Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Magic With Barrington Powell | The Christian Reeve Podcast #255

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Magic With Barrington Powell | The Christian Reeve Podcast #255 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to another episode of the Christian Reeve Podcast.
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  How about that? OK, I've had my fun.
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  But seriously, if you want to support the show, it really,
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  really helps us out. So thank you so much and thanks
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  again for listening. Hello, and welcome to another
• 0:53
  episode of the Christian Reeve Podcast.
• 0:54
  Today's guest. He's a magician.
• 0:58
  But not just any magician. He is Barrington Powell.
• 1:00
  Welcome to the show, Barrington. How you doing?
• 1:02
  I'm doing really well, Christian, how are you?
• 1:05
  I'm all right. I'm hanging in there.
• 1:09
  Magic. Magic is magic.
• 1:11
  That's right. Well, this is, this is.
• 1:13
  So this is fun. I wanted to start with this, so
• 1:16
  I'll explain to the audience first how I know Barrington.
• 1:19
  So we're actually working on a short film together right now.
• 1:23
  It's called The Vanishing Cabinet.
• 1:24
  It's coming out sometime this year and Barrington is working
• 1:28
  essentially as a consultant to the film to give us a better
• 1:31
  idea of I guess, how to kind of portray magic in in the right
• 1:38
  way in terms of what we're trying to achieve with the film.
• 1:41
  But then also how to do things properly.
• 1:44
  And and just kind of to answer any questions and fill in the
• 1:48
  gaps. I suppose is is a good way to
• 1:49
  put it and we were lucky enough to get a full magic show first
• 1:55
  time meeting Barrington, which was incredible.
• 1:57
  I was not expecting that. I honestly thought it would be
• 1:59
  like a sort of a 10 minute thing and then we go to do something
• 2:02
  else. But you did gave us a full magic
• 2:04
  show and I was like awesome coming the last time I saw like
• 2:07
  a magic show. So it was really cool.
• 2:09
  But there was something that, I don't know if you remember this,
• 2:13
  but you asked everyone in the audience what is magic to you,
• 2:15
  and you asked everyone to write it down.
• 2:18
  And I think we just, we ran out of time.
• 2:19
  We didn't get back to that. But I actually wrote my
• 2:21
  response, and I'm going to ask you that question.
• 2:24
  The second my response was enchantment and recapturing the
• 2:29
  wonder of childhood, a moment where time stands still and
• 2:33
  fills you with pure joy. Barrington, what is magic to
• 2:36
  you? Well, it is exactly that.
• 2:40
  It's it's very, it's very special because you touched on
• 2:46
  something. It's that childhood moment of of
• 2:51
  thinking what is special and right and that Santa Claus
• 2:58
  feeling where we as adults sometimes forget that and it's
• 3:02
  quite unusual and it's quite strange.
• 3:05
  Now you said the word enchantment.
• 3:08
  We've not, we didn't rehearse anything, did we?
• 3:11
  And you didn't tell me that on the night because now I know
• 3:15
  this is is is all sound, but hopefully you can describe this.
• 3:20
  But I had an envelope and it's in a glass and it's been sealed
• 3:26
  and it's been sealed for a very long time.
• 3:30
  And I don't know whether you can see this because obviously you
• 3:33
  can't. You're listening to this.
• 3:34
  But there is actually an envelope that is sealed on all
• 3:38
  sides. And I I'm going to open this up
• 3:42
  now because I was thinking sometimes the play we're
• 3:47
  discussing without giving anything away is like about
• 3:49
  fishing is about memory. But I wrote something in this
• 3:53
  envelope because I knew you were going to say and there is just
• 3:57
  one little card in there I didn't want to to cheat.
• 4:00
  I'm going to pull it out of of the envelope.
• 4:03
  There's just one thing so that it's in shot at all the time.
• 4:06
  You'll be listening to this. But in the word, there's one
• 4:10
  word I wrote and I don't know if you can see that there's a
• 4:13
  little fish, but it says enchantment on it.
• 4:18
  It says enchantment. So I don't know.
• 4:23
  But that's. I think.
• 4:25
  I think I've just fried his brain, Christie.
• 4:28
  I'm I'm kind of, I'm kind of scared.
• 4:31
  How do you feel? Very.
• 4:33
  Afraid that was in view all the time.
• 4:35
  So even though I know you're listening to this, hopefully
• 4:41
  that's just kind of ride your brain.
• 4:44
  Oh my God. Well, I'll say to all the
• 4:46
  listeners of the podcast, make sure you go check out the video
• 4:48
  version of the podcast on on YouTube to to see that, yeah,
• 4:52
  that was not planned. I'm genuinely kind of amazed
• 4:56
  right now how? I'll just hold that up to the
• 5:00
  screen, that is. That definitely, says
• 5:02
  Enchantment. There's a little.
• 5:03
  Yeah, there's like fish and everything.
• 5:05
  Little fish and a little enchantment.
