Nothing Is Impossible: The Real-Life Adventures of a Street Magician (5 page)

What was Gramps going to show me next?
When I returned, Gramps painted the tips of the matches and the boxes – one set green and the other set red. Then, he put the green matches in the red box and vice versa and asked me to hold them. ‘Shake them up,’ he said and I did, as hard as my little hands would allow me. The matches rattled away inside, while my heart pounded with anticipation.

‘Now open them,’ Gramps beamed, his eyes wide. Tentatively, I push the little boxes open and when I did I nearly dropped them. My breath caught as I looked down at them. Somehow the green matches were in the green box and red matches in the red box. I was absolutely stunned. Miraculously, the matches had invisibly travelled through the air, without me seeing, and had switched boxes. I was blown away. Just like all good magicians, Gramps never gave me an explanation. It was simply magic. Of course, I can make that happen myself now. But that day it was
like I’d fallen under a spell. Over the next couple of years, my interest in magic grew, and then when I turned twelve it really took hold of me.

Gramps’s army days meant he had seen a lot of life. He was a wise man. I never told him that I was being bullied, he just knew. He’d meet me after school sometimes and I reckon he saw things happening for a long time, but wanted to make sure before he stepped in. He was like Mr Miyagi – and I was his Grasshopper!

One night, not long after my twelfth birthday, Gramps showed me the ultimate way to take on the bullies. I’d been rolled down the hill for the hundredth time, and my head was hanging so far down it almost touched my toes as I shuffled home. I’d been crying – not because the boys had hurt me but because I felt so humiliated. Nana and Gramps were at our house and I went straight to my room, as always. When my mum called me down for tea, I sat there, quietly, eating. I didn’t say anything to Gramps, but he could just tell. After tea, he came up to my room. ‘You know how to win a fight, don’t you, Steven?’ he said. I looked up hesitantly, shaking my head very slightly. ‘All right, come here and I’ll show you something.’

Gramps didn’t give me a master class in boxing. He did something much better than that. This time, rather than showing me magic with laces and matchboxes, he demonstrated how to, literally, take away someone’s strength. By the end of my ‘lesson’ Gramps was unable to pick me up – his slight, twelve-year-old grandson. It was the most empowering feeling I’ve ever had. I still use the technique today – on the first series of
Dynamo: Magician Impossible
, I asked world champion heavyweight boxer David Haye to pick me up and after I’d taken his strength away not even he could do it. I’m eight stone max at my heaviest! He looked very confused.

A couple of days later, I saw Paul and Ben and
the
life-changing moment I described earlier took place. I drained them of their strength. It was the last time they ever rolled me down a hill or threw me into the dam. The look on their faces was an absolute picture. Their jaws dropped and they backed away nervously. I’d found the most powerful way to overcome them – through the power of my mind.

Not long after, I recalled the magic Gramps had shown me with the matchboxes. I’d worked it out by myself and shown it to my mum and my cousins, but not to anyone at school. I reached a stage where I could practically do it with my eyes shut, but hadn’t found my moment. Then one day, I saw my chance. ‘Hey everyone, watch this,’ I said to the kids as they milled around their desks, waiting for the teacher to arrive. By now, word had got round about what I’d done to Paul and Ben. My classmates thought I was a bit weird, and that I had some kind of strange power, so they had steered clear of me ever since. Eventually, though, curiosity getting the better of them, they slowly gathered round. ‘It’s probably a load of rubbish,’ muttered one. I traced Gramps’s move and showed everyone how the green matches were in the red box and the red matches were in the red box, then I closed them and asked one of the kids to shake them. Then –
pow
– in a flash the matches had swapped over…

‘Wow!’ exclaimed one girl who I’d had a crush on for ages. ‘Show us again.’ The rest of them all stood open-mouthed; some were laughing, some shouting in amazement or shaking their heads. I don’t know what the best bit was: the acceptance of my classmates or the realisation that girls who had previously ignored me began to pay me some attention. It seemed the magic gave me the edge I’d been craving. As I drank in the scene, it was almost as magical as the matchboxes – around me stood boys and girls of all different colours and backgrounds. Usually,
the Asian kids kept to themselves while the white kids always stuck together and black kids would drift between the two groups. It was the same when we were all back home on the estate too. But in this moment, magic seemed to have broken down the divide. Slowly, my eyes were opening – magic had powers far beyond those you could see.

