Simon of course brought the wonderful and now cult following ‘The Secret Cabaret‘ show to Channel Four in the 1990’s and started up a venue in London a number of years ago to perform him gothic, horror and stage act for corporates, before starting to open it up for public.. This was the perfect venue!!!

We headed up, Simon had been kind enough to sort out us with some special tickets..

The House of Magic, is a full evenings entertainment, entering through the enchanted garden you start off with tours of the haunted cellar, fortune telling from the whispering chair, and some lazying about in the drawing room, and red room, before some excellent food is served, alongside in our case champagne (lots!)

The evening show is something very special. Simon’s turned the entire Victorian pub into the theatre space, using not just the stage, but also the surroundings into his performance space. The opening act ‘amateur transplants’ was hillarious, a surgeon sining some dark parody songs..

Following this Simon put on his full evening show, a mix of his signature dark horror magic, along with some of his classic routines as well (so it’s not all gore).. I wont go into what he did, as that will spoil it for those of you that should go and see it.. except to say it’s possible one of the best magic shows I’ve seen for some time.. and it will stay with me as a very special show..

After the show, Simon went out of his way to make me and my party feel so welcome.. even taking us up into his flat and personal living space.. We even got to see the Captains Cabin, and spent some time of top of the building looking over london in a strange ‘Mary Poppins’ type experience (Us, Simon Drake and Chimneys!).. you can see my flickr set for some more photos, or check out the gallery on The House Of Magic site

Simon Drake’s House of Magic is somewhere you HAVE to go if you are in London… full details on his site

The doors open at 5:30pm for close-up magic in the bar, and the show starts 7pm sharp.

Simon Alexander will introduce international Illusionists ‘The Molins‘, Simon Williams will present Comedy Magic, and Ian Souch will demonstrate his awe inspiring Mind Reading.

Clive Winterton and Robert Bone will provide additional closeup magic before the show and during the interval.

Tickets are £10 and full details and maps can be found at www.berkshiremagicians.co.uk

Both videos feature some nice magic with the Nokia phone’s

It’s nice to see magic coming back into the mainstream again.. and it’s nice to see it’s the UK guys working in conjunction with companies like Nokia to bring it to the public eye..

If you read my blog, you’ll be aware that Dynamo did his first UK lecture last year at the International Magic Convention in London

The Magic Convention Guide is now up and running well and attracting a lot of visitors, especially now that you can search for and book hotels for conventions through our partners on the site. The Home Counties Magical Society Website is also going great, with literally thousands of visits now per month!! I’ve also now joined the management team at what I think is one of the best Magic forums on the internet, The Magic Woods.

I’m very proud to have been asked me to come on board to The Magic Woods Team and help further the forum. There are some exciting things that I hope to do with conjunction with The Magic Woods Forum over the next year.

Recently The Magic Woods completed a Q&A session with Teller from Penn and Teller that ran for over a month, and other names that have frequented and openly discussed magic with the members have been Ben Hart, Simon Drake, James Randi, Jeff McBride, Jason Palter, Dynamo, Angelo Carbone, Justin Miller, Michael Paul, Jay Sankey, Whit Haydn, Eugene Burger, Cardone, Zenneth Kok, Paul Zenon, Keith Pascal, Nathan Kranzo, Banachek, Paul Daniels, Daniel Garcia, Steve Dela, Luke Jermay, and Daryl.

It’s also always been my goal to join The Magic Circle, in fact I actually joined as an associate member when I was much younger, but neglected to really pull my finger out and do my exam. The Magic Circle don’t run associate memberships anymore, so it’s all or nothing now!!

Our Society now has in it’s midsts The Regional Representative of the Magic Circle for the Home Counties, Keith Churcher who is a Member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star. This of course means that if your in the ‘Home Counties’ area, which includes Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, arranging your Magic Circle entry has never been easier. and you can contact him for more information.

This morning Keith kindly delivered my welcome pack, which is a bit daunting when you see it in black and white (and a splash of colour!).. It looks like our regional exams might be around September, just in time for the wedding!!

