Graham: Mr Durham,

It takes very little imagination to realise that you spend a lot of time researching effects in order to constantly feed your TV requirements. What is the average time-scale from effect location to finished performance?

kind regards,

Graham Nichols.

Geoffrey Durham: Hi Graham

Well the times vary, of course. But generally speaking I think I do spend longer than some magicians researching and sorting out an effect.

For television, I have a notice board by my desk, and when I have an idea, or I see a prop advertised or (more usually) when I decide to try and put together one of the classics, I write it on a piece of paper and add it to the rest. When the job comes in, I sort through the pieces of paper and decide on a course of action. Countdown is slightly different in that I do six shows in one day, and that means six new tricks, and I need to keep them varied. So I usually have the Countdown tricks planned a fair way ahead of actually being booked for the show.

Given that I know what I'm getting together, I research and try props out, and I often find myself in a permanent state of daydream. I sometimes sleep with the prop by my bed. I always have it on my desk. And slowly ideas start to come. A TV trick is normally about two or three weeks from start to finish.

But the point of TV is that it is completely ephemeral - I do the trick once and I will never do it again. So it doesn't actually make emotional or economic sense to spend months getting the trick right only to put it in the bin. Getting a cabaret or stage trick together is a completely different ball game , because they are my life's work, and those tricks take AGES.

If I am to do a thing every night of my working life, I need it to be right, because I need it to please me in some way. That doesn't apply to a TV trick.

So for the stage tricks, it really can be a huge operation. There are exceptions: my Rubik Cube routine took about two days; my Spirit Paintings was less than a week. But the average is months, sometimes it can be years.

An extreme example was my Himber Ring routine, which I started working on in about 1979. I tried routines based on the work of Billy McComb and Ken de Courcy, and they just weren't for me. It's a trick that needs to have a lot of your own heart and soul in it, and they just weren't there. By about 1982, I was ready to go with another routine I was proud of, but something stopped me. I put it away, and in 1984, I started working on it again.

Well, it was 1990 when that routine finally saw the light of day. The great impetus had been designing my own Himber Ring, and having it made up by a jeweller. I loved that ring! The trick went well, and I did it quite happily for about a year, and then I started to have little niggles about it. There were things I just didn't like. There was a switch that was technically difficult to do, and happened when the props were "hot" - i.e. when the audience was actually staring at them. It began to make me a bit edgy.

It was my friend Roy Johnson who pushed me into making the change. He saw a show I did in about 1998, and said that he got a feeling as I was doing the trick that perhaps I wasn't happy with it. I realised he was right. We started working together on it, I changed the premise of the trick completely, and ended up in 2000 with something I have not seen fit to change at all since. Not one iota.

So that was 21 years!

I put the old Hindu Sands into the show in January of this year. I've done it differently every time, and so far used eight different pots! I recently bought an antique pot which I have a feeling may be the right one, and it is being doctored by my prop maker now... so fingers crossed it's not another 21 years!

Geoffrey

Sean: Hi Geoffrey

I know you do quite a bit of TV. My question is, if you had your own, maybe weekly TV show, and had 30 minutes to do whatever you wanted in whatever format you wanted, what would you do?

Which format would you like your show to take? Would you just show off effects, or would you do more interactive kind of magic which people could sort of work along with? What kind of things would you include?

Thanks

Sean

Geoffrey Durham: Hi Sean

I'd love to answer this more fully than I'm able to. Unfortunately any ideas for new shows that I post here might not turn out to be my ideas for long!

I've made pilots for TV shows on numerous occasions, and often been close to hosting my own show. It probably sounds dumb but I am actually fairly pleased that it has been that way - my work tends to be shown off best on shows in which people aren't necessarily expecting a magician.

Having said that, I can say that TV is crying out for shows in which hosts and stars behave generously towards up-and-coming talent, and in which the top of the bill shares the honours with a team of clever people.