• 5:08
  How? How You never you were never
• 5:10
  there anywhere near my well, I like I wrote this down on on my
• 5:14
  pad, my writing pad that I use for like notes and and you were
• 5:18
  never near there. What?
• 5:21
  Yes, fantastic. OK.
• 5:24
  Wow. So magic for me it's that little
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  special bridge. I mean the tricks are are
• 5:30
  nothing but it's that guide to to basically connect with
• 5:36
  somebody and it's and you said it is it is about that childhood
• 5:41
  kind of expression that we as adults sometimes forget.
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  And so I kind of think real magic is is well this is where
• 5:49
  the magic happens. It's kind of not necessarily an
• 5:52
  effect or a trick but that little moment you had, which
• 5:55
  was, and I saw it in your face, your eyes just literally popped
• 5:58
  up and you couldn't believe it. It was like Santa Claus is real
• 6:00
  again. And that is the key to magic.
• 6:04
  To real magic, I feel. And yes.
• 6:08
  One of the things you spoke about and to give go everyone a
• 6:12
  a kind of understanding of this is when Barrington was doing his
• 6:16
  show, it was also kind of a a motivational speech as well.
• 6:19
  And I presume that you do this everywhere when you do your
• 6:22
  public speaking. OK.
• 6:23
  So, yeah, So you go around, you do public speeches and you
• 6:26
  obviously demonstrate your magic, but you kind of
• 6:28
  illustrate that there are different audiences for for
• 6:33
  magic. And you spoke about, you know,
• 6:35
  children and and like corporate events and and so on and so
• 6:38
  forth. And I guess one thing I wanted
• 6:41
  to ask is how do you kind of gauge particular audiences?
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  Because yeah, you might have like a set show, say, for like
• 6:49
  different corporate events and stuff like that or different
• 6:53
  audiences in general. But like, how do you, how do you
• 6:56
  gauge, like how the reactions are going to go or let's say
• 6:59
  they're not eliciting the reaction that you kind of
• 7:02
  expected, Like how do you adapt yourself kind of thing?
• 7:07
  Well, I think that's the beauty of magic and the art form.
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  I don't think in any other art form there is so much
• 7:14
  flexibility. So for instance, well, if you're
• 7:20
  a classical musician, you can have a go for the piano.
• 7:24
  Also, I'm probably saying there is, you know, you specialize in
• 7:28
  a certain field, but with magic you can either go black dye
• 7:32
  corporate, you can be producing doves.
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  There was a great magician called Channing Pollock back in
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  the 40s and 60s all the way up and he was brilliant and that
• 7:44
  was replicated with somebody on Britain's Got Talent.
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  Everything comes full circle. Or you've got your big
• 7:49
  illusionist like David Copperfield and Seyfried and
• 7:53
  Roy. So then you have your kind of
• 7:57
  what what I would say TV mainstream, which was
• 7:59
  interesting because the first TV magician in the UK was David
• 8:02
  Nixon. Before that, that that TV genre
• 8:06
  was completely a new landscape. So it was a kind of vaudevillian
• 8:12
  crossover between the likes of Benny Hale type of thing, who
• 8:15
  was the first time we had to do TV on a weekly basis.
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  And anybody who knows who does TV, it eats up quite a lot of
• 8:22
  your material. And so then you have somebody
• 8:24
  like Daniels who comes on. And again, the connection
• 8:27
  between Nixon and Daniels was a gentleman called Ali Bongo and
• 8:31
  he was basically Nixon's right hand man.
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  And then when sadly, Nixon passed away, the mantle was kind
• 8:38
  of taken over and ended up with Daniels.
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  But before that, in America, you have the greats of magic.
• 8:46
  There are Keller, which was who used to do the stages.
• 8:51
  So we're talking in the 1800s you had the first ever showman,
• 8:57
  which was Harry Houdini. So Houdini was the first ever
• 9:00
  superstar ever, you know, created.
• 9:03
  Rarely you have your types of your to, to, to call them, to
• 9:07
  call the, the media profile, if you name anybody.
• 9:12
  Now the person that still comes to mind is Harry Houdini, those
• 9:16
  photographs you see of him. So I think proper showmanship,
• 9:20
  magic has always been there throughout the ages.
• 9:24
  So yes, but there's different branches.
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  You might say Harry Houdini wasn't a magician, he started
• 9:29
  off as a magician. He's an escapologist rarely,
• 9:32
  which again is a different subsection of magic.
• 9:35
  So you could completely go down that route.
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  You could completely be having what is termed box jumpers,
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  which is illusions, where you've got people jumping out of boxes
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  with, you know, tigers and leopards.
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  Or you could have close up Magic or you could have the the dove
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  act. As I said, I mentioned Channing
• 9:55
  Pollock, there's. So I think in Magic you can
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  shape your own identity. Everybody kind of it's fits to
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  what you want to become. I'm lucky.
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  I kind of dip into quite a lot of genres.
