Nothing Is Impossible: The Real-Life Adventures of a Street Magician (27 page)

We could have sat on the train for an hour and given up, but we waited there for six hours, getting knock-back after knock-back. Most people would have got off that train before we did.

I have that ethic in me when it comes to getting the reaction I want. I might not have the same mindset when it comes to the gym, but when I’m trying to make
Dynamo: Magician Impossible
the very best it can be I’ll wait all day and all night to get what I need. I’m passionate about doing what it takes.

I’ll never get tired of chasing a good reaction and I’ll never get bored of seeing it. I just want to elicit that joy, confusion and astonishment from people when they witness my magic. How many people can say that they go to work and amaze people all day? I don’t take for granted how incredible that is.

I love magic because I love watching people’s responses when I pull off something incredible. Regardless of what type of magic, where I do it or who I do it on. I’ll never get bored of that. Never.

CHAPTER 12

LEAP OF FAITH

FOR THE SECOND
series of
Dynamo: Magician Impossible
, we had to find lots of new locations to film at to make it feel as fresh and new as the first. LA is the perfect place because you can find totally different scenery in close proximity. Some of my all-time favourite memories have been created there.

If you were to ask me a year ago what the scariest thing I’ve ever done was, I would have immediately said, ‘Walking across the River Thames’. Little did I know what the future had in store; if there’s one thing I’m not too fond of, it is heights.

As I stood on the top of the
Los Angeles Times
Building, the bottom looked an awfully long way down. I had decided a few weeks before that I was going to walk down it. Don’t ask me why. I wanted to do it. Just me, my trainers and the jumper on my back.

The
LA Times
Building is eighty feet high and situated in the Spring Street area, downtown LA. It was built in 1935 by Gordon Kaufmann, the same guy who designed the Hoover Dam. We wanted to find somewhere that was fairly iconic but not too ‘Hollywood’. Downtown LA sounds upmarket, but it’s far from the bright lights of Sunset Boulevard, Rodeo Drive and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The area was once the hub of LA’s financial district, but it is now blighted by high unemployment
and crime. It reminded me a bit of Delph Hill in that both areas feel cut off from the rest of the world. It’s like everyone deserted it in the eighties and at night it feels especially eerie. It’s a pretty edgy part of town, but I always like to take my magic where it’s least expected. Everyone goes to the Empire State Building but not everyone goes to Harlem. Obviously if you’re in Rio you want to see Copacabana beach, but it’s also great to experience the City of God neighbourhood.

I wanted to give Spring Street a lasting memory; something that would live with the area forever. Other than that, the building was nice and high and it didn’t look too hard for me to sneak in there.

It was around 8 p.m. on a warm evening in LA. I walked confidently inside, strolled up to the elevators and pressed the button. No one stopped me. I stood on the roof for a few minutes to prepare myself. The sun had already set and although it was dark I could just about make out the people below. They looked the size of safety pins. I knew the crew was there somewhere, ready to capture everything, but other than that, I was on my own.

My stomach was churning and I physically couldn’t stop my hands and legs from shaking, regardless of how much mind over matter I attempted to employ. I had tried to prepare myself for this, but it was much more frightening than the deathly tides of the River Thames. It was a million times scarier than predicting something live on television or radio. I knew that if my magic didn’t work, there was no way I would survive the fall.

The hardest part was mentally preparing myself to go over the edge, and trying to come to terms with the thought of anything going wrong. As I looked down, I tried to compose myself. I had to block out any negative thoughts otherwise I’d never be able to do it. The gravity of the situation began to take hold, but I tried to battle my fears head on.

if there’s one thing I’m not fond of, it is heights

I knew that, if I could pull it off, millions of people would be watching this. I knew that I’d had a great first series and that I needed to have an even better second one. I wanted to test myself; I wanted to push my own physical and mental limitations.

So I simply turned on a switch in my head that would allow me to throw myself off a building.

I went from standing on the top of the building to leaning over the edge, leaning, leaning, leaning, leaning, leaning, leaning, leaning… until I was completely horizontal, and looking at the ground.

