do in a certain way, but without the spectator there is no magic. Without them, it simply doesn’t exist.

Another thing that I learnt was that I don’t really believe in ‘magic’ as such, which I know sounds weird. I don’t believe magic exists as a ‘thing’ at all; to me it’s more a physical feeling and emotion that you get when you see something that you can’t explain. When you’re a baby, you have no idea how anything works, so everything’s magical.

The greatest magic I’ve ever experienced will always be at Gramps’ house. But some of the best lessons I’ve learnt have been on the streets of New Orleans, over breakfast in Memphis and in twenty-four-hour diners in Las Vegas.

I’D ALWAYS IMAGINED
that some day I’d end up in Las Vegas with my own show. But after that first visit, I decided that actually, Las Vegas wasn’t the place for me. I didn’t want to be stuck out there for a long period of time and I didn’t really
want to be on a stage performing. I wanted to be on the streets, amongst my audience.

But I still travelled to Vegas for the odd visit. The more I went and the more magicians I met there, the more it made me re-evaluate my approach and the direction I wanted to take with my magic. I wasn’t like any of those guys with their big stage shows and incredible props. I didn’t have a suit and tie and there were no lions involved in my act. But meeting people like Apollo and Daryl, I saw that I didn’t need to follow the herd. Being myself was actually the greatest strength I had. When I started out, there was certainly no one else like me. I was a young kid from the North of England who, like most teenagers, liked music, video games, films and girls. And that was a great thing. Kids my own age related to me, and people who were older than me were intrigued to see magic done, live, in the street in front of them rather than from via television where they might suspect trickery.

Being different was the best thing about me; in many ways it was one of my main strengths and it would help me a great deal in those early years.

Although I didn’t move to Vegas, the money I saved as a croupier helped me to start my own business. The city did help me begin a professional career, just not in the way that I had expected. With my savings, I would travel around Leeds, Manchester and Bradford, making links in the music and television industries. I started to turn up at hip-hop shows where artists like Ms. Dynamite and Jazzy Jeff would perform on tour. I started to put together pamphlets, quotes and clips that would eventually end up on my first DVD.

While Vegas might not have been right for me as a magician early on in my career, maybe one day I’ll end up there. I have lots of ideas for my live show, but I want to really think about it properly before I do it, so that it’s the best live magic show anyone has ever seen. That’s when I’ll know that I’ve really made it. When I can sell out a few months at Caesar’s, I’ll finally pat myself on the back and say, ‘
Yes, Dynamo. You did it
.’

WHILE I’M NOT
ready as yet to have a live show in Vegas, I have experimented with theatre in the past.

In 2007, I did a live show in London. At that point, I’d had some success, but I still didn’t have my own television show. So, as a sort of business card, I decided to create a live show at the Soho Theatre to which I could invite friends, family and members of the industry. It was very stripped back and low-key – it was about as far from Vegas as you can get.

After the short run of five nights, to my utter amazement, Kevin Spacey invited me to the Old Vic to perform it for him. He had seen me do my magic at a Prince’s Trust event a couple of years before and really liked it. I had various corporate companies interested in booking me as a live performer, so he offered to help me condense the one-hour show into a twenty-minute capsule that would work in the corporate world.

As the lights went up, I could see him in the audience and, if that wasn’t pressure enough, the actor Jeff Goldblum was sat right beside him. No pressure.

Trying to translate the close-up magic I do into live theatre turned out to be a lot tougher than I had anticipated. The whole show was based around me interacting with a television screen, and before I’d barely begun, the scart lead decided to break. Not the best start! After that, everything seemed to go wrong and I could see Kevin furiously scribbling notes throughout.

Afterwards, Kevin took me into his office and told me straight: ‘This doesn’t work’. Admittedly, it was tough to take such straightforward criticism, especially from an actor and director that I admired, but it was what I needed to hear. The show was terrible!

Back then, being on stage wasn’t my forte. I’d always been a close-up, street performer so I didn’t know about projecting my voice or turning my body out towards the audience. Kevin gave me some great tips and he hooked me up with a drama teacher to help me figure out how to use the space on stage better and how to project my voice from my diaphragm rather than my throat.

Not only did he give me his time, Kevin also invited me to join a workshop with final-year students from RADA. The workshop taught me that you have to live outside yourself when you’re in front of an audience – you’ve got to lose your ego and not be too self-conscious if you want to give yourself in a performance. You’ve got to be in the moment as a performer. It can be hard for me – for anybody – to really expose myself like that. You may have a huge amount going on in your private life, you may feel ill that day, or you may just be in a bad mood. But onstage, you have to learn to handle your emotions and control what people see.

It was such a great learning curve. The idea had been well-intentioned but I quickly realised that I shouldn’t put anything out– even if just for friends and family – that I wasn’t completely confident in. I really appreciate that Kevin took the time out to explain where I was going wrong. It’s still something I’m working on, to be honest, but I hope I’ll be able to do a live show with more success very soon. I have a lot of ideas and I have the advice from Kevin to guide me. It will happen one day.

CHAPTER 5

THE HEROES OF MAGIC