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  So I do illusions, I do the stage stuff and I do quite a lot
• 10:15
  of corporate work as well. So yeah.
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  It's interesting as well because with the presentation and and
• 10:22
  everything, the way you speak about magic and stuff, you can
• 10:25
  tell that you're a student of the craft.
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  It's not just that kind of a a thing that you do on the
• 10:29
  weekends or something you do for fun.
• 10:31
  Like this is your career. This is you, man.
• 10:33
  This is part of you. And you know, it's like that big
• 10:36
  book that you have. So, OK, I should explain.
• 10:39
  Barrington bought this huge book.
• 10:42
  It's like one of the biggest books I've ever seen in my life.
• 10:44
  Like something that you would see in like, I don't know, Grand
• 10:47
  Alexandria Library or something so massive.
• 10:50
  But it was a book that essentially details the history
• 10:54
  of magic dating back to like, the, yeah, 1800s or maybe even
• 10:57
  earlier than that, actually. Yeah, definitely earlier than
• 10:59
  that. Because you.
• 11:01
  The posters I I think we're sorry to jump in, but it's it's
• 11:04
  actually there's a whole different branch.
• 11:06
  It's produced by a guy called Mike Cavney who's an American
• 11:09
  guy and he specializes in the history of magic and honestly,
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  the beautiful posters. Back in the day you would have
• 11:17
  people like Chungling SU. As I said, I've mentioned Keller
• 11:21
  who gave over his mantle to a gentleman called Thurston and
• 11:25
  Thurston. These are the Great American
• 11:27
  magicians of the time when America was was just a fledgling
• 11:32
  state and so starting to become bigger and find its own
• 11:34
  identity. And the the the cornerstone of
• 11:38
  magic, which still carries on today in Las Vegas, is the
• 11:41
  magician. One thing I was really
• 11:45
  interested about asking you about comes down to the
• 11:49
  Magicians code. So for those who don't know, and
• 11:55
  again, I'm just going based on what I know so you can clear up
• 11:57
  any ignorance I have here. Magicians code is essentially
• 12:00
  like all magicians kind of universally agree to keep the
• 12:05
  magic of magic secret. It's a bit similar to in
• 12:09
  professional wrestling when they would do keeping kayfabe, you
• 12:13
  know, keeping it alive, or, you know, keeping Santa alive for
• 12:16
  the kids. But the difference, obviously
• 12:18
  with The Magician's Code, is that you know you're trying to
• 12:21
  make a living out of this. If you reveal the secrets of the
• 12:25
  tricks, then people find out about it.
• 12:27
  And especially in this day and age, people find out about it.
• 12:30
  And now the magic of that trick is now lost.
• 12:33
  Right. Well, you've just said something
• 12:35
  interesting there, which is is really, you know, astounding.
• 12:39
  There's a brilliant mentalist and a philosopher who sadly
• 12:42
  passed away recently called Max Maven, and he mentions that he
• 12:45
  was a big wrestling fan. And you've just mentioned K Feb
• 12:49
  K Feb, so I don't pronounce that wrong.
• 12:53
  I'll add to that as well. An important link between Magic
• 12:57
  and and professional wrestling is that they obviously originate
• 13:00
  from the the carnival. So it's it's all, it's all
• 13:04
  linked. It's all part of the same thing
• 13:07
  in so much as. But where it differs is
• 13:10
  obviously magic is more about captivating audiences as well
• 13:13
  and like luring them in in that sense.
• 13:15
  Whereas wrestling was always more about it was about the
• 13:18
  spectacle and the showmanship as well.
• 13:19
  But it was also about kind of, well, be honest, in the same way
• 13:26
  that you would have marks in the in the carnival, you know, you
• 13:31
  would have games set in a certain way where, you know, the
• 13:36
  house always wins, so to speak. Not to say that you're kind of
• 13:39
  like trying to screw over your audience or whatever, but like.
• 13:42
  It's a carny it's the it's. The carnival mentality, Yeah,
• 13:45
  you know, I'm going to the. Fact that you've said that.
• 13:47
  The fact that you said I know now you know a little bit more
• 13:50
  about that history because if you're not a wrestler if nobody
• 13:54
  would know that terminology. It's not for and we call it the
• 13:57
  lay public. The lay public is is people.
• 13:59
  The audience members don't know about terminology.
• 14:02
  Now that I know you know that terminology, I can go, oh, well,
• 14:05
  there's somebody who's a little bit more clued up and you know,
• 14:09
  suddenly you go, it's interesting.
• 14:12
  So without it being like some some strange dodgy Masonic kind
• 14:17
  of practice, which it isn't, although some people kind of
• 14:22
  think it may because he sees magic and you see like Dark Arts
• 14:26
  and Harry Potter and some of the posters like as I said, those
• 14:30
  wonderful beautiful posters, they used to have little red
• 14:33
  aims and little Red Devils on shoulders and you know,
• 14:36
  conversations. But that in itself was
• 14:38
  interesting because the magician back to Houdini at the time that
• 14:43
  was going on there was quite a lot of unscrupulous characters
• 14:50
  who was making money by by pretending to be spiritualists.
