Nothing Is Impossible: The Real-Life Adventures of a Street Magician (18 page)

AS MY CAREER
began to take off, exploring new weird and wonderful places became a more regular thing for me. In my time, I’ve found myself in the most amazing places and my journey has been full of surprises. Sometimes the unexpected and the unplanned can be one of life’s greatest gifts.

In terms of some of the places I’ve ended up, Singapore has to be among the most outrageous. I have a few friends who live out there and it’s always a bit ridiculous; when we go out, we roll in a convoy of Ferraris, drop-top Phantoms and Porsches – the most over-the-top cars you’ve seen. It’s like something from the Gumball Rally. Our friends in Singapore look after us very well – they’re internet entrepreneurs and very successful, so it can be crazy seeing life through their eyes. It’s the funny thing about my new way of life: one minute I’m at Ronnie Wood’s birthday party in his house, the next I’m in the shanty towns of Brazil. Even to this day, I pinch myself. Dan and I will look at each other like, ‘
How the hell did we end up here
?’ Some of the hotel suites I’ve booked into in Dubai or Singapore would fit my entire flat in them twenty times over.

It’s in cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Singapore where I’ve witnessed wealth on an incredible scale. It’s thanks to Formula
One that I’ve been invited to these cities in the first place; and it’s through them I’ve met many of the people I admire such as Richard Branson and Pharrell Williams, and hung out with the likes of Lewis Hamilton.

In December 2009, Formula One invited me to the Singapore Grand Prix to perform for F1 Rocks. An idea was floated around that I would drive Beyoncé around a racing track – blindfolded. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, her team went off the idea of letting their multi-million-selling artist hurtle around a racetrack at 150mph with a blind kid from Bradford behind the wheel.

So we approached someone else instead: Lindsay Lohan. Now, ordinarily I like to have at least a little bit of time to hang out with someone before we film, just so I can get to know them a little. But when you are dealing with a huge celebrity, it is often the problem that they only have a very limited amount of time to spare. It can really put the pressure on when it comes to getting the footage you need.

Lindsay had had a nightmare getting to Singapore, missing four flights and being delayed all around the world as she tried to make her way from LA. As soon as she landed, she was piled into a car, which raced her to a huge shopping mall in the middle of the city.

It was a boiling hot day. The steel-clad building omitted heat all around us; it was touching 40°C at one point and the humidity was off the scale. In order to reach me, Dan had to guide Lindsay through the vast shopping mall, packed with thousands of people. After trawling through the shops, up the back stairs and in and out of various lifts for half an hour, they eventually stumbled up onto the roof. We were supposed to have an hour to get the shot, but we only had twenty minutes by the time she arrived.

It was so hot; I thought we were both going to pass out. We’d had to hire industrial fans to try to keep us cool enough so we didn’t sweat our way through the shoot. Time was so tight; we only had one shot, and one shot only, to get it right.

Lindsay perched on top of a bar stool and I asked her to hold my hand as she closed her eyes. By this time a curious crowd had gathered, adding to the tension. I stood back and levitated her off the chair. Slowly, she rose up into the air. But rather than freak out, Lindsay giggled nervously, trying to keep as calm and composed as possible. Up and up she rose, until there was a metre-long gap between her and the chair. I passed my hands beneath her to show there was nothing there.

The gathered audience had a 360-degree view of what was happening. Their mouths opened wide as they stared at Lindsay, in her little vest and skirt, floating in mid-air among all the magnificent buildings in Singapore. It was a real sight.

In the twenty minutes we spent together, we got on really well and I think she enjoyed doing something a little out of the ordinary. I’ve seen Lindsay since then in Cannes and in London, and she’s always really cool.

Singapore was hard work – it just seemed to get hotter and hotter and it took a lot to persuade people to give me even two minutes of their time. I wanted to do a good job for F1 Rocks, as they had flown me out there, so I knew they’d be counting on me to get great footage of the various stars who had also been brought over for Formula One.

Will.i.am was really jet-lagged and overheated. I could tell it would be a challenge to engage him. So I left him alone to chill out and instead showed Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas some magic. I pulled something off that had Taboo, and his band mate Apl, going crazy. I snapped a piece of string off my T-shirt,
swallowed it and then I lifted up my T-shirt to reveal my stomach. Protuding from it was the piece of white thread. My skin puckered as I pulled and pulled until the string was free from my body. Their reaction was brilliant – they ran about like headless chickens as they tried to process what they’d just seen. Eventually, Will.i.am burst out laughing and really got involved.

As Will Smith once said, people are attracted to greatness. If you can display greatness in whatever field you work in, then naturally people are going to gravitate towards you. Plant the seed around them and they will come. It’s keeping them there that is the hard part.

It’s a principle I apply today. Sometimes I need to attract the attention of an A-lister because I’ve been asked to create content for something, like, for instance, F1 Rocks or the MTV VMA Awards show. So, I’ll need to ‘work the room’ and get footage of the more famous people in the room because that’s essentially what I’m there for. The company relies on the bigger names to get viewers to either watch on TV or look online.

I’ve found when I’m in a room with a celebrity I can inadvertently steal the attention from them. It’s not intentional, but the curiosity of the crowd will invariably be drawn towards what I’m doing when I perform. I start small, working the room, so that people slowly get an awareness of what’s going on. I’ve found that occasionally with a famous person, as the hangers-on and pretty girls start to gather around me, their attention and curiosity will override whatever they’re doing and ultimately they too will want to see what everybody is so excited about.

It was a lesson I first learnt when I performed for Jay-Z. It was 2006 at the Light Bar in London’s Covent Garden. He was throwing a party for the release of his album,
Kingdom Come
. It was your typical West End scene – so dimly lit you could barely see the end of your nose, with over-priced cocktails and a long, winding queue outside waiting to get in. That night, the Light Bar was the place to be. ‘Hi guys, come on in,’ said the hostess, welcoming me and Dan, despite our caps and trainers. My face was fast becoming a familiar sight at bars around the West End. I was far from famous, but I was starting to get a certain amount of recognition. I didn’t have to work as hard to blag my way in anymore; they knew I’d do some magic and help everyone have a good time.

a lot of people have said that I have some sort of magnetism

Around midnight, the moment everyone had been waiting for finally arrived: Jay-Z made his entrance. Everyone rushed towards him, pushing against the black rope of the VIP area. Wearing dark shades, designer clothes and jewellery, his fame, confidence and talent lit up the room.

We didn’t have a camera with us, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to create any content. But as an admirer and long-term fan of Jay-Z, I simply wanted to perform for him. I was genuinely interested to find out what he thought of my magic.

Dan and I were probably the only two people in the room who didn’t go over and crowd around him. I stood to the side and started messing with my cards. Gradually, people stopped staring at the world-famous rapper and drifted back to their seats. Jay-Z had said a few polite ‘hellos’ and before long the whole club was jumping. People were up for a party.

I started doing my special card shuffle, nothing too crazy, but enough to gather a circle of people around me. ‘Hey bro, do that one where you put the coin in the bottle?’ said one enthusiastic bystander. I was starting to generate a lot of attention.

After about five minutes, Jay-Z’s best friend, Ty Ty, clocked what was going on. I could feel him watching me for a while before he tapped Jay-Z on the shoulder. The next thing I knew
the entire party had descended on me – Jay-Z and his crew had sauntered over.

I did some card magic on Jay-Z and Ty Ty. ‘This kid is dope,’ they murmured. He might have been a famous rapper but that night Jay-Z was just like anyone else – a curious bystander caught up in the wonder.

I finished with a final big piece of magic – I made his signature magically appear on my business card – and left.
Pow!
That’s the best way, I think – leave them wanting more.

The next night, Dan and I were out again in the West End, and we saw Jay-Z and his crew celebrating his birthday at Movida. ‘Hey, get over here,’ said Jay-Z, beckoning us over to his table that was heaving with both champagne and beautiful women. ‘Show me some more of what you got.’ Well, it would have been rude not to!

A FEW YEARS
later, I met Lewis Hamilton for the first time. He’d just started to win a lot of races, and we’d both been invited to the 2007 MTV EMA Awards in Munich.

It was well after midnight and people were already pretty tipsy from the awards show. A big brand threw an after-party and so we decided to go to this crazy event in some cavernous warehouse in deepest, darkest Munich to see what was going on. There was a lot of alcohol and the loudest music was blasting from the speakers. It was a real celebrity-filled party. Everyone from the Black Eyed Peas to the Foo Fighters and the Pussycat Dolls were there. I was out partying with Lewis Hamilton and Shaggy (a random combination to say the least)!

I don’t remember too much about how the night ended up. I just know it was crazy and that a few days later my friend Lewis was dating a Pussycat Doll. Sounds like a good night to me!

I bumped into Lewis again in Singapore two years later. I was with a friend whose father is a big deal in the oil industry and rather wealthy! Life was good as me and my friend’s mates drove around the city. I was in a Ferrari while my friend was in a Bentley – both of them matte white. I’m bit of a petrol head and the sight of them gave me palpitations! They were so cool.

At one point we pulled up at some traffic lights. I looked to the left and I could see these guys checking out the car from a taxi. My face lit up as I realised who was in the taxi – it was Lewis! Obviously, Formula One was on and he was in town.

He wound the taxi window down. ‘Dynamo! What are you doing here?’ he shouted.

I explained I was filming for Formula One and just as we’d established that we were staying at the same hotel, the lights changed. ‘You want to race back?’ I grinned. To be fair, he wasn’t driving and he was in a taxi, but to me it was a race, which I won nonetheless. It was nuts: Lewis Hamilton, a famous Formula One driver, and I beat him in a race.