From that moment, I immersed myself in magic. I read every book I could get my hands on and practised and practised, day after day and night after night. Magic literally became my world… some might say an obsession. I sat in and practised magic for hours on end with Gramps helping me and encouraging me along the way. I’d spend hours just shuffling cards alone, trying to figure out new ways of moving them around. Hours turned into months, months into years. I was told recently about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours theory – that all experts have practised for at least 10,000 hours to master their chosen field, be that Beethoven, Michael Jackson, Picasso or Steve Jobs. I laughed when I heard that; I reckon I’ve spent at least ten times that practising my magic.

I WAS A
loner growing up, but over the years I’ve met thousands of people from all walks of life. It might have scared the kids at school, but as I got older and went to college, my magic instantly won me friends. I chose to go to the Batley School of Art and Design in Bradford, which wasn’t the typical college that you went to if you had gone to my school. Not only was it a creative college, but you had to take two buses to get there from where I lived. But I didn’t care about the journey. It was a fresh start for me; no one knew who I was and no one knew I had been bullied before. The first day I got there, someone asked me what I was into, and I said, ‘I like doing magic.’ I did some, and they
loved it and they accepted me. I felt like I could be myself. When I told them about my Crohn’s they just said, ‘Oh, that sucks,’ and that was that. They didn’t act like I was some alien out of space. They were much more mature about it. I found that people wanted to hang round with me, watch me perform with my cards. It created an immediate connection. Magic was my way of bringing people together.

That first time when I took away Paul and Ben’s strength, thanks to Gramps, my whole life changed and I knew my life’s focus would be magic. It wasn’t the idea of fame or money attracting me back then – far from it. It was simply that the most wonderful feeling rose up inside me whenever I showed someone magic; it made people happy. I’ll never, ever get bored of watching people’s faces when they witness something astonishing.

I’d spend hours shuffling, figuring out new ways of moving the cards

CHAPTER 2

HUSTLE AND BUSTLE

‘I’VE WORKED IT
out; I know how you do it!’

Every now and then my friends or my girlfriend will suddenly, out of nowhere, announce that they’ve figured out how I do a certain piece of magic. The funny thing is it’s always something random. I haven’t done magic like my shoelaces tying themselves since 2004. But just recently, one of my oldest mates came up and said, ‘I’ve worked it out!’ The thought of people sitting around talking about how I walked on water blows my mind.

There are so many elements involved in every single thing I do. The average person doesn’t understand all of the technical intricacies that go into one piece of magic. They might see how one element is done and the illusion is broken for them. They think because they’ve seen one little thing they know everything,

‘I saw you do something behind your back.’

‘Oh, right. What did you see?’

‘Well, I don’t know, but you did something, so that’s how you did it!’

Unless you’re into magic then it can be hard to appreciate the way someone actually does something, rather than just the end effect. It often takes someone who’s really into the art to understand it. I watch other magicians all the time because I appreciate the spectacle, the art, the style of that magician. It’s beautiful to watch magic when it’s perfectly executed.

Take music, for instance. You’ve got so many unknown kids out there who have the same potential as some of the biggest, most famous rappers. But the normal person on the street wouldn’t appreciate the fine detail that they put into their wordplay. It would take the ear of an emcee to hear a rapper from the UK and say, ‘Wow, that kid’s cadence, his punch lines, the way he structured the lyric, his use of double entendres is amazing.’ Sometimes it takes an artist to fully appreciate an artist.

I don’t mind that people want to work it out. But I hope that my magic is strong enough that ultimately people just enjoy it. I really want people to believe in my magic because then anything is possible. There’s something that Joseph Dunninger, a pioneer of magic, once said: ‘For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not, none will suffice.’

That’s very, very true. I think magic is a feeling, it’s an emotion. It’s something that is brought out in someone when they’re witnessing something they can’t explain. They think,
I can’t explain that, it must be magic
.