• 14:56
  So the magician used to and and Houdini himself was one who
• 15:01
  would be very anti people getting conned so he would go in
• 15:06
  and he would explain. So part of a theatre show would
• 15:09
  be the spirit cabinet or you know a a render show.
• 15:14
  This is how a magician can create the stuff that you are
• 15:17
  seeing in the real world in the 1800s and and beyond, where
• 15:24
  obviously people want to contact their loved ones because there
• 15:27
  have been two world wars and you know, people used to prey on
• 15:31
  that. So the magician was actually an
• 15:34
  interesting antidote to that. And also what is I find really
• 15:39
  fascinate fascinating is, is, is now we have a lot of luckily
• 15:46
  it's become more open. So one of my friends, Romani
• 15:49
  Diva of magic, she was Las Vegas Magician of the Year.
• 15:52
  But the truth of the matter was that most female magicians were
• 15:58
  kind of under the radar and they were medium.
• 16:01
  So you had Eva Faye, who was the Uri gallery of our day and you
• 16:08
  know what I mean? So I went to a talk once and
• 16:10
  they were saying, you know, oh, you know, women have kind of not
• 16:14
  been able to be part of magic and it has been a gentlemen's
• 16:17
  group. But actually they were some of
• 16:19
  the most powerful people in the profession because they
• 16:25
  pretended to be the real thing. So you have like the Fox
• 16:28
  sisters, which were 18481846. They were the first people who
• 16:35
  created the spiritualist movement and they found out they
• 16:38
  were fraudulent. So in other words, they were
• 16:41
  magicians, you know, so and and hoodwinked quite a lot of
• 16:46
  people. So when they say they've never
• 16:47
  been females in magic, there has.
• 16:50
  They've been the real ones, you know, So they've been the ones
• 16:53
  actually, you know, doing tricks and and getting paid for it in
• 16:59
  unscrupulous ways. I'm I'm an honest magician.
• 17:03
  Just bringing it back to The Magician's Code.
• 17:05
  The reason I brought that up is that there's a lot of people
• 17:09
  unfortunately now and especially with the advent and the
• 17:12
  Internet, who are kind of revealing tricks how you do
• 17:14
  tricks. Like I literally saw one the
• 17:16
  other day. There was a guy on TikTok or
• 17:17
  YouTube and he was basically just going video by video.
• 17:21
  So he's in front like just going like, oh, this is how you do it.
• 17:25
  And I don't know. For me it just irritates me
• 17:30
  because, I mean, I'll say this about magic.
• 17:34
  For me it's like 80, twenty 80% of it I know is tricks and as
• 17:37
  you said is a combination of the tricks and the showmanship.
• 17:41
  You know, like when you were doing your ACT, so much of it
• 17:43
  was your character and the way you move your body and the way
• 17:47
  you use your energy in the room and everything and and also your
• 17:50
  other things like the lighting in the room and and the
• 17:53
  conversation. It's it's all the combination of
• 17:55
  these factors together, right. But then 20% of it is also stuff
• 18:00
  that you just is impossible to explain, like you having that
• 18:03
  word on that piece of paper. That's impossible.
• 18:06
  And that's. Yeah.
• 18:08
  But my point with all of this is that why would you want to ruin
• 18:12
  that? I, I don't AI don't understand
• 18:14
  that. And B as a practising magician,
• 18:18
  you know you do this for a career, you go around the world
• 18:20
  doing this. That must be frustrating for
• 18:23
  yourself and forever practitioners in in the industry
• 18:26
  to have these people that are just, you know, just ruining it
• 18:29
  for everyone. Yeah, absolutely It.
• 18:32
  Well, it is. And I I think it's Oscar Wilde
• 18:36
  who who did the quote that, you know as long as they're talking
• 18:39
  about you, you know, so like like with magic, when it's.
• 18:43
  It's an interesting thing that you said because when I first
• 18:46
  started out Daniels was sadly there was 2.
• 18:52
  Daniels is brilliant and it's absolutely amazing.
• 18:55
  But he'd gone to the bit where although he'd overstayed his
• 18:58
  welcome but that magic had got a perception that it was becoming
• 19:01
  cheesy or it was becoming a kind of second rate art form just
• 19:06
  because they've been on so long. Which was sad.
• 19:08
  What made it really cool again. What made magic brilliant was
• 19:13
  Harry Potter, believe it or not. Suddenly you had people going,
• 19:18
  oh, this is cool, it's urban, it's you had the likes of David
• 19:21
  Blaine come on over here. We had a gentleman called Paul
• 19:24
  Zenon. And so suddenly the zeitgeist
• 19:28
  changed and suddenly to be a magician was cool.
