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Highlights and extended interviews from 91.5 Jazz and More's morning show.
0:00:00
So now tell me about your start.
0:00:20
You're from the United Kingdom? Yes, I grew up in South East London. And how did you get into what you're doing? Yeah, I mean, it's like looking backwards I can tell you. Okay. Looking forwards, I was like, it was all just like chance and luck and stupidity. So I hated magic when I was growing up. In the UK, we had a couple of magicians I didn't like. They were like, it was a bit, they were like, oh, we're much cleverer than you, and you're an idiot, and all that sort of stuff. And so I didn't like it. But when I was 15, they showed a program. It was called Stuff the White Rabbit. And it was these close-up magicians from all over the world, a lot of them American. David Williamson was on it, who was a great magician. Matt King, I think, was on one of the episodes. And they were doing these card tricks. And I was like, oh, I quite like these card tricks. So I'd watch the show, learn how to do these tricks and then I would do it to my friends so I really like close-up magic mm-hmm so then and you know I went to university and I was like I was like getting what I thought was a backup career in case the magic didn't work and what backup career was that it was computer science okay but I was dreadfully so it was no backup I was just me not being good at something so I I would work in bars and restaurants doing card tricks for the people there for tips or for a little bit of cash and that's how I paid my way through college. And then when I finished university, I went, I'm gonna do this full time. And as soon as I started doing it full time, I realized that magic is not really like show business. It's like there are these, you have show business and then you have these things on the fringes, you know, like juggling or magic or clowning or whatever and magic was one of those things because it was it was basically the catering industry. You know you'd work bar mitzvahs, you'd work these like corporate dinners, birthday parties, meet-and-greet events and your job was to mix and mingle and entertain people in between the courses or in between the speeches. So you were were interrupting people for a living you know and once I was in a very small restaurant in Croydon which is already a bad place to be and I walked up to a table of two and I said
0:03:15
hello I'm the magician would you like to see a card trick and the guy scraped his chair back across his tile floor the whole restaurant stopped looked at
0:02:53
really think I want to see some effing magic he didn't say effing right he didn't feel the need to censor himself I feel like I'm on a very nice yes you know platform here so I will but he did not and and I said no no you don't do you because she just made half your house disappear and he didn't take that
0:03:14
well
0:03:16
disappear. And he didn't take that well. And that's what I found was that I was doing, you know, I was like doing magic and I was like doing jokes to people and I was, you know, we call it split in the room which is
0:03:44
where half the people like it, half the people hate it. Now, if you're on stage and you've got 100 people, 50 people laughing is a lot of people.
0:04:10
Yes.
0:04:11
You know, it sounds like you're doing well. If you're doing a table and there's four people, two of them don't laugh, that's a problem. So I got fired from everywhere that I was working and I became unemployable. I was down to my last one or two gigs, I didn't have enough money and I was like, I got to get out of here. And I went to a party around this time, it was a costume party, and I said to my sister, I don't have a costume to wear. She said, I have a dragon outfit under my bed. Under her bed? Under her bed. Now I asked no further questions and neither should you because it's my sister. Let's let that mystery stay buried. So I say great I'll wear the dragon outfit. I cross London in a dragon outfit on public transport. I didn't drive so I'm on the buses, I'm on the trains, I'm on the tubes across London in a dragon outfit. I arrive at the party no one else is in costume. That's funny. Just me. I go to my friend and say, what did you do to me? She said, well, you know, we just thought it was a bit immature. So I'm in a drag now. I'm like, yeah, really? You think? So now, for once, I'm appropriately grumpy. You know? Because usually, inside I would feel happy, it's just my face would read grumpy. I did a wedding once, and this guy was like, what is your problem? And I was like nothing I'm in a good mood. He was like you look like the Eeyore of magic And then he fired me because he was the groom. Okay, so at this party for once I've got an excuse to be grumpy Mm-hmm, I'm drinking red wine in the corner. My other friend comes up to me. She says this is funny She says you should do this in your act. You might have heard of my older brother, Steve. And I was like, that's not a bad joke. So, you know, a couple of months goes by, I'm losing all my work. And I'm like, I wonder whether that thing would work. So I, I try it at an open mic night. It kills. Now with comedy, and I'd done a bit of comedy before. Comedy, it takes you like a year two years to even like become Bad because you're learning how to be in front of an audience had to talk all of that stuff But I'd learned all that by doing magic You know and I also had material because I had like routines So I'd done the hard part part of this and now I just found the the icing on the cake, the framing, that made it all work. So it was very quick after that. In the next year, it sort of like shot up. And, you know, I go to Edinburgh and I do this gig, you know, where I'm like, I need Mr. Piffles and I need a dog. So I got Mr. Piffles and he was like the missing piece of the puzzle. Right. You know, because he was like, I was this grumpy dragon, you know, and I've got this adorable Chihuahua, so that brings me to neutral. So as soon as the two of us teamed up, everything sort of came together and we started going places..
0:07:28
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Transcribed with Cockatoo