So I just need to work out, and polish my routine, practice, relax and practice a bit more!!!

Fingers crossed, and sorry to everyone over the next few months who will have magic forced on them whilst I’m practicing…

The sites been a little dormant for a while, but after a long period of dust settling on the site, I’ve taken over running it, and The Magic Convention Guide is back and cranking up to running at full speed again!

I’d like to express my sincere thank yous to Table Magician Noel Qualter, Creative Design Agency – Monster Creations, and Publisher and fountain of all knowledge Andi Gladwin, for their generosity, and agreeing to let me loose with their original project.

I have some very exciting ideas for the site, and I hope that you will support it’s growth. As well as the features that were part of the site before, I’ll be offering a lot more, including more interviews from the convention celebrities, convention gossip and rumors, and even practical things like a list of hotels in the area of each of the conventions (as well as the reviews), I’ve teamed up with a number of hotel providers to allow you hopefully an easy method of finding hotels near to the convention centers, and we hope to get the inside track on whats coming up. You might even see the odd game on the site to fill those convention gaps.

This site will now be running to generate money for two organisations, we will be donating all money from the site to The Home Counties Magical Society, and The Conjuring Arts Research Center. I hope as visitors, and contributors to the site, you will help me support both of these worthy organisations. Advertisers should contact me for information on how to sponsor the site, or advertise on it.

I’m also now looking for a team that will help me with information, although anyone can submit a review of a hotel, or convention to the normal email: info@magicconventionguide.com, I’m looking for a small team to cover conventions outside the UK, again if you are interested in joining the team, please let me know on the above email.

If you know of any conventions not listed, please let me know, and I hope, together, we can make a site dedicated to magic conventions, and how to survive them.

The Magic Convention Guide can be found at : http://www.magicconventionguide.com/

Contrary to popular belief, I am not a member of, and have never actually been up to The Magic Circle itself, so the prospect was quite exciting, and, of course the double plus was that I’d also get to see Joshua Jay lecture.

The Magic Circle itself is located not far from Euston Station, and from the outside looks very unimposing. Turning the corner into Stephenson Way, a pair of doors with the Magic Circle Logo on them hides the wonders inside. Walking in, I was greeted by The Magic Circle’s security guard, given my guest pass for the evening, and we headed up to the Devant Room to watch the examinations for that evening.

Standing at the back of the room, watching the performers getting ready, and waiting for them to start, I actually started to feel quite sick. That nervous; I shouldn’t be here kind of sick, I’m not sure why. I think it might have been some sort of sympathetic nerves for them, about to perform for those sitting in the room, ready to mark them and establish if they were the caliber to join the ranks of The Magic Circle. I think it was the stone cold thought that soon, that might be me sitting in front of the same audience, waiting to be judged.

Once the auditions were over, we headed down to the Club Room. It was nice to bump into a few people I knew; Sav, Andi Gladwin, Noel Qualter, Iain Moran, in fact there probably were more people I knew that I didn’t get a chance to talk to during the evening, as it turned out to be quite a busy night..

Almost too soon after sitting down, it was time to head up to The Magic Circles own theatre, a 162 seater custom theatre located on the top floor of the building. I’ve never been to a magic club that really boasts such great facilities as The Magic Circle, it’s not many clubs thats can seat 162 and project the lecture onto a back screen behind the performer.

Joshua’s lecture was excellent, although I’ve read most of the content of his set in various publications it was great to see Joshua himself perform them. It’s actually quite thought provoking that Joshua is so young, and so talented.

After the lecture we headed down to the the club room for some drinks (again, a club room with it’s own bar!!), to chat and savor the atmosphere. It’s quite overwhelming, but a great place to be..

..I just need to polish up my skills to get through the interview and audition…

Thankfully Derren has also opened a west end run of this show this time, and the Home Counties Magical Society hopefully will have some interesting news about that event in the next few days.