• 19:31
  Whereas beforehand it was starting to look a bit hackneyed
• 19:37
  and it was the silver thingy and the bling and like everything
• 19:40
  else, it changes. And as I said, if you actually
• 19:43
  see Daniels, he's absolutely brilliant.
• 19:45
  He's amazing. He could wipe the floor with
• 19:47
  anybody. I think a lot of that though is
• 19:51
  imbued in in the British culture as well, is it not?
• 19:54
  I mean not when I see common, sorry magic in the UK.
• 19:59
  It reminds me a lot of of theatre, of pantomime, of
• 20:04
  everything. And I wouldn't necessarily say
• 20:06
  that that's cheesy. It's it's just a very British
• 20:09
  thing. It's, it's imbued.
• 20:10
  And now it's it's part of of that, you know, I understand
• 20:13
  there's different types of magic and even in the UK there's
• 20:15
  different ways of presenting yourself.
• 20:17
  But I think I don't know when. When people say things like
• 20:19
  that, I think it's very unfair because at the time that they
• 20:22
  were saying that in the 90s and 2000s, I remember this is a lot
• 20:26
  of TV shows, especially in the States, where A they were
• 20:31
  revealing tricks, which sucks in an that was a mass.
• 20:34
  Magician, yeah. Yeah, it sucks.
• 20:37
  And then also as you mentioned, like the presentation was
• 20:41
  different. So it was a lot more serious, a
• 20:44
  lot more intense. It played on sort of the
• 20:48
  counterculture of the time. So it was, it's all fit, but the
• 20:52
  identity was different, like you say it was.
• 20:54
  There was no more about the lavish kind of costumes anymore.
• 20:57
  Now it's a masked guy showing you what's what or or or it's
• 21:03
  back to escapology. It's it's back to the kind of
• 21:06
  the stuff that, OK, well, yeah, we're not going to do the little
• 21:09
  tricks anymore. We're going to do the the big
• 21:11
  stuff, the wow factor stuff. And it's like, well, it all
• 21:13
  comes from the same thing, You know what I mean?
• 21:15
  Like you can, you can mock this, this earlier forms of of art,
• 21:19
  but at the end of the day, it's all about the showmanship.
• 21:22
  If you just did the trick without any of the performance
• 21:25
  element, then it's not really going to be that interesting.
• 21:29
  And that's what that's what Daniel was brilliant.
• 21:30
  He was a showman. He was absolutely incredible.
• 21:33
  And but then you also had who is absolutely brilliant, fantastic
• 21:36
  and and not the floor with everybody was David Copperfield.
• 21:40
  He went wow and he was incredible.
• 21:42
  And then people's perceptions change and it happens even with
• 21:46
  like greats like Laurel and Hardy when they reach the kind
• 21:50
  of peak. And it's sad because if you go
• 21:51
  like, my goodness, if Chaplin was alive today or if you just
• 21:55
  to see that one last movie and something that I I showed you,
• 21:59
  which is quite slow and is, is but a beautiful movie still to
• 22:02
  watch, was Jack Tati's last script he wrote or one of the
• 22:07
  last scripts he wrote. And it was never turned into a
• 22:09
  film called The Illusionist. And the people who some
• 22:13
  animators from France actually took the script and made it.
• 22:17
  And it's, it's a stunning movie but can be quite slow.
• 22:22
  So. So yeah, magic goes through
• 22:24
  different styles and it's like saying 80s where you look back
• 22:28
  and you go, oh, everybody's wearing perms.
• 22:30
  That's a little bit. And then the next generation
• 22:33
  comes along and they want to shape it, which is great and
• 22:36
  fantastic because then they have their own identity And there's a
• 22:39
  book called The Shock of the New, which everybody always goes
• 22:43
  to. And the Shock of the new says
• 22:45
  your generation has a different voice.
• 22:47
  So sadly the the previous generation kind of doesn't fit
• 22:53
  the new stereotype and it's a bit like I think it was Neil
• 22:58
  Sedaka said as soon as The Beatles came on stage, his
• 23:01
  career was as good as over. It's changed.
• 23:05
  There's been a a complete zeitgeist.
• 23:08
  There's been a paradigm shift. And so that's what I'm saying.
• 23:12
  And yet, if you look at Daniel's, yeah, absolutely wipes
• 23:15
  the floor with anybody today, you know.
• 23:17
  And there was another fantastic magician who's still alive but
• 23:21
  sadly has got a mask called Wayne Dobson, who was
• 23:25
  sensational if you get to see some of Wayne Dobson's clips and
• 23:29
  stuff. But again, some of the material
• 23:31
  now might not fit this particular generation because
• 23:35
  some of it may be a little bit sexist or a little bit slightly
• 23:41
  slightly blue or off colour. And an interesting fact is even
• 23:45
  the guys who did Little Britain, which is within our generation,
• 23:48
  said well we can no longer do the man dressed as a woman, you
• 23:53
  know what I mean? Because of of how how our
• 23:56
  identity as a country has changed.