Eighty feet in the air and there was only one way to go. When you’re afraid of heights everyone says don’t look down, but I had no choice!

Under the glare of the street lights, I could see the cars slowing down, the bicycles skidding to a stop, the people looking up at me, their hands covering their mouths in shock.

‘What’s he doing?’

‘Is he going to jump?’

‘Should we help him?’

When I first appeared on the roof, people thought I was a suicide jumper. There was a couple watching and when I went over the edge, the woman literally freaked out. Then I started to walk and she freaked out even more. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

I walked right down the wall, right to the bottom, before stepping off onto the pavement almost like Spider-Man.

I felt every single step of those eighty feet. Walking down the
LA Times
Building, I have never, ever felt closer to death. I can honestly say it’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.

I love that magic gives people the feeling of being young, carefree and open to life’s unexpected surprises. When you’re a kid you believe you can do anything. It’s only as you get older you get cynical and you start to put up barriers. This is why I loved superhero films as a child and what makes me want to recreate the special effects through my magic as an adult.

Why do I do these things? I guess I’m a little bit mental. It’s that whole Evel Knievel syndrome. The more you do things successfully, the more you start to feel invincible. And, even if you fail at something, you still learn so much from it.

I believe that passion is the biggest form of motivation. When people ask me why I would walk down a twenty-storey building in LA, I tell them it’s because I want to show people that there’s more to life than just working nine-to-five. You don’t have to follow what everyone else is doing. You can have a mind of your own. You have to go against things and innovate. I like to take the impossible and flip it inside out by using magic.

I think that if I can create it in my head, if I can imagine it, then it must be possible. I think everyone can live their life to their full potential. But it requires work. Everyone has a certain skill set that they are better at than anyone else. Everyone has their own unique selling point; magic just happens to be mine.

IF YOU GO
to LA thinking Hollywood is all fun and glamour, you’ll be quite disappointed. It’s just a city. It’s a city where people go to work. There are hardly any transport links, meaning the pavements are deserted because everyone drives. The weather is usually warm but because of the pollution it gets really smoggy.

LA is a good city to go to if you are in a position like the one I’m in now. Because I’ve been there so much and worked with so many people, it really is the City of Dreams for me. If you know people then you will be looked after and you can have the best time of your life in LA. One minute you can be chilling by a hotel pool surrounded by superstars; the next you’re averting your eyes as half-naked ladies run about at pool parties. It’s a ridiculous city in many ways and I absolutely love it.

Although walking down the
LA Times
Building is top of the list, I’ve had all types of crazy experiences in Los Angeles. I’ve hung out with Snoop Dogg and his kids, I’ve turned paper butterflies into real ones for Natalie Imbruglia and I’ve performed for Kim
Kardashian, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. I did a card levitation and then I swallowed some string and pulled it out from my stomach. Ashton was pretty freaked out! Kim said to me, ‘Are you married?’ I didn’t take that as an actual proposal!

I have had some of the most surreal moments in LA. In 2009, I flew over to film an advert for adidas alongside Estelle, David Beckham, Run DMC, Katy Perry, The Ting Tings and Missy Elliott to name just a few. Adidas had put me up in the most amazing hotel, the Sunset Marquee, which is just off Sunset Strip. My fellow guests at the hotel included Slipknot and Lil Wayne, and it was by the rooftop pool that I met and made friends with Wayne’s manager, Cortez Bryant. Because it was the MTV VMAs weekend, there were the craziest parties every night and my feet barely touched the ground as I went from one glamorous party to the next.

One of the best was at a hotel called the Chateau Marmont. It’s a faux-French castle just off Sunset Boulevard that is notorious for its wild parties. Everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to John Lennon has stayed there. The actor John Belushi died in one of the bungalows after a drug overdose. Jim Morrison from The Doors nearly broke his back after dangling from a drainpipe and falling onto a shed (as you do). Lindsay Lohan occasionally moves in and lives there for a few months, causing all kinds of havoc. It’s the most rock and roll hotel I’ve ever been to.