As a teenager, magic did not interest me—I wanted to be Timothy Dalton. Or direct the next great action film. And to that end, I begged my parents for a video camera. At the time, this was cutting-edge technology, and the price tag was not inconsiderable. Santa understandably declined. I was encouraged instead to save for it myself.
Two years of pocket money, birthday £10 notes, and paper-round wages later, I finally had it: a video camera roughly the size of a suitcase. The short films I made with it were, inevitably, utterly dreadful. But I loved making them.
That pretentious but quiet dream of being an auteur never fully went away. I now carry a dozen better cameras in my pocket, and though life has taken me in other creative directions through my work, the urge to make silver-screen magic never really left me.
On occasion, you can still spot this fire. From the annual Christmas card videos (a hangover from my chorister days) to dabbling in edits for marketing clips, I’ve always loved playing behind the lens. And now, I can announce a project that makes the teenager in me very happy.
I feel a little embarrassed to be on social media. It’s not naturally becoming for a gentleman of my age to be scrambling for views and likes. I am clearly not of the generation that would consider themselves digital natives. And I feel a little bit of a fraud announcing myself as a magician, only to refuse to perform any magic online.
If you’ve been following me, you might have seen some enthusiastic but scattershot attempts to marry my love of The Bowler Hatted Magician with a few photographs and clips. But the itch to make something—playful, thoughtful, moving—has grown too strong to ignore. And so I’m embracing it.
If you’re already a follower on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, you may have noticed a few things I do regularly. Every Monday, I announce the times and dates of my London venue residencies for the week. I also enjoy creating postcards of the places and venues I’m lucky enough to visit, and I shamelessly reiterate the recommendations I receive from happy clients. (Over 165 Google reviews now—and I still haven’t had anything less than five stars!)
But there are now a couple of new threads to enjoy.
Every Friday, I’ll be releasing a short visual vignette titled The Weekend Beckons. These are playful little videos about what it might be like for a magician to prepare for his weekend work, and they’re designed simply to make you smile.
The second new feature conveys an entirely different mood. As I work to improve my performances, I always return to my key theme: how are we all magic? To that end, I’ve been looking for examples of real magic in our often prosaic lives. To help me express these ideas, I’ve begun piecing together visual tone poems—glimpses of how a magician might interpret the world. The project is called Quiet Magic.
Although I’ve found them helpful in conjuring new ideas, I hadn’t expected them to interest anyone else. But after some gentle persuasion, I’ve started to share them—and people have been very kind in saying they connect. So, you might find more of them appearing on Sunday evenings, which seems a fitting moment in the week for a small reminder that the world is full of wonder.
If you do come across these little nuggets of reel magic, I hope you enjoy them. My inner teenage Spielberg would be overjoyed. And if social media isn’t your thing, I completely sympathise. But if you fancy a few moments of thoughtfulness and merriment, come and find me online.