• 23:58
  And in some ways that's a good thing, you know, But it's it's
• 24:03
  interesting to acknowledge that and go we're always changing.
• 24:07
  And it's not that Daniels was bad or he was fantastic.
• 24:10
  If you if you see some clips of Daniels holding an audience, Oh
• 24:14
  my goodness, it's fantastic. It's the confidence factor,
• 24:18
  isn't it? Like, I mean, obviously if
• 24:19
  you've been doing it that long, you would be confident.
• 24:22
  And you know he was very he curated an act that was very
• 24:27
  strict even though like it came across quite.
• 24:29
  You know, it's particularly later on in his career.
• 24:32
  Like I don't know or that comedic maybe, maybe would be
• 24:37
  that word. It was just, it was you could
• 24:40
  tell they practiced that act. Well, he'd done all the working
• 24:43
  clubs, he'd done all those nightclubs.
• 24:45
  So he got, he got his merits and Nixon before him, who was
• 24:49
  absolutely beautiful, a gentleman, a kind of your
• 24:53
  grandfather figure. He was the first person who
• 24:55
  introduced basil brush into the country, which was amazing.
• 24:58
  He was the first presenter with Basil brush.
• 25:01
  That's stunning. And and I was having a meal with
• 25:04
  somebody. I was at friend's wedding and I
• 25:07
  was sat next to Anita Harris, who is a star of that time.
• 25:10
  And she was Nixon's assistant for his first couple of series.
• 25:14
  And I hadn't realized and I was like, oh, so many questions I
• 25:17
  wanted to ask. And it's like, wow.
• 25:20
  So yeah, it's it's fantastic. I mean, magic is an absolutely
• 25:25
  amazing art form. In fact, whilst I'm here, I
• 25:28
  should do another trick for you. You'll have to wicked wicked.
• 25:31
  You'll have to listen to this people at home and see, but
• 25:35
  everything that I say is genuine and Christian will confirm this
• 25:40
  and I want to paint a picture for you.
• 25:43
  So even though there is magic on radio, there used to be a Chapel
• 25:47
  who used to do ventriloquism on radio and he used to do
• 25:50
  education and art shape. So this will work because I've
• 25:54
  I've got a slip of paper and I'm going to put it in the glass
• 25:58
  now. So there's a slip of paper and
• 26:00
  I've now placed in a glass. Piece of paper in this glass.
• 26:04
  It's like a sort of a whiskey glass style.
• 26:06
  And it's, yeah, purple folded piece of paper.
• 26:09
  And I want to make sure like I did with the envelope, because
• 26:12
  the envelope was in view at all times, I'm going to make sure
• 26:15
  that this is in view at all times.
• 26:17
  So I will turn this up and I'll just see is that's out of view.
• 26:22
  So let's make sure I put it somewhere so that you can see
• 26:27
  I've got to hear a globe of the world because I do.
• 26:30
  I genuinely go all around the world.
• 26:32
  I'm not just making this up. And I was in London actually the
• 26:35
  other day as Phileas Fogg, so hosting a big awards event.
• 26:39
  So I'll put that. I'll put I've now precariously
• 26:42
  put a glass with a purple slip of paper on top of the globe, so
• 26:49
  I'll make sure that that's in shot at all times.
• 26:52
  And now a little history lesson. So for those people who are
• 26:57
  listening to this and can't actually see the visuals, I will
• 27:01
  explain that you might have watched Ghostbusters, and if
• 27:04
  you've watched Ghostbusters, you will see at the opening shot on
• 27:09
  one of the opening scenes Bill Murray unscrupulously trying to
• 27:15
  date a lady. And he's got, he's got some of
• 27:18
  these cards and these are genuine, genuine symbols used in
• 27:23
  Stanford University in America, because they were really afraid
• 27:29
  that some of this stuff was real.
• 27:31
  And they actually did experiments to see if people
• 27:37
  could actually read minds. You can look into this, Google
• 27:41
  it on YouTube or Wikipedia wherever you want to go, have a
• 27:44
  look. And there's there's simple
• 27:46
  geometric shapes. So.
• 27:47
  So you've got a, you've got a plus sign, you've got a star,
• 27:52
  you've got a circle 3 WAVY lines and a square geometrical shapes.
• 27:59
  Now at home, I want you all to think.
• 28:01
  Now I'm going to click my fingers.
• 28:03
  Think of one of those shapes. So I'll repeat.
• 28:06
  We've got a plus sign. We've got a star sign.
• 28:10
  We've got a circle, 3 WAVY lines and a square.
• 28:15
  Now here's the thing. Unfortunately, you're listening
• 28:18
  to this. So to be your eyes and ears,
• 28:22
  Christian is going to be you for a moment.
• 28:25
  So, Christian, we're going to get rid of the cards one at a
• 28:29
  time. No fancy word play, no KFAB.
• 28:33
  Here we go. What I'm going to do is I'm
• 28:35
  going to ask you, we're going to remove one and get rid of it.