Last year Derren didn’t do a run in Reading (possibly to do with the Reading crowd managing to, lets say deviate most of the effects from their intended outcome year!!) but thankfully he’d decided to give them another chance and return to the Hexagon this year. We had back of the flat stalls, center tickets, a very good view point. I think one of the nice things about Derren Brown shows is that the tickets are very reasonably priced (unless you pay the £200 odd on ebay!!) and the programs are a fair price at £5.. anyhow… On entering the theatre I instantly spotted a Malloy Master Prediction box hanging above the stage, that was quite exciting in itself, since I’ve been wondering how it worked (now I know!). The stage was set in the guise of a Victorian front parlour, think Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, seances, mediumship and mystery, fitting the show very well

Before I go further, I should warn you there are some spoilers in this review, so.. if you’re lucky enough to have tickets to the remaining sell out shows.. go away.. come back after the shows run is over.. You’ll just enjoy it more…

The first few minutes of the show is a nice introduction via a projection screen, working round the idea of focus, and not noticing things outside your normal area of vision something thats come back to a number of times in the show.. It also introduces the box hanging from the top of the stage in full view.. This box… obviously is very important..

Derren starts the show with some wonderful effects, again his normal style of mind reading, as always executed without flaw (or.. where it is flawed, it’s flawed for a reason!!). these consisted of the game of Twenty Questions where he correctly ‘guessed’ at six audience members thought of objects, those on stage really looked totally baffled as to how he did it, in fact Derren did the ‘just think of the answers and dont say them’ method on the last person, which confused them even more!! This section was really nicely put together, and showed a slight change from the previous shows in that Derren was predicting what we were thinking of, as opposed to influencing us at the time, so six spectators down, on with more effects..

There was an excellent bank note serial prediction, the numbers obtained from a phonecall to a spectators son, which seemed to go wrong, ending up with the telephoned person having unknowingly predicted the banknote serial number.. To be honest I think this is the main effect from the show that stays with me. The serial number is, as far as I can see genuine, and I have no idea on the method for it, making it a lovely effect.

I think theres a few other things that stood out in my mind as excellent effects, the Question and Answer session at the end (a classic Victorian mental effect he described as ‘The Oracle Act’) was in my opinion perfection.. he executed it flawlessly (although some people say it was a little long taking up the entire second half) and I watched trying to track the various methods at work.. Derren in a nutshell asked audience members in the break to place questions in sealed envelopes into a glass bowl on stage, placing only their initials and row numbers on the outside.

He then picked envelopes, correctly guessing at things like names, or ages or sexes of the people that wrote the question. Once the person was found, they stood, and he started to answer their question, and in a lot of cases started to tell them more details about them, their lifes, illnesses and other personal or secret information that to all the audiences view, he wouldn’t know. I have to say this was probably one of the best executed Q&A’s I’ve seen.

Moving on from divining the questions in the envelopes, he started to pick up questions people were merely thought of, objects in pockets, personal items people were thinking about, and other seemingly impossible things. I can only imagine how amazing and gob smacking this must have been to non-magicians, this was also done blindfolded.

The show ended with the revelation of the box, containing a complete prediction of the outcome of a number of effects in the show, the thought of objects, the hobby of a spectators son who came on stage, and the description of the volunteer who came up at the end to open the box.

However you look at the show and the effects, there are two views… the views of the people around me that genuinely believe that Derren has ‘something‘ which means he can in some way read minds, or reactions, body language or predict things, and the magic view; that this is magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship, mainly showmanship, and flawless showmanship at that..

In either case, you cannot think anything else than.. Bloody hell thats clever..

I went back to the stage doors after the show, my copies of Pure Effect and Absolute Magic, (thankfully ones I brought when they were in print for Twenty odd pounds, and not the ones from eBay at up to £200 plus), were still unsigned and I wanted to see if he’d be so kind as to sign them. I’d been up in London at Tabula Mentis III during the day, and had a long chat with David Berglas before I’d left. He’d given me a message for Derren, so I was on a double mission.

After a brief wait, Derren came out, and was very friendly. He took time out to go over to a camper van to talk with a disabled audience member, and after the crowd had cleared we had a wonderful chat about the show, the message from David and even talked about Tabula Mentis. Books signed we headed off with a friendly wave from Derren and a shout of ‘thanks for coming’.

