Naquada

Geoffrey Durham was last night award the prestigious Murray Award by the Harry Greenaway, President of The Blackpool Magicians Club.

The Murray Award is presented each year to honor the recipient for outstanding service to Blackpool Magicians Club and for distinguished dedication to the art of magic.

Geoffrey Durhan has performed for clients including members of the Royal Family, cabinet ministers, captains of industry and the aristocracy. He has performed in two Children’s Royal Variety Performances. In thirty years as a cabaret artist his unique presentations have been featured in every hotel on London’s Park Lane, as well as in many of the most prestigious venues in the world. In the corporate field, he has toured Australia for the Ford Motor Company, created over 100 special performances for Seat Cars and worked for a host of organisations from Kellogg’s to IBM. In the West End of London, he has appeared at the London Palladium, Dominion, Duchess and Apollo Victoria theatres and he has performed in over two hundred other playhouses nationwide.

He has hosted two series of Thames Television’s The Best of Magic, and was featured on The Fifty Greatest Magic Tricks of All Time on Channel 4 (where his expert performance of the Newspaper Trick came in at number 31!). In all, he has made over 700 appearances on British television - covering children’s shows, chat, quizzes and variety galas. But he is probably best known for his many years on the cult Channel 4 word game Countdown, where he has performed over 160 close-up tricks as well as displaying unsuspected skills as a wordsmith. He also appears regularly as a panellist and presenter on BBC Radio 4.

He frequently works as an illusion adviser for stage and television. In the West End of London, he has devised effects for Oliver! (London Palladium), Jesus Christ Superstar (Lyceum Theatre), the Reeves and Mortimer/Fast Show double bill (Labatt’s Apollo), The League Of Gentlemen (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane), Peter Pan (Royal Festival Hall), Privates on Parade (Donmar Warehouse), and The Mystery of Charles Dickens with Simon Callow (Duke of York’s). He was also the Magic Director of the critically acclaimed West End show about Tommy Cooper, Jus’ Like That!, which later toured nationwide. On television, he devised effects for Dr Who in the now classic episode The Greatest Show in the Galaxy starring Sylvester McCoy.

In 1990, the Magic Circle of Great Britain made him a Member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star; in 2002 he was presented with The Maskelyne, the Magic Circle’s highest award; and in 2003, he received The David Berglas Award for his outstanding contribution to magic. He now joins the ranks of Joe Pasquale, Patrick Page, Hans Moretti, Wayne Dobson, Jay Marshall, Paul Daniels, Ali Bongo, Ken Brooke, Peter Warlock and Murray himself as a recipient of the Murray Award.

It’s physically impossible to attend ALL of the Blackpool convention, firstly because a number of lectures and performances overlap. The second reason is that you’re just too tired and knackered to do everything.

So here’s the best of the rest of show that I missed, or slept through:

Richard Sanders did a number of his visual rope effects along with a very clean and cleaver self working card revelation.

Kostya Kimlat performed a number of card effects and ran through his roadrunner cull.

Andi Gladwin apparently did a miniature deck routine that fooled Matt Parro

J.J Savert did some nice money routines, including silver from bill, pen through bill, bill to Babybel, and finally a bill switch that consisted of 1 £20 note, to £10 notes. Invisible aces to royal flush, signed card to aces and Cannibal cards.

J.C. Wagner did a card printing routine, apparently again according to Matt Parro’s blog it was “very dreary and although I probably would have enjoyed his routines, I could not pay attention for longer that the first 3 minutes.”

Lior Manor’s lecture started with his demonstrations with his computer software, including Knights Tour and Celebrity Prediction. Moving onto his very good ‘Touches’ routine.

The children’s Entertainer World Championship was apparently “average at best”, the favorite, John Kimmons went on to win the title.

Michael Close did two tricks in his lecture, Red Blue Mamma Fooler and his Torn and Restored Card, The second half was jokes and stories and from his new joke book, which according to Rich Morrell was “exactly the laugh I needed after seeing magic all weekend”

Rich also has a great write up of the Close-Up Session:

“Shoot Ogawa was spectacular as ever with coins, thimbles, flip-stick and Ninja Rings. Helder Guimaraes the current FISM card champion showed us a similar routine to that which he did at FISM a Travellers routine with four signed cards that travelled to his pockets, the deck turned blank, and the signed cards too, and then one was found in an envelope on the table, and the entire deck became printed again. Michael Close showed his impossible Salt Shaker, Card, Forehead routine. Finally Richard Sanders showed Interlace, Extreme Burn, Dough, Alpha Deck and Fibre Optics. His Extreme Burn really does look like trick photography“

Sorry to everyone I missed at the convention.. Dr Todd, Edd Withers, Erlandish to name a few… and it was great to finally meet up with Richard Morrell, really nice bloke and hopefully will be doing a guest spot on the upcoming Fismblog!!!

The Dealers, who I didn’t miss, were numerous in number.. two halls FULL of things to buy, here you can see just one of the halls, full to capacity, with dealers on the lower and upper levels, hall two was about the same size, again packed full of stuff to buy. Dealers from round the world were here, and if you ever wanted to loose large amounts of cash on props, DVD’s or other must haves, then this was the place to do it!!