And television needs a magic show (compare with early David Blaine, but not his style) in which the spectator and his/her response to the trick is properly exploited and featured. I really am sick of magicians looking winningly at the camera ("Now aren't I clever?") while the poor benighted spectator is left standing there like a lemon.

So I think I would like more reality in magic shows (as opposed to pseudo-reality), more generosity in the stars, and, in answer to your question, swifter and more interactive magic items.

Geoffrey

John Mcdonald: Mr. Durham,

Will you be attending, performing, lecturing at any future conventions?

Geoffrey Durham: Hi John

No conventions coming up that I know of, though I am in discussion with a couple of organising committees.

Watch this space!

Geoffrey

John Mcdonald: Would love to see you at a convention. I have really enjoyed reading all your replies this week.

Geoffrey Durham: Thank you, John. If I do one in the near future, do say hello.

Geoffrey

Chabang: You have briefly touched on your future plans in answer to other topics - so my question is rather obvious....

What have you got planned for the future; is there a master plan you're working to, perhaps a burning ambition to drop magic and become a TV chef

Geoffrey Durham: Hi Tom

No plans to be a TV chef! No concrete plans of any kind, in fact.

As I think I've said elsewhere, I'm not an ambitious person. I'm at present going flat out to get the theatre bookings for next year, and then I plan to take 2005 off doing other things. I hope to do some travelling. I've been working very hard lately.

I'm also intending to sell a lot of magical stuff during the next 18 months. I have a lot of books (many I have are duplicates of each other) and a great number of tricks, and I intending making some space by letting some of them go.

I'm always talking to TV companies about ideas for the future, and there are a few of those chats happening at the moment. There's a possibility of a game show, which I'd love to host if it came up.

But my main task is being a decent father to my kids, and I'm taking them off to the sun in as couple of weeks, and I can't wait!

Geoffrey

Unklepaul: Hello Geoffrey,

I wonder if you could advise on how one can obtain performance videos of classic acts by magicians such as yourself, Paul Daniels, Dai Vernon, Ali Bongo etc?
I am currently performing a children’s act, and it is my hope to be able to expand my current repertoire and introduce classic magic such as the zombie, linking rings, multiplying bottles etc...the sort of magic that I grew up on, but is sadly lacking in today’s magic scene.

I can obtain the tricks, and there are books available, but it’s by watching other performers doing their acts that I feel I would be able to see the potential of such material and develop myself.

There are countless instructional dads/videos (though few if any cover traditional stage magic), but I’m after classic performances for pleasure and inspiration.
Have you any ideas?

Thank you for taking time to read this, I hope you may be able to advise.

All the very best

unklepaul

Geoffrey Durham: Hi Unklepaul

Yes, you're right. The dealers do less and less to serve the stage magician, and it can be quite alarming to discover just what isn't available any more.

When I was advising the Tommy Cooper play in the West End of London, I was astonished to discover that it was completely impossible to duplicate the set of Multiplying Bottles that Tommy Cooper used. Unbelievable.

As for DVD and video, you might do well to study the video/DVD catalogue currently put by Stevens Magic Emporium. They are currently selling a lot of fascinating archive material from magicians now long dead. (I'm actually thinking myself of buying a DVD of theirs, which features my beloved Roy Benson!) So you may well discover what you need with them.

Books are really the answer, though. It's all there - the methods and routines of people who really knew what they were talking about. And there's so much more available in books than was ever recorded by anybody, let alone Stevens! And by reading it in a book, you are perhaps more likely to put your own stamp on it, and perhaps less likely to copy something accidentally.

Good luck with your search, though. It's wonderful to hear that somebody is interested in performing the classics. After all, they didn't become the classics for no reason...

Geoffrey

Unklepaul: Many thanks for that Geoffrey,
I shall have a look at Stevens Magic Emporium it sounds just the lead I need.
Thank you for taking the time to reply, it is greatly appreciated.
all the very best

UnklePaul

nippy99: If anyone is looking for the link it is at....

http://stevensmagic.com/