Of course if you’ve read down to here.. and you’ve off to see the show, and you didn’t heed my warning of spoilers.. you’ll still enjoy the show, since I’ve not listed everything that happens..

I also forgot to say how much the poster (Illustrated by Kerry Donovan) reminded me of the Thurston and Ask Alexander posters from their careers;

A thoroughly wonderful show, as always with Derren. It was an excellent evening, and well worth the money I highly recommended going if you can still get tickets.

The Magic Woods has started it’s voting process on The Magic Industry Awards. The Magic Woods Awards are awards given to magicians, tricks and institutions in the magic industry, by fellow magicians. Nominations are made by magicians on The Magic Woods forum, and then anyone is welcome to vote on The Magic Woods Awards website. The awards cover everything from best new trick, to best magic website, and the awards are run annually in April. The nominees looks very good for this year, including our own Home Counties Magical Society Website!!!

TMW Award for Best Trick

Current Nominees for TMW Award for Best Trick
The C.A.N.N.A.B.I.S Effect – Daniel Young & Lee Hathaway
Between The Lines – Michael Murray
The Casanova Closer – Steve Haynes
Extreme Burn – Richard Sanders
iKnow – Jason Palter

TMW Award for Best Teaching Video

Current Nominees for TMW Award for Best Teaching Video
The Casanova Concept – Steve Haynes with Big Blind Media
Don Driver’s Jam Auction DVD – Don Driver
Past Midnight – Benjamin Earl
Here I Go Again – Bill Malone
The Roadrunner Cull – Kostya Kimlat
No Camera Tricks – Richard Osterlind

TMW Award for Best Book

Current Nominees for TMW Award for Best Book
Jack Parker’s 52 Memories- Andi Gladwin
Designing Miracles – Darwin Ortiz
Scripting Magic – Pete McCabe
The Secret Life of Houdini – William Kalush, Larry Sloman

TMW Award for Best Magician

Current Nominees for TMW Award for Best Magician
John Archer
Jeff McBride
David Stone
Shoot Ogawa

TMW Award for Best Website

Current Nominees for TMW Award for Best Website
Magic Unlimited -Tim Ellis
iTricks
Magic Video Depot
MagicWeek
Home Counties Magic Society

TMW Award for Best Newcomer

Current Nominees for TMW Award for Best Newcomer
David Forrest
Benjamin Earl
Justin Lee Collins
Peter Harrison

TMW Award for Lifetime Achievement

Current Nominees for TMW Award for Lifetime Achievement
Wayne Dobson
Michael Ammar
Harry Lorayne
Pat Page
Ali Bongo

Make sure you get over to the awards site and vote for your favorite in each category, voting closes at the end of April

After almost six months of hard work, from conceptual stage to launching last night, I’m very pleased to say that the new Home Counties Magical Society Website is now up and running.

A fully fledged content management system is now in place, and the site provides a full and flexible portal to the magic community and our members.

Visitors to the site will be able to see everything about our Society, from joining instructions, through to finding the location of our Society though interactive maps, you can even get the site to plan a driving route for you!!

As well as the normal Society information, the site provides information about the next lecture, reviews of previous lectures, magic related news and events, show and convention reports.

Members of the society get access to the private side of the site through their own unique username and password, giving them the ability to look through previous society news letters, the DVD Library lists, reviews and new purchases, and other content that is private to the society.

Members can also become more involved in the society through the ability to vote, and have polls on subjects, as well as a number of surprises that we have in store for later in the sites development. Members can also contribute to the site by writing article and news reports.

Advertisers also benefit as we are running a banner advertisement program for magic related companies and magazines, our rates are very very low! If you lecture for us, as an added advantage you’ll get one month of free advertising space following your lecture, which is a great way for members to buy additional items or other societies to contact you following a successful lecture.

We feel that the Home Counties Magical Society now has one of the leading and most flexible society resources for it’s members, and look forward to the opportunity to welcome more visitors and members to the site.