Page 74 - Phonebox Magazine October 2015

Magic!
David Pibworth
There is nothing like a bit of magic, and coming up to Christmas I get working at it a bit and develop a few new tricks for people to buy
on our on line shop and on ebay.
As it’s panto season coming along also I get out all my blueprints of how to make people appear/disappear on stage, which is fun and much easier than you’d imagine. Nope, you don’t need a trap door or any fancy flying wires, all you need is.....ah, I can’t give away the secrets of the trade otherwise I’d have to kill you.
I make no great claim to have come up with new ideas as most magic is developed from someone else, often in India, where they came up with rope tricks, sword swallowing, cups and balls, and much more.
I have just worked out the simplest way to get a pack of cards from your hand into your pocket, with no- one seeing it, and this opens up a multitude of gags that you can do with cards.
My area with cards is really the lazy person’s way to do card tricks. You can spend years developing your card manipulation skills but
some time ago I thought that there must be an easier way to do it all, and there is. I can teach people amazing card tricks in about an hour. I’ve had some magicians telling me that I’m cheating, but...well lets be brutally honest, the whole thing about magic is that it’s cheating. That’s why I enjoy it so much. Reminds me of school.
I did once encounter someone – an adult - who quite seriously asked me how to do ‘real’ magic. I explained that there was no such thing and he got quite cross with me and said I was a fraudster. I agreed with him which made him all the grumpier and he caused something of a scene and went off muttering about the dark arts, voodoo and such like.
Much of it does involve getting people to look where you want them to look. It’s called misdirection and it’s just a trick of the trade. Also when you get onto really fooling the audience there is some setting up involved, but that’s part of the fun. This much I will give away. When a card appears in an unlikely place, it hasn’t got there by magic, even if the trick was done
by Dynamo. However he is superb and if you ever get a chance to watch him, do so. Magic by its very nature makes one ‘think out of the box’ as it were and that’s why I get called around the UK to do Magic Workshop. I do them for the Pauline Quirke Academy a couple of times a month, and I’ve always felt that young people getting to grips with this kind of thing, really gets them thinking. If they can do magic and read music, they won’t have a bad start in life I say.
But there is no age limit for magic. Once someone has hit the age of around 10 they are perfectly capable of handling magic and at the other end of the scale quite a few older people have taken it up as a retirement hobby, usually to amaze their grandchildren. It’s something for everyone to do.
Well I’m off for the last two sell out performances of Fawlty Towers but do keep a look out for a panto that Anna and I will be producing at the Carlton House club on December the 3rd, 4th and 5th with our drama school. It’s sort of back by popular demand...See you all soon.
Mad Magic Workshops
Within an hour you’ll be performing card tricks you won’t believe you can do!
Come to our 2 hour workshop and learn all this & more.
Forcing a card - Dave Pib’s 3 Card Trick Method - Chosen card ends up stuck to the ceiling - Card thrown in the air changes in full view.
Fool mates - Impress clients - Confuse granny - Win bets!
This and many other tricks of the trade & misdirection explained - plus a bit of Tommy Cooper.
4 splendid Mad Magic card tricks supplied for you to take away, plus oodles of information.
David Pibworth, The Workshop, Clickers Yard, Olney, Bucks, MK46 5DX
01234 241357
Workshops at our studio in Olney or your chosen venue
£45 per person • £40 group bookings (Max 6)
The Natural Alternative
Green Burial Ground
• Private burial ground in beautiful countryside
• Trees instead of headstones
• Protected woodland for permanent security
• No maintenance or risk of neglect
• Family & ‘DIY’ arranged funerals
01234 241808
Within easy reach of Milton Keynes, Bedford & Northampton
74 Phonebox Magazine
davidpibworth@googlemail.com
The Funeral & Green Burial Company Yardley Road, Olney, Buckinghamshire MK46 5EH www.olneygreenburialground.co.uk