Chabang: Our guest this week is a personal hero and something of a legend in the UK magic scene

Originally leaping onto the magic scene as the Irrepressible "Great Soprendo" on crackerjack (a "foreign" magician with a legendary style & dubious facial hair) by the 90's Geoff had stepped out from the shadows and become something of a house-hold name; making regular appearances on TV shows and hosting the (much missed) "Best of Magic" TV Series with a young Anthea Turner and Italian Quick-Change Maestro Arturo Brachetti. In recent years he has become a regular guest on cult quiz show Countdown helping to puzzle viewers even more with his little miracles.

Despite clocking up probably more TV appearances than any other UK performer Geoff can still be found touring the UK with his one-man show which seems to be in constant demand across the country.

Famous as an all round magician and one of the genuine nice-guys in the magic world it is my pleasure to introduce our special guest......

Geoffrey Durham!

Admin: I'd like to offer Geoffrey Durham a very warm welcome to Magic Bunny. We are indebted to professionals such as Geoffrey, in the input of top-quality feedback in this forum and so I would like to offer thanks in advance for the considerable time and effort that Geoffrey has offered to set aside in providing this service to our site.

Thank you so much Geoffrey for offering your input. I am so looking forward to seeing the questions of our members and your subsequent replies. I am sure that many of our members, as well as myself, will gain so much from your input and hone their own ideas and ethos from this too. Here is a very heartfelt "thank you" for allowing us all to benefit from your knowledge and experience.

Thank you.

Nigel.

Michael Jay: Thank you for taking your valuable time with us over the upcoming week, Mr. Durham. I'm looking forward to this week with you, I hope that you shall find it as stimulating and enjoyable as we do!

Again, thank you.

Mike.

Geoffrey Durham: Well, thank you all for having me. I'll do my best to come up with replies as soon as I can, but there may be days in the coming week when you'll have to wait a bit. Apologies in advance for that, but don't let it stop the questions coming!

Graham: Mr Durham,

Often I find comedy magicians use their humour to hide their lack of true skill, whereas your skill is a wonderful example to us all. Do you deliberately use your comedy to disguise just how good a magician you really are, so that when the effect hits the audience the impact is further amplified?

I fondly remember your performance of "Dean's Box" on "Countdown". The only time Richard couldn't think of a thing to say. You fried 'em. You knew it and we loved it!

kind regards,

Graham Nichols.

Geoffrey Durham: Thank you, Graham.

Thank you particularly for your kind words about Dean's Box, because I thought I'd done a bad job that day, and I've never seen it, so I didn't know it had come off OK!

I'm not sure about the comedy thing. I certainly don't try to hide the skill with the comedy. I'd be very happy if the audience thought I was skilful!

It comes down to expressing my personality really. It doesn't actually matter what tricks you do, so long as the way you do them expresses something about you. I find I express myself best through a lightness of touch, and through not taking the material too seriously. So I guess you could call that comedy.

You know when you see a magic competition, and there's someone up there who can do the moves right, and the trick looks fine, and they're smiling nicely, and there's nothing actually wrong - but it doesn't work?

Well, what's wrong is that they aren't expressing their personality.

Usually, what's actually wrong technically is that the rhythm is wrong. But it's the rhythm that expresses the personality. So when I can't get a trick right (there are about three tricks in my current new one man show that I change every night for just this reason) I alter the rhythm, and as I alter the rhythm, so the effect on the audience changes. And slowly, the trick and my personality start to coincide.

When a trick gets cut from my show, it's almost never for magical reasons. It's always because it won't do anything to express me to people.

So that is where the comedy comes in, I think.

They don't come to see your tricks, they come to see you!

Geoffrey D

Huw Collingbourne: Hello Geoffrey,

Magicians (yourself most notable among them!) don't generally seem to have a problem mixing comedy with magic. But most mentalists take a very serious, straight-faced approach to their performance.

Do you think there is something essentially humourless about mentalism or are mentalists, by nature, just a gloomy bunch of people....? (and if so, what can we do to introduce a bit more fun into the proceedings?)

best wishes
Huw

Geoffrey Durham: Hi Huw

Well, I do some mentalism in my current show, and it's not exactly jam-packed with gags, but I do OK with it. When I opened this new show, though, I had quite a bit more mentalism in than I have now. Maybe that tells us something?

Graham Jolley is a wonderful performer, I think, and he is there to prove that you can express yourself through mind reading and comedy if you tackle it the right way. And that is by letting the comedy bubble up through you, rather than laying it on the top, if you see what I mean.

