Nothing Is Impossible: The Real-Life Adventures of a Street Magician (6 page)

I THINK THAT
part of my success as a magician comes down to a combination of factors that informed my childhood years. I was ill a lot of the time and I lived on a rough estate, so my mum didn’t like me playing outside. I spent a lot of time indoors
cooped up in my bedroom. I had days, weeks, months and, ultimately, years to perfect my magic.

As a kid, I would practice with my cards, with bits of string, or matchboxes, for hours and hours after school. I bought those ‘starter’ magician boxes but would bore of them immediately and instead use the props that they came with to further my own ideas. I was absorbed in the world of magic and what I could do with it.

My room was pretty small. There was a window to the right of the bed that I’d sometimes stare out of absent-mindedly while shuffling cards. I’m a Bradford City fan so I painted my walls in claret and amber in honour of my football team. It was me, on my bed, watching films and working on my magic.

As I got older, my mum let me go out a little more after school, even suggesting I could get a part-time or Saturday job. She didn’t have money to spare, so if I wanted to buy myself clothes or CDs, then I’d have to earn my own way.

I had a couple of different jobs as a teenager. I got myself a paper round and then, when I was fourteen, I got a job in a local video store, which I really loved.

Although it wasn’t that glamorous, the video store inadvertently informed a huge part of my approach to magic. I’d get to see all the new films before anyone else. I’d go home with two or three of the latest releases and watch them until my eyes were too heavy and I’d fall asleep. I’d spend hours absorbed in the world of Superman, Spider-Man and Batman. I became even more obsessed with film than when I was a kid and almost without realising it I built up an encyclopaedic knowledge.

Someone else who worked in a video store is the film director Quentin Tarantino. It’s perhaps no coincidence that we both ended up in the creative industries; although Tarantino’s a filmmaker and I’m a magician, I don’t see what we do as particularly different. We both entertain people in a very visual sense. Film and magic are able to transport people away from life as we know it, to the realms of the impossible.

When I was seventeen I started working at a hardware store as pretty much the dogsbody. When I wasn’t lifting and carrying I’d be sent out back to bag up nails. I’d have to count them one by one and I’d be covered in cuts and dust. It was hard work but the boss was really cool. He even bought me a magic book!

OVER THE YEARS
, I’ve tried to push the envelope with what I do, but there’s nothing purer than having a pack of cards in my hand and just jamming. I can entertain myself for hours. I can create art with cards. I can generate moments of astonishment. All I need is me and a pack of cards, and I’m pretty sure I could walk into any room anywhere in the world and do stuff that no one’s ever seen before. I practise with my cards the whole time. I’ll be watching TV and not realise that I’m doing it. My cards have become an extension of me.

A deck of cards is a pretty magical thing in itself. The more I found out about their history, the more fascinated I was by them. Did you know they were invented in ancient China during the Tang dynasty? They spread throughout Asia in the 1300s and came into Europe, via Egypt, in the fourteenth century. There are four suits in each deck and there are four seasons in the year. If you add up all the pips (that’s the suit symbols) on all the cards, they add up to 364, plus one for the Joker, that comes to 365. There are 365 days in a year. Everything stands for something.

When I was a teenager, I used to go to the MAPA Youth Club in West Bowling. You could play football or learn breakdancing. I was really into my magic and I was beginning to want to take it in my own direction. I would practise breakdancing every week and then I’d do my magic after the classes or during the breaks.

There were three guys who used to teach us breakdancing – Rash, Jimmy and Dennis John, who choreographs a lot of my shows now. Rash and Jimmy were two Asian guys who were amazing body poppers. One day, I had been learning how to do the glide where you move from one foot to the other in a
seamless way. I’d practise it in between some body popping. Messing about, I did the glide and, at the end, combined it with popping. Jimmy said, ‘Oh that’s amazing, you should keep practising that’. It suddenly fell into place and made sense. I could combine elements of dance with shuffling.

It’s like when you’re cooking at home and you accidentally put the wrong ingredient into something, but then it tastes better and you’ve suddenly created this great new chicken sauce. I combined two things that shouldn’t have been together, but they worked – they tasted good!

I soon discovered that body popping could transform my act. Anyone can shuffle cards with a bit of practice, and I quickly learnt how to do it like a professional gambler. I would ‘riffle’ the cards, which is when you split the deck in two and then interweave them as they fall. I could do the cascade where you lay the whole deck out flat in one smooth motion, and I learnt how to work the deck so it would fly through the air from one hand to the other.

When I did those moves at school, the kids were impressed at first, but they soon lost interest. But when I showed them my new ideas, they were in awe all over again. Thanks to breakdancing and body popping, I learnt how to incorporate the moves into my card shuffle, giving me another way to appeal to kids my own age. A few years ago, I taught myself to shuffle in slow motion. Now it’s second nature to me, but it took a lot of attempts to be able to stack them at odd angles or flick a card up on the air and kick it behind me.

Really, I am my own audience so it made sense for me to work alongside the culture that inspired both me and the kids around me. I always wanted to make sure that no matter what people thought of my magic, there should be enough skill displayed
that they have to respect it regardless. Even if they think what I’m doing is a ‘trick’, hopefully they’d still appreciate the dexterity of my hands, the expertise behind it, and my approach.

YOU’VE GOT TO
put your heart and soul into it if you want to succeed at this game; you won’t make money overnight and you have to look at the bigger picture if you’re heading for the top. I’ve achieved a lot so far, but I haven’t touched where I want to go. It’s not easy – you will get knock-backs – but you have to take the criticism. You have to have good people around you. Listen to everyone’s advice and take it in, although you don’t always have to do what they say. But listening and making a considered judgement on what you hear is so important. I don’t take criticism as a personal attack. I know when someone’s intentions are honest and when they’re just being jealous. Even if it’s delivered in a horrible way, I think it’s still important to think through what someone has said rather than dismiss it straight away as someone ‘hating’.

When you’re doing what you do – whatever it is – you’ve got to set high expectations because these days everyone is competing on a world scale. If you want to make it as a singer you’ve got to think that you’re going up against Adele, Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. If sport is your thing, consider the Beckhams, the Bolts and the Messis. I looked to Blaine, Copperfield and Penn and Teller in the hope that one day I might be mentioned in the same breath as them. If you read up on these kinds of people then you will find the beginnings of their stories are somewhat similar to mine. In all those cases, those guys, like me, worked relentlessly on their chosen craft from a really young age. If you’re fortunate to discover that you’re not only good at cooking, piano or table tennis, but you love it, then keep at it and work as hard as you
can. In later years it will pay off, even if it’s not in the way you might have expected. And it’s never too late!

It takes hours and hours of work. I’m talking in the thousands. I was stubborn, I kept on going, and I worked harder at magic than anyone could have done. If you really want to do something, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. So many people told me I couldn’t do it and they were wrong. You have to be stubborn but be smart with it. If you think you can prove others wrong, go for it.

For a long time I felt quite shunned by some circles of magic. At first they thought I was destroying their idea of magic; that it wasn’t supposed to be done on the street by a guy in a hat and a hoodie. I’m more accepted now, as I’m inspiring the younger generation to get into magic, which is good for the whole art form.