• 28:39
  If I was doing this in a theatre show, I would then ask that
• 28:42
  person to choose somebody else, because the odds are just one in
• 28:45
  five at the minute. But when you start choosing
• 28:47
  different people, they might make a different decision.
• 28:50
  So the odds become, well, more extreme.
• 28:55
  So you're going to play, well, five random people.
• 28:59
  But we're going to get, we're going to eliminate these cards
• 29:01
  that one at a time. So it's up to you which one do
• 29:06
  you want to get rid of? Do you want to get rid of the
• 29:08
  circle, the square, the free WAVY lines, the star, or the
• 29:12
  plus sign? Which one would you like to get
• 29:13
  rid of first? Before I get rid of the card at
• 29:17
  the beginning of this, you said think of the particular shape
• 29:22
  that well. Keep hold of that one in your
• 29:23
  head. OK, so don't remove.
• 29:25
  Want to get rid of? If you don't want to get rid of
• 29:27
  that one, keep it in your head. OK, cool.
• 29:29
  It will bluff me and choose a different.
• 29:31
  No, I I will make sure not to remove that one.
• 29:34
  Obviously I won't tell you which one it is.
• 29:36
  So my decision now for the the card I remove won't be the one
• 29:40
  I'm thinking of. Cool.
• 29:42
  OK, this is. Good.
• 29:42
  I like the way you think, and I know the way you think already.
• 29:46
  I don't want, I don't want to spoil this for the listeners.
• 29:50
  Go on. The first one I'll remove is the
• 29:52
  circle then. We're removing the circle and
• 29:55
  just to prove there is just a circle, we'll get rid of it.
• 29:59
  Yep. What next do you want to remove?
• 30:04
  The star. We're getting, we're getting rid
• 30:07
  of the star, everybody the star is getting rid of.
• 30:10
  We're down to to three. We've got the three WAVY lines,
• 30:15
  the square and the plus sign. What would you like to get rid
• 30:18
  of now? We'll get rid of the square.
• 30:22
  We're getting rid of the square, so the squares going, I'm going
• 30:24
  to get rid of the square. We're down to two.
• 30:27
  We've got WAVY lines and A+ sign.
• 30:31
  And I'll get rid of the WAVY lines.
• 30:34
  We're getting rid of the WAVY lines in here, and I'm going to
• 30:39
  do this so slowly so it doesn't go out of view.
• 30:44
  I knew before we began that you would.
• 30:48
  Come on. Fine, I just knew it.
• 30:55
  Because I'm, I'm, I'm just that predictable.
• 30:56
  Is that what you're saying? Wow.
• 30:57
  It's. Difficult.
• 31:01
  I did give you the option to change.
• 31:02
  You did. And I thought about that.
• 31:04
  See, this is the interesting thing about that trick I thought
• 31:07
  and as you guys at home would have seen, so make sure you
• 31:10
  watch the video version of this. I purposefully didn't say
• 31:14
  anything but made it clear that I would leave my choice until
• 31:19
  the last minute and but I didn't I still didn't say what my my
• 31:24
  choice was. I just said that I'll keep it in
• 31:26
  mind. And I thought, like maybe I
• 31:29
  should pick the my choice and get him to put it down.
• 31:34
  But then I was thinking the Bay, it will still be same on the
• 31:36
  same on the paper regardless of that, that there's always a
• 31:39
  chance, isn't there? I don't know.
• 31:42
  But yeah, that's that's still amazing to me like how you've
• 31:44
  how you've done that. How have you done that?
• 31:47
  Thank you. Thank you.
• 31:48
  By the way. Just thank you so much for doing
• 31:49
  magic on on the podcast. I did think about asking and
• 31:53
  then I was like, that feels a bit cheeky but but you're a
• 31:57
  magician and you do it and you love this And I it's just
• 32:01
  amazing. Thank you so much.
• 32:03
  Oh, my absolute pleasure. And as I said, it's it's
• 32:06
  intriguing and lovely. I I kind of think, you know, the
• 32:10
  project that you're working on at the moment, you can't give
• 32:12
  too much away. But it's it's it's it's a really
• 32:15
  special project. I read the script and my old
• 32:20
  lecturer contacted me and said will you help out?
• 32:23
  And it was Lloyd Peters who's been in quite a lot of stuff and
• 32:27
  has had some rave reviews. He's just come back from near
• 32:31
  New York playing a character called Morris to five star
• 32:34
  reviews, which is absolutely glowing.
• 32:37
  So yeah, that's salt. Salford holds a special place,
• 32:41
  Salford University to me. So it's nice meeting you all
• 32:44
  again. Back at Media City, back at my
• 32:46
  old stomping ground, although I was, I I was before the new
• 32:50
  build was even built. I was in the the old building in
• 32:54
  Frederick Rd., the Adelphi House, with quite a lot of cool
• 32:57
  people. What?
• 32:58
  What? What did you study at at
• 33:00
  Salford? I studied.
