Nothing Is Impossible: The Real-Life Adventures of a Street Magician (4 page)

‘STEVE, ARE YOU
coming to the dam with us?’ shouted Paul. I was sat outside my mum’s house, trying to mend my broken skateboard. ‘Yeah, yeah, wait for me,’ I said excitedly, chucking aside my skateboard and running after them.

Next to Delph Hill was another estate called Woodside, the two separated by a dam. Once a year, kids from the two estates would meet to have a fight. It was like something out of
The Warriors
or
West Side Story
– albeit the Bradford version. All the local estate kids would pile in and try to beat each other up. You know that scene in
Bridget Jones’s Diary
when Colin Firth and Hugh Grant have that pathetic slapping fight? Well, it was sort of like that. Usually, one side would get cold feet and run away and the other estate would be crowned the ‘winner’.

Ordinarily, though, the dam was where the older kids from Delph Hill went to smoke, muck about and try to get off with girls. Being asked to go down there with them was a big deal. Like anyone, I was desperate to fit in and be one of the cool kids. At that point, I was, or so I thought, friends with Paul and Ben.

We got to the dam and within two minutes of us being there, Paul and his brother had picked me up. I knew what was coming; it had happened before.

The dam water was cold, murky and filthy dirty. As I flailed around, panic rising as I struggled for air, two hands gripped my shoulders and pulled me out. Coughing and choking, Ben threw me down on the muddy bank. All I could hear were the other kids laughing like it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. I pretended not to care and tried to smile, relieved that they wouldn’t see the tears on my already wet face. ‘It’s only a joke, Steve, don’t be a baby,’ they’d say. It wasn’t very funny to me. I couldn’t swim. Every time they did it, I was convinced I would die.

The bullying started a lot earlier than I even realised at the time. It would be more psychological than physical; my ‘friends’ would say or do something to make me look stupid – they’d take the mick out of me and I’d laugh along. Because it was done under the guise of a joke – mates mucking about, everyone having a laugh – I couldn’t see what was happening. But Paul and Ben were never thrown in the water. No one ever took their lunch money off them.

Even when the bullying became more physical, I just thought it was normal. If it wasn’t me being chucked in the dam, then it was someone else. I wouldn’t stop and help the other kid being bullied; I’d just be relieved it wasn’t me on that occasion. I thought it was normal because it happened to loads of kids all the time. But Paul and Ben weren’t my friends. They hadn’t asked me to go down there to hang out. They got me down there to chuck me in, make fun of me, to use me as a scapegoat.

It’s only when writing this book, that I realised my desire to walk on water came from that time. I always thought the River Thames was an idea that had randomly popped into my head, but I know now that as a little kid, soaking wet, freezing cold and scared stupid, I would have given anything to walk on water. To be able to just glide across the surface and get away from them all. The seed was sown.

BECAUSE OF THE
fear of being bullied, I started to avoid going out at all and spent more and more time alone in my room. The likes of Paul and Ben couldn’t get me there. Up in my room, I’d watch as many films as I could. I became enveloped in a fantasy world of action heroes and futuristic metropolises. I really wanted to be MacGyver, the
private detective, from the American TV show of the same name. It was huge in the eighties. To me, MacGyver was the ultimate action star. No matter what situation he was in, he always found a way out. He created something from nothing. Just like a magician, in a way. He would take down a plane with just a hastily assembled slingshot, using a belt and an inflatable dinghy. That ideology stuck with me as I got older. Now, you can take me to a slum in Rio and I’ll pick up an old bit of wire and think of something to do. Take me to Miami and I’ll make a girl’s tan line move from her wrist to her shoulder. Show me snow and I’ll turn it into diamonds. MacGyver instilled in me a sense of improvisation; you don’t need expensive props to make brilliant magic. Back then, though, what MacGyver did for me was make me realise that you didn’t just have to accept things the way there are. You can makes things happen out of thin air.

MacGyver wasn’t my only screen hero. I was very naïve as a kid and, as ridiculous as it sounds, I believed that Superman was real. I thought Gotham City really existed. I’d have trouble sleeping, partly because of the Crohn’s, so I’d be up half the night watching
Superman, Batman, Back to the Future
, Indiana Jones and
The Goonies
, over and over again. It was an escape into a mysterious world where normal people could have magical powers. I’d imagine what it would be like to be them; to be able to travel through time like Marty McFly and fly through the air faster than the speed of light like Superman. In my mind, these people were real, so what they could do was a reality too. Even now I believe I can make those things happen. Who knows one day maybe I will move the moon like Superman did. In all of my work, you’ll see the positive impression those films left on me – it was watching Keanu Reeves in
The Matrix
and Spider-Man’s skyscraper scaling that inspired me to perform levitations and walk down the
Los Angeles Times
Building. But there are no tricks with my magic!

As a kid, though, I had no idea what bearing these superheroes would have on my life. All I knew was that they could make me happy and transport me out of my own little world of worry, but now their value to me is incomparable. Those films taught me to never doubt your abilities. If you want to make something happen badly enough, then you’ll make it happen. I still watch films to inspire me now. It’s an art that knows no boundaries, just like magic.

I WAS NINE
when magic really became an intrinsic part of my life. Like lots of little kids, I had a passing interest when I was very young. I was given one of those generic magic sets for Christmas and I’d mess about with the wands and cards, but it wasn’t something I paid much attention to.

But then one day Gramps gave me my first real glimpse of magic in real life. He’d fought in the Second World War and had learnt a few things then that he used to entertain his army mates with. And, after the war, he was a pool hustler and could often be found in the local pub, taking people for their cash with one of his tricks. I’ll never forget when he first performed one of his classic moves on me. He took two different-sized shoelaces, then did some crazy move with his hands, and all of a sudden…the laces were exactly the same length. As he waved them in front of my face, my mind whirred. It was the most amazing thing I’d seen – real magic in my own front room.

‘Show me how to do that, Gramps,’ I begged, excitedly. He looked at me for a minute and then gave me a smile. ‘I’m not going to tell you how to do it, but I’ll show you something else.’ I didn’t need to be told twice when he sent me off to the kitchen for two boxes of matches.