The difficulty lies in how to express the climax of a mind reading trick other than by being portentous and important. Because those tricks just seem to cry out for us to be heavy and solemn, don't they? But we don't have to give in to it if we don't want to.

In my current show, I conclude my version of the Stanley Jaks Brainwave routine by telling them that I can't look, because I'm so scared I've got it wrong. And I look at the final turnover of the card through my fingers, like a ten-year-old watching Jaws. It works for me, because it de-mystifies the climax, and gets me more applause as a result.

I often follow a mind reading piece with a piece of cod mind reading, like the Bar Code. That works for me, too. It just depends on your personality. It wouldn't work for Derren Brown!

Geoffrey

Michael Jay: I realize that there are different nuances with bad and good for both, but, since you are prolific both on the television and on stage, which would you say is your favourite genre, if you have one, and why?

Mike.

Geoffrey Durham: Hi Michael

It's a difficult one this, but I think it has to be the stage work that I love the best. It was how I started, and I still regard it as my life's work, and I try to keep learning about it all the time. When I appear on TV on the other hand, it's almost invariably the first performance of the trick I've ever done, and chances are it will be the last!

The show I now do most on British TV is an odd, quirky little game show in which I do a two-minute spot half way through. The show has only two camera shots available, and I have to do a trick with no camera rehearsal and no re-takes. I never see it until it is transmitted. I've done 150 of these particular magic spots now, and I love devising and performing them, but I never learn too much about the individual trick by doing it this way. Lots about how to be on TV, but not much about the actual magic.

When I appear on stage, on the other hand, I just never stop learning and seeing how to perfect the moves, and trying it this way, and that way, and re-designing the props, and just generally keeping the show lively and fluid.

They're different jobs, I think. And I do love TV. But it's stage that does it for me every time.

Geoffrey

Graham: Mr Durham,

Magicians are often seeking the "holy grail" of effects that will catapult them onto the front pages of the world's press. It's like schoolboy soccer: kick and run. One performer has great success with a particular genre or effect, and the rest cling round like iron-filings on a magnet. The herd of wannabees chasing Derren Brown's tail right now is a case in point.

Modern over-availability of magical secrets has created the magic consumerist, who flits from effect to effect just because they can. As "necessity is the mother of invention", do you feel that the wealth of information available actually stifles creativity? Being spoon-fed rather than having to feed ourselves?

kind regards,

Graham Nichols.

Geoffrey Durham: Hi Graham

This is a big topic.

I think there are basically two kinds of magician. There are magicians who are in it to entertain audiences, and there are magicians who are in it to entertain themselves. Obviously, it isn't quite as simple as that, and there are a lot of areas of crossover, but I hope you see what I mean.

The obvious conclusion to draw from that would be that the first category are basically professionals, and the second lot are basically hobbyists. Well, actually that hasn't been my experience - there seem to me to be quite a lot of professionals in the second group and vice versa.

If you do it to entertain yourself, it stands to reason that you will become fascinated by methods and secrets. You will want to learn four or five methods for the pass, three double lifts and seventeen ways to do the Diagonal Palm Shift. You will scour the magic magazines to see what's new and buy the latest thing as soon as you can your hands on the cash. You will see someone do a trick on the TV, and have a huge, incandescent passion to know how it's done.

If you are like that, you are keeping the magic dealers solvent, and it's hardly surprising that that you are catered for so well by them. There's money to be made, and I certainly don't blame the dealers for doing what they do. I don't blame the enthusiasts either. That was how I started.

But isn't a good way to handle your magic if you believe as I do that audiences are much more interested in you and your personality than they are in your tricks. If you come to believe that, you realise that you need to entertain them first and yourself second.

But you need to take your tricks very, very seriously indeed.

So that means having a different attitude. My working methods are based on taking a given effect and breaking it down through rehearsal to its basic essentials; researching all the methods that have ever been used to achieve the effect; from these methods, distilling one that I can begin to work and call my own; learning how to talk through the trick to express my personality; and finally (and most important of all), getting the rhythm right.

When I buy a trick from a dealer, I almost always remake it and change the method or the finer points of the working, to make it more my own. In fact I can't think of a dealer trick I've ever owned that I haven't changed!

As Paul Daniels once said: never read the instructions!

So to answer your points directly - yes, I agree with you, but it always been like that, and I bet it never changes! And if you want to be successful as an entertainer you need to find your own voice, and you won't do that by doing it someone else's way.

Geoffrey