• 33:03
  It was it was funny. I studied the media performance.
• 33:07
  I've got a distinction in contemporary dance, which I'm
• 33:11
  quite proud of. I always mention it whenever I
• 33:14
  do. I go early, I've got a
• 33:14
  distinction in contemporary dance.
• 33:16
  But it was it, as I said, I think in in the talk I gave it
• 33:19
  was because I needed at the time somewhere to live and so that
• 33:23
  became a a a place We were very, very lucky and that you know I
• 33:29
  I'd lived off about 10 lbs a week.
• 33:31
  So I know what object poverty is like.
• 33:33
  So I I was able to go to uni to actually have a bed and a roof
• 33:40
  over my head and so that was that was quite inspiring because
• 33:45
  of of my friends who kind of got me there and and it was just
• 33:50
  really lovely. It was a teacher called Roland
• 33:53
  Metcalf who is just was amazing and and it was that I met Lloyd
• 33:58
  as well who was one of my lecturers and that yeah, some
• 34:03
  incredible characters. One thing I'm really intrigued
• 34:08
  by, and obviously you covered this a little bit in in your
• 34:11
  speech, but I wanted to kind of maybe have you talk about it
• 34:15
  here. How exactly did you get into
• 34:18
  Magic? Because I feel like a lot of the
• 34:21
  time with people and creative endeavours, which I I would sort
• 34:25
  of put that under this banner because I can sort of relate to
• 34:28
  a degree. So with me, I do acting and and
• 34:31
  voice acting and music and all these different things.
• 34:34
  And I can tell you acting came later in life, but music, I was
• 34:39
  playing around with that when I was, I was very young.
• 34:41
  I remember trading my my a bike for my first guitar because I
• 34:45
  couldn't afford to buy one I. Wasn't that so much better?
• 34:50
  Because you passionately, obviously had something that,
• 34:54
  you know, it suddenly became a vocation.
• 34:56
  You gave up your bicycle for a guitar and that that you you
• 35:01
  asked me what magic is. Well, that's the magic because
• 35:04
  it suddenly is is no longer it's it.
• 35:08
  It's attached to emotion. There's emotion there and
• 35:11
  there's that kind of extra, you know, I'm willing to give up
• 35:14
  something amazing to pursue my vocation, my dream.
• 35:19
  And I think as we get older, many people lose that ability.
• 35:25
  As you said, that enchantment, that kind of childhood wonder.
• 35:29
  I think that's what magic does. But, you know, you actually
• 35:32
  saying, no, I'm actually going to commit to this.
• 35:34
  I'm going to get a guitar that's amazing.
• 35:36
  That's powerful stuff. That's real magic there.
• 35:40
  Beautiful. Well, oh, at what point did you
• 35:45
  kind of know you're going to become a magician?
• 35:49
  Because I imagine that's quite an an interesting point to get
• 35:51
  to where you're like, I'm going to be a magician.
• 35:55
  Like it's not, you know, I mean it's not like, oh, I'm going to
• 35:57
  go study business and and become a marketing exec.
• 36:01
  It's not quite the same thing. It's it's like this.
• 36:03
  Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I mean, maybe there are
• 36:05
  people that, you know, they know from day one I'm going to be a
• 36:09
  magician. But I think a lot of people
• 36:11
  would probably try a lot of different things and then find
• 36:14
  this thing and it like, you know, like how I got into
• 36:17
  acting. Like I didn't, I didn't choose
• 36:19
  acting. It was something that I kind of
• 36:21
  came across and it was quite similar to music in terms of
• 36:25
  like performance, but it was still very different.
• 36:29
  And I'm still learning four or five years later like and I'm
• 36:32
  big picked a few years ago that I was like, OK, this is what I
• 36:36
  need to be pursuing. So I was just kind of wondering
• 36:38
  like, how did you come to that kind of decision?
• 36:41
  Like, OK, I'm going to commit and pursue magic.
• 36:44
  Well, I I think I touched about on the story, but it was
• 36:47
  interesting. I was, I was working at an
• 36:51
  event, literally. When was it?
• 36:55
  I was Monday. I was in London hosting a big
• 36:58
  Hilton award dinner and on Friday, no Saturday I tell a lie
• 37:03
  I was in Doncaster and no not Doncaster.
• 37:07
  So sorry. I was in Sheffield and it was
• 37:10
  for a corporate event and it was an 80s corporate event like a
• 37:14
  themed talking about 80s. It was so it was only on lights
• 37:18
  and it was incredible. And I was stood at the back of
• 37:23
  the room and a lady came up to me and she had a hat cocked to
• 37:29
  one side like a gangster. But she was obviously being one
• 37:33
  of the madness kind of 80s kind of drafts.
• 37:37
  And I'd met her about three years.
• 37:40
  She worked for a company and so this was that kind of Christmas
• 37:45
  party or whatever. And the reason why I tell you
• 37:49
  this is she was a gