This thread is becoming quite amusing. We all think we are right, and everyone else's opinion is wrong.

I remember seeing a TV documentary a few years ago and it detailed the life of people with jobs they hate. One person quit their office job on the Friday, decided to become a children’s magician on the drive home, went to a magicshop on the Saturday, and started doing kids shows on the Monday. Does that sound right to anyone? Now the timeframe isn’t quite the same, but that is what this feels like to me.

After all, magic is an art, and it should get the time and attention it deserves. 3 months is just too short a time from knowing nothing to turning professional.



I think it took him 3 months. Is't the sponge balls is considered a "packet trick" in that setting?

Nick23 wrote:-

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I take your point Nick, but there are always exceptions to the rule! Maybe he'll be one of them. I guess sometimes we have to take a chance in life and that's what he seems to have done. Who's to say it won't work out for him? After all, stranger things can happen...

Nick,

I don't really understand why you are on a high horse about it all? If your concern is that magic is too accessible then just make sure that you have changed your presentations enough to avoid being in the situation where a 15 year old kid with a modem can replicate your effect.

Magic should be about the thinking, and a bad magician can go to the store on Saturday and perform the effect on Monday. However, a good one can adapt the presentation to suit their own style. I have no idea what this guy is doing when he performs, and granted he had some help, but we can't pass judgement on whether he was capable of becoming a professional after 3 months because we don't know.

They guy fooled some 'top names' in the business after 4 weeks. Lord knows what he could do after 3 months with that kind of progression. You are forgetting that he was introduced, and made, to develop the most important aspects of the art.

Learning the technical aspects is easy to do with time. Besides which we do not know what he is performing, he may have 6 effects that he has perfected through practice and that is all he does.

Just to add to this train of thought. In my younger days when I started to learn to dance I managed to go from complete beginner to being a British Champion in 12 months. Some might say that was impossible to do - but it isn't.

This guy already demonstrated a highly analytical mind and approach, something that is very useful in this 'art'.

Nah the horse isn’t high, I’m just so tiny it just looks that way

Im not worried about the accessibility of magic, I wish more people would do it, it would be nice to walk into any bar in the country and be able to join a session of magicians. Of course, we don't want "everyone" doing it or else we would be out of a job

Imagine what it would be like if you couldn’t discuss a hobby like football with your friends. Having a hobby that you love and only being able to talk about it every other Tuesday night at your magic club can be quite frustrating.

Do I detect a touch of envy here...

I enjoyed the program, I thought that he probably was good enough to go professional by the end of it. Well the judges thought so, didn't they. It gave me some presentational points to think of certainly and probably helped me to a certain extent. Although my magic had a logical patter, routine etc I felt it looked to much like a routine and that I wasn't enthusiastic enough. This program taught me the important of enthusiasm and how important it is.
Nick

I think one of the reasons he progressed so well is that he was personally tutored right from the beginning by working magicians, So the techinical aspect was relativly easy to pick up, rather than the trial and error I have when learning from books.

Good luck to him I say

I enjoyed the programme. Good luck to the guy if he's earning a living from magic after only 3 months. But he is only table-hopping. It's not like he's doing a sell-out nationwide tour, or that Channel 4 have given him his own series. (Yet - although given how reality show participants are turned into 'stars' these days, it wouldn't surprise me).

Yeah, we seem to be forgetting that this guy was perdonally tutored for 1 month solid, he ate, slept and breathed magic. It is not like he had to do it all b y himself like most of us did.

The guy's doing regular work, he's entertaining his audience(who are members of the public not magicians.) I don't care how long he's been a magician, he's doing more than a lot of magicians out there. Well done and good luck for the future. It's a tough business.

Couldn't have put it better myself! Instead of criticising the guy, let's welcome him into the world of magic and encourage him in his new career (a career he says he LOVES!)

The programme shows what IS possible IF you are 100% committed and not afraid to risk making yourself look like a fool! Let's learn from the programme, and grow as "people entertainers", not just "magicians"!

Kind regards
Mike

I really enjoyed watching the show, and I thought Daniels was spot on when he summed it up with ‘well, he’s a nice guy, and I like nice guys!’ Kevin has oodles of natural sunny charm and clearly makes the punters smile.

I think we should also remember the show format doesn’t change from week to week. Always 3 mentors, one of which is brought in at the end as an ‘emergency turnaround’. A few days before the judging, the mentors are always expressing their doubts at being able to pull it off. There is always a clothes / hairstyle makeover.

So, let’s look at the personality: a solid, honest guy, hard worker, smart, studious personality with attention to tiny detail (physicist, remember) and desire to win on the day. With a month of daily personal tutoring thrown in for a 7 minute set, what he achieved is obviously possible. I think it is far more likely that Kevin worked his little socks off to learn magic quickly – especially when he realised the impact it could have on his life – and that the real deceptions were achieved in the editing suite to keep to the show’s by now very familiar routine of ‘almost failed but pulled it off in the 11th hour’.

It was enormously pleasing to see the personal transformations that magic has brought to Kevin’s world, and I wish him the very best with his new career.

I thought the show was quite inspiring. Of course magic is different things to different people, for him it's a job, for some its a hobby, and others it's an art.

I admire someone who actually performs more than someone who gets lost in debates and stays in their bedroom forever.

Zenminstress is right - only the producers and participants know exactly how faithfully the end programme matched the "real" journey of Kevin. Of course it was manipulated in the edit to make a good story even better.

But does that matter? Not a bit. We the audience were treated to a funny, moving and exciting programme; Kevin got a new career and a life-changing experience.

It was all done with only the tiniest bit of low-level exposure: you could tell that the producers were very sympathetic to the "exposurephobes" and the fact that it was done with the blessing of the Magic Circle proves it.

Most important, if you ask me, is that it showed to anyone watching that being a magician is far, far more about performing than about technical ability. Magically speaking, his "psychic surgery" trick at the end was pretty elementary, but the audience were in stitches and loved him for making them laugh. He could have done the whole thing without even the elastic pull *and* borrowed the ring, but it didn't really matter.

(I feel a bit sorry for the other pros on the show, though. Imagine being mistaken for a newbie and have your act slagged off on TV!)

Good luck to Kevin, I say!

As a matter of Interest the judges comprised P Daniels and who Else?. Who was the "Agent"

Hi Ian,

One of the other judges was Rosemary English, wife of well know West Country magician Jack Stephens. She runs an agency for entertainers.

Don't remember who the other person was.

Kind regards
Mike

Thanks. Ian

Does anyone have a copy of this, or now a site that has a .torrent up? I would like to see it again.

Wow! 15 years on and I'm just coming across this thread. Feeling a bit nostalgic I guess.
Well, believe it or not, I was the guy in that show.
And I'm still a magician. And I hope I've retained some of the likeability and personality that were pointed out as such strong points all those years ago.
If anyone wants to rewatch drop me a DM.
Best wishes
Kevin McMahon (aka Kevin Quantum)