Nothing Is Impossible: The Real-Life Adventures of a Street Magician (24 page)

I have learnt a valuable lesson on this journey. Having a successful show with huge viewing figures is one thing. But knowing that what you do brings joy to people is a completely different matter. Now I’ve achieved, finally, what I set out to achieve, it’s about what I can do for other people. I’m in a position now where I can make a difference.

I can’t describe how it feels. We made it happen

CHAPTER 10

SOUNDTRACK OF MY LIFE

I’VE WALKED ON
water, thrown myself down an eighty-foot building, I’ve walked through walls, disappeared into thin air and turned snow into diamonds. Snoop freestyling about me was the coolest moment, while walking across the Thames was a pivotal event and walking down the
Los Angeles Times
building was the scariest. But one of the highlights of my career is the time I used my magic on Tinie Tempah.

It was November 2010 and Tinie was playing in Manchester. Before he did his show, I headed backstage to give him one of my own.

‘Yo! Mr D, what’s going on? You made it down, come in, come in,’ said Tinie, ever the gracious host, welcoming me into his dressing room. ‘This is the best magician in the world,’ Tinie told his boys. He yelled at all his mates to come into the dressing room.

Once they’d all piled in, I made Tinie pull a chain through my neck. ‘Oh my God,’ he laughed, looking a bit disturbed at having to then touch the same chain. Next, I told him I wanted to do something else.

‘I know it sounds silly, but every time I see you, I never get you to sign anything,’ I said. ‘I know you’ve signed thousands of CDs, but I’d like to get mine signed.’

‘Cool,’ he replied. ‘Let’s do it.’ I produced the CD and showed it to him.

‘You’ve signed loads of them so I want mine to be a bit special. I want to see your eyes,’ I said.

On the cover of his album
Disc-Overy
, Tinie is staring into the camera, but his eyes are covered by a pair of dark shades. I held the CD, rubbed the case and took Tinie’s sunglasses clean off.

He actually dived into the wardrobe. ‘That picture doesn’t even exist, Bruv! He took the glasses off of my eyes and moved them onto my forehead!’ he shouted, jumping around in astonishment. I had taken the album cover, and, in front of his face, removed his sunglasses to reveal his eyes and created a one-of-a-kind Tinie Tempah album.

It’s the one moment in my magic career that still stands out as the most memorable. There are a lot of reasons why. His reaction was incredible; it got amazing feedback from viewers and for me it felt like Tinie and I were two people on the top of their game doing something great. I finally had my own TV show; he’d been to number one with ‘Pass Out’ and had won BRIT Awards. He was a huge star.

I had the idea to do the album illusion on the very same day. On the drive up to Manchester, I pulled out his CD, and I was like, ‘
Let me see. Could I do something with his lyrics? Could I do something with his songs?
’

I looked at the album cover and I was like, ‘
He’s always wearing glasses, maybe I should do something with them… Yeah, that could be cool
.’

So I called Dan, and said ‘What do you reckon about this?’ and he replied, ‘I’d have to see it, but it sounds all right.’ Three hours later, we were in Manchester doing it.

I love Manchester – it’s such a vibrant city, and I love the northern humour, I guess because I’m a northerner myself. There’s no messing about with Mancunians – they say what they think. It might rain all the time but the streets are always full of life and energy. The centre was heavily regenerated after the 1996 IRA bomb, so the city feels very modern and buzzing, and it’s full of brilliant little bars and clubs around the old canals.

It’s also one of those places that have a huge musical heritage. There are so many cool groups that come from there – Oasis, Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, The Buzzcocks, The Smiths, Joy Division, New Order… even The Bee Gees and Take That! You have to respect a city that can produce that number of groundbreaking bands. I have a very eclectic taste in music: everything from rap and R&B to indie and pop. In fact, music has landed me in the most random of situations at times.

IN 2006, I
was honoured when Damon Albarn, who had seen me do my magic backstage at a Blur show, asked if I would open for his new band, The Gorillaz, at New York’s Harlem Apollo Theatre.

The band was doing five nights at the Apollo for the
Demon Days
album. They invited all the artists who were on the album to perform, so you had everyone from Shaun Ryder (Happy Monday’s lead singer) and Ike Turner, to Dustin Hoffman doing the intro, to my mates De La Soul on the song, ‘Feel Good Inc.’. Every single collaborator from the album turned up. It was epic.

After one of the performances, I sat outside the back of the Apollo with Shaun and Damon, just chatting about the show, New York, life in general. They were smoking and we were hanging out. It was mad – we had a normal conversation, which you wouldn’t expect to have with those kinds of guys. They’re rock-and-roll stars. At one point, though, things weren’t so normal – Damon pulled a stone from his pocket, drew a circle on my head and kissed me on the head. It was a bit odd, but it’s Damon Albarn, what are you going to do?

I got a totally different view of New York on that trip. As well as doing all the sightseeing that I hadn’t had a chance to do on my previous visit, I also spent time in the historic area of uptown Manhattan. Harlem has produced music greats from Billie Holiday to P. Diddy. Historically, it might have been a violent place, but it is rich in music, dance, art, literature and theatre. Nowadays, it’s quite upmarket; there are organic shops and macrobiotic cafes, and it’s been heavily regenerated. Back when I visited, though, it was still a little bit lively.

Through De La Soul, I had hooked up my friend, Luti, to film a video for De La’s Maseo, who had signed a new artist to his label. We were waiting for him to arrive and we ended up at Rucker Park, which is a famous court where the street basketballers go. It’s the best b-ball you’ll ever see. I think these guys are better than the highly-paid professionals.

When they first saw the cameras they were like, ‘What’s going on here?’ because we had a big crowd and it looked a bit dodgy. But once they saw what we were doing, and that we weren’t filming anything that was going to make them look bad, they loved it. I did a bit of magic for them and they were buzzing.

I remember one of these guys gave me a one-dollar bill and I changed it into a twenty. As soon as I did, he ran straight into a
nearby shop. ‘I spent it before you changed it back,’ he laughed on his return.

About forty minutes later, we were in a completely different part of Harlem. Some random guy comes up to me and he goes, ‘Hey, are you the magic guy?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah…’ So he goes, ‘Change my dollar into a twenty, change it into a twenty!’ The news had spread throughout Harlem. I just laughed, because you could tell he was serious, but it was funny as well. It was just weird to see how fast news had travelled through Harlem like that. I was reminded once more that magic is a powerful thing.

I wasn’t scared to be in Harlem. If I’d been nervous on my first trip to New York, I wasn’t on this occasion. I do find that, for some reason, I’m fine around people who others generally feel uncomfortable with. Maybe because I’m a bit different myself. I can relate to those people. I can appreciate growing up in that situation and not having any opportunities, so I can see why people might go the way that they do.

Obviously, now I have a luxurious lifestyle, but growing up things were very different. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have had everything given to me on a plate.

I went to New York to hang out with Damon Albarn, but I actually had the best time on the streets of Harlem.