GRAPHIC CONTENT
What we’ve been talking about Illusion is in the air, rabbits are up some sleeves and sleight is of the hand as MagicFest prepares to trick Edinburgh, while Penn & Teller mosey into Glasgow to perform feats of largely unimaginable conjuring. We asked some folk to tell us about their all-time favourite magic trick whether it was performed in front of their actual faces or witnessed from the safety of a TV lounge . . .
My mother and I got hypnotised in Gran Canaria circa 1999. I
never went under but every time my mum heard the James Bond
soundtrack she turned into a gun-wielding 007 agent. It was really embarrassing for me and
my 11-year-old brother! Her
trance-like state seemed to last
the rest of the holiday!
The best magician I’ve seen was Paul Dabek. He combined seriously impressive playing- card wizardry and sleight of hand with roasting audience
members. Not literally.
Paul Nathan, who does the I Hate Children Children’s Show at the Fringe each year, turned
a flame into a chewy sweet inches from my eyes in the
Pleasance Courtyard one year. The sweet tasted great and I’ve never been the same since.
Derren Brown’s The Heist show terrified me. Every time I hear Michael Jackson’s ‘Can You Feel It’, I’m sure I’ll accidentally rob a bank.
Watching Paul Zenon facilitate an audience member swinging pints of lager around and
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I’ve seen Colin Cloud a few times at the
Edinburgh Fringe and
each time he’s blown my socks off with his mind games, guessing what audience members most embarrassing moments were, what colour car
they drive and what they’ve eaten! Spooky!
speed without spilling a drop in the Spiegeltent ages ago
is still one of the most astonishing
things I’ve ever seen.
His humour was mildly cheesy but it’s difficult to be
brilliant at two things
at once.
My favourite magician has to be Piff The Magic Draggooon (yes you have to type it like that). Piff and Mr Piffles were one of my ‘let’s just go see something random at the Fringe’ discoveries. A cheeky, yet charming man with some serious black comedy dressed up as a dragon with a
little chihuahua. It’s quite the experience. He was on America’s Got Talent so you
know he’s good.
I went to see a young Paul McKenna long before he was famous in a small town called Camberley. Being a small town it ended up that out of the ten people chosen
on stage I knew six of them. They ended up doing any number of bizarre things
including feeling so cold that they had to put on about 15 jumpers, pretending to be a spaceship etc. But my favourite part was my best friend being persuaded he was Skippy the bush kangaroo for about 15 minutes. To this day he remembers
nothing and still gets confused when told the story. First time I realised that actually people can be hypnotised and it wasn’t just a stooge in the audience.
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