Nothing Is Impossible: The Real-Life Adventures of a Street Magician (14 page)

I’d already dabbled with making CD-ROMs, but now I figured if I was to be taken seriously, I needed something slicker that would make people take no. I needed to emulate this mixtape idea and make a DVD to act, essentially, as my business card.

‘You still scribbling that nonsense’, the nurses would chuckle as they came to do their rounds. I’d gone into Bradford Royal Infirmary a quiet, worried and, occasionally grumpy, teenager. But something had changed. I was now driven, determined and full of life. It sounds cheesy but I felt like a new person.

I let everything float around in my mind – the line from
Troy
, the way rappers were creating their own hype, and, of course, magic. It was like the perfect storm. I saw that if I fused all of these ideas, incorporating my love of film and music, and focusing on being a magician that was relevant to today, then I might actually be on to something. Using the cultural references of my generation – everything from the films we watched, the music we listened to, to the clothes we wore – I could be my generation’s first credible magician.

I devised the idea of a ‘Magic Mixtape’; instead of music, it would be a collection of my magic set to the music me and my mates were into. I would need a camera, a laptop and a DVD burner and I’d be good to go. Dynamo’s
Underground Magic
would feature me, performing magic on members of the public and the latest, hottest music artists. Combining magic with music, this would be my way of standing out from
the rest. No one had ever tried to do anything like this before. All I had to do now was persuade someone to show some financial support.

After six months, I was discharged from hospital. I was weak, and still very sick, but I was determined. I returned to my nan’s house and immediately set to work – despite her worrying. ‘Stay in bed, you need your rest,’ she’d fret. But there was no telling me.

I had fire in my belly and no time to waste.

First of all, I approached the guys at MAPA. It was run by a bloke called Emil, who had seen my work and was hugely supportive of my ambition. Emil introduced me to someone called Tony from one of The Prince’s Trust branches in Bradford. ‘What do you want to do with your magic?’ Tony asked me. I replied confidently: ‘I have a business plan. I’ve got it all sorted out.’

In reality, my ‘business plan’ consisted of two scrappy pages of A4 and a few half-baked ideas about persuading people to give me a TV show. ‘OK, go away and have a proper think about this. The Prince’s Trust will need a full, detailed plan. Let’s meet next week,’ Tony suggested. We started having weekly get togethers to try to help me formulate a proper proposal. Eventually he put me in touch with a business mentor on a regular basis.

To get funding, I went into a meeting where I had to both perform and sell a business idea – it was a bit like
Dragon’s Den
crossed with
The X Factor
. I knew my goal was to get enough money to buy the camcorder, laptop, and DVD-burning facilities that I would need to make the first magic mixtape. But first I had to persuade the representatives from The Prince’s Trust, who held the keys to the funding.

I walked into the small meeting room at the Providence Insurances office, who were partners with The Prince’s Trust in
Bradford at that time. It was everything you’d imagine from an insurance office: bright fluorescent lighting, brown carpet and turgid green walls. There were four guys sitting in a row behind a desk. They were smiling and I could see they were willing me to do well, but it was quite an intimidating environment.

There was no time for nerves – this was my chance to get on the first rung of the ladder in my career. I had nothing to lose. I’d just come out of hospital and nearly died. Normally I might have been intimidated by a situation like this, but I had a new-found confidence; I was fired up and determined to blow them away.

I went in and performed for about twelve minutes. I did the Paul and Ben strength piece; I ‘broke’ my finger in front of them and then fixed it again before flipping and shuffling my cards, making them appear here, there and everywhere. When I eventually walked out of the room I left them in a state of shock. Five minutes later, one of the guys came out. ‘We don’t normally do this,’ he said. ‘Ordinarily you get a letter in the post, but we want to tell you that you’ve got the funding.’ I was completely and utterly taken aback. I’d done it. My plan had worked. I’d explained to them how the likes of 50 Cent had started out by making mixtapes and I wanted to do the same thing, but with magic. The guy continued, ‘To be honest, we don’t entirely understand what your business is about, but your talent and passion are obvious. We’re going to support you in any way we can.’

They gave me £2,000. I’d made it happen. I had my own business. I rushed out to buy a laptop and camera and set to work on my DVD mixtape:
Underground Magic
.

IT WAS THANKS
to promoters like Drum Major and Original Heroes that I was able to start meeting a lot of artists, some of whom would later end up on the DVD. Those guys used to promote all the nights in Leeds and Sheffield, and they gave me a lot of bookings for Leeds University.

They also had a lot of connections with the hip-hop world. Through them, I met people like Jazzy Jeff, Ms Dynamite, Sway, Roots Manuva, and so on, when they were up north on college tours. They really helped me in the very early days. Thanks to Ms Dynamite and others, I was able to put together a little scrappy leaflet, featuring quotes and pictures of me with her, Sway and so on. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

Original Heroes ended up doing the Leeds night for the DVD release of Eminem’s film,
8 Mile
. It was an
8 Mile
MC Championship and it featured some of the hottest freestylers from Leeds battling each other to win a place in the London finals. I blagged my way into the VIP area, got out my cards and started doing some magic. This guy walks up to me. ‘So how come you’re performing here?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I was booked by the organiser,’ I replied breezily.

‘That’s funny,’ he laughed, ‘because
I
am the organiser and I don’t remember booking you!’

His name was Dan Albion, but rather than being annoyed with me, he liked the fact I had some balls. I showed him the leaflet I’d put together and he was impressed by that too. Like me, he had had to hustle his way through the industry.

Dan and I stayed in touch and he started to get me a few gigs here and there. Eventually, he told me that he wanted to manage me, but I was a bit reluctant at first. I liked managing myself and I was convinced I needed to be in control of my own
destiny. But then he got me a £13,000 booking, doing a tour for Tizer, which was more money than I had ever earned in one go. Dan also had a background in television production and he had a few ideas about how I could approach the making of
Underground Magic
. I had the magic knowledge, Dan knew how we could produce, promote, distribute and market it. I had a great idea and a vision, Dan had the expertise. He knew how to do what I wanted to achieve. The more I learned about him, the more it made sense.

We’ve worked together ever since. By combining our strengths, we created a killer team. We were like the X-Men!

Shortly after that, I moved down to London and we began shooting
Underground Magic
. We filmed in Walthamstow, popped up to Birmingham and hustled our way backstage at gigs. We understood that we needed a mixture of footage that would feature people in the street, so the ordinary man, woman or kid could connect, as well as popular people already in the limelight to add even more appeal. We knew the power of ‘celebrity’ would help to make my magic credible. Reaction in magic is everything; without the spectator, magic is nothing.

It was thanks to a friend of ours, Kemi, who used to work for Dan, that we were able to meet major musicians like Snoop Dogg. Kemi had worked with one of the UK’s biggest live promoters and she would hook up me and Dan with tickets. After that, it would be up to us to get ourselves backstage and in front of the band.

Once I got myself into the venue, I’d just have to use my skills to blag us backstage. It was hard work persuading people. It was never as straightforward as showing a security guard a card trick and walking through. There were no Jedi mind tricks at work. It was a mixture of northern charm, magic, a certain sense of
fearlessness and the willingness to stand outside in the freezing cold for hours on end, waiting for a friend to send out a friend of a friend with one of their friend’s spare backstage wristbands.

Eventually we got strategic about it. We worked out who the right people were to impress but even then they wouldn’t always go for it. Would we pull this off or would we be kicked out? It was 50/50 at every gig we went to. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

The first time I met Snoop, we managed to get ourselves into one backstage area at Wembley Arena, but then they cleared everyone out for some reason. All of these huge security guys just appeared and started showing everyone the exit. ‘All right everyone, thanks very much, but it’s home time now.’

Dan nudged me and we dropped behind the crowd of people reluctantly leaving and slipped through a side door. It turned out to be the dressing room of support act M.V.P.. I started doing some magic for the band and, as I did, a girl came in.

‘Snoop’s ready to meet you now,’ she said to the band. They turned and started to walk out of the door. Me and Dan caught each other’s eye and, knowing what the other was thinking, we cheekily joined the line and followed the band. Before we knew it we were behind the red rope of Snoop’s exclusive area of the venue. It was like nothing else I’d ever seen – he had actual palm trees in there and it was absolutely filled with smoke. After they’d been introduced, the lead singer of the support band said to Snoop, ‘You have to see what this guy can do’. Snoop looked over at me. ‘Oh yeah, what’s that then?’ he smiled.

I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to hold his attention for, so I did something very simple – I made a coin appear underneath his watch. He smiled, turned to his laptop, picked a beat and began to freestyle a rap about me. Dan got the camera out, smiling the whole time as Snoop rapped about me. It was so surreal.

before we knew it we were behind the red rope of Snoop’s exclusive area

Dan and I were over the moon. We had our first bit of footage and it was so much more than we could have ever hoped for. We must have checked back about eight times to make sure we’d recorded it, totally paranoid that Dan had forgotten to press ‘record’. It was one of the first times I’d been filmed with a celebrity and that footage turned out to be priceless. We used it everywhere from
Underground Magic
to my showreel. It was the catalyst I’d been looking for.