I didn’t see everything being demo’ed or sold. but highlights for me were Big Blind Media, their tour bus trip up to the convention, and our mind reading abilities on Dave Forrest telling him about the trip up and the previous days events… thanks Liam!!.. Alakazam’s Real Ghost, Mark Mason’s Come Fly with me (from the Friday morning trip to JBMagic), seeing Bob Swadling again and having a long chat with him about years gone by.. Catching up with Magic Box, and Kernow Magic (and being quite touched that Angie and Kenny remembered me!!)

For anyone with photos from the convention, please get them onto the Blackpool Magic Convention 2008 group on Flickr, we’re sadly lacking in members and photos on there currently!!! (it’s free!!!)

The interntational Gala Show marks the end of the Blackpool Convention, Adrian Walsh was the compare for the evening, a huge improvement over saturdays ‘mc’!!

Mahka Tendo opened the first half of the show with his traditional card manipulation act, although many people say that his act is slightly boring after a while, the sheer number of cards, and the large card productions (mainly the number he managed to hold and pull out) keeps my interest. It was a good strong start to the show. Rafael followed with his comedy dove act (which I saw at FISM in stockholm). To be honest I thought his act on Saturday night in the show was much better than this show, although both were great, I found the previous nights much more interesting. He finished with a very effective Bird to Assistant illusion.

Every gala show has a juggler, it’s part of the tradition of the show I guess, and in true style, the juggler always steals the show. Antje Pode performed her foot juggling routine juggling suitcases, balls and hand bags with her feet while lying on her back.

Scott & Muriel where up next and it wasn’t really a great slot. The lack of a working mic when Muriel was doing her singing routine, and a chair-suspension illusion which saw Scott coming crashing down to the floor embarassingly exposing the ‘workings’ of the illusions didn’t help. For a ‘FISM world champions’ act it was very poor.

David Sousa performed his FISM card act, with appearing envelopes and letters, pulling the show back into an air of quality, and was followed by quick change artist Valerie. Although the changes were good and quick, the sectioned between them were not, and her floating / suspended legs illusion suffered badly from bad angles and not really fitting into a quick change section.

Topas, who I always think is just the best act when I see him, closed the first half with appearing speakers act, a box was shown empty and many speakers were removed from the box (each one the size of the box itself), plugged in and placed on stage. I liked the build up from a simple sound track to a full on energy track as the speakers were produced and started playing. Topas is a fantastic act, and except a little over acting by the stand hands lifting the speakers, it was a strong close to the first half and beat the normal type of tired illusion acts that close the shows.

After the interval the Award ceremony part of the show started, this is traditionally a little dull, but heralds the better acts. It was great to see Geoffrey Durham get the Murray Award for services to magic. The award for Worlds Children’s Entertainer, and the Ken Dodd Comedy Award were also all given out, both going to John Kimmons from the UK. It would have been nice, if those giving the award had known which award was which though!!!

Blackpool Magicians Club honorary life president, Ken Dodd followed with his normal humor, which probably only really registered with the British part of the audience, and was actually quite funny (I normally don’t enjoy the Ken Dodd section) and he only did about 20 minutes as opposed to the few hours in previous years!!

The world youngest illusionists The Yamagami Brothers were on next, When I first saw these two perform they were very young (about 5) and they seamlessly did illusions and magic, and seemed to have great energy, throwing themselves around the stage. They seemed to lack that energy this time, and although the act was good (especially given their ages), it has lost something for me personally. However it was good, and they did some clever illusions and substitutions.

Unfortunately Scott & Muriel came back for a second attempt at a set, giving us a dismal act of pure stupidity. Adults running round the stage dressed up as pantomime horses when from bizarre, to ridiculous to cringe worthy as they got Balckpool President, Harry Greenaway up on stage dressed in a large cactus suite, while they shot guns and flicked whips at him to burst a balloon, and ended up with a ‘comedy’ dropping of Harrys pants gag (hilarious.. not!) Muriel inflicted more pain on the audience by passing in front of the speakers giving up a ear bleeding feedback scream not once but twice. It’s a shame stages don’t have working trap doors any more..

Strangely, the acts from the first half started to re-appear in the second.. Topas did another set based around his ‘childhood memories’, producing and vanishing balls, rocking horses, and included a nice animated teddy bear at the end. Like everything Topas does, it was beautifully presented, polished and honed, and maybe just because of the previous ‘act’ the audience gave Topas a great reception.

The normal thank the organisers, crew etc now followed before Shimada took the stage. He performed his traditional parasol and dragon act, a great fitting end to the show. It was fast, tight, and many items were produced quickly and cleanly. a few pyro’s and smoke effects heralded the appearance of two large chinese dragon type performers, and in a fight to the death, a neat switch of Shimada and his assistant was achieved.

The show itself clocked in at about 3 hours and 25 minutes, much shorted than previous years, and to be honest it was just around the right length. I woudl have liked to have seen maybe a patter act, or comedy act. Noel Britten with his water bucket escape would have gone down a storm given the previous nights issues with the water torture escape. Even giving Justin Lee Collins, doing his Justin Illusion act would have been a great one!

In all a good show, brought down slightly by the odd ‘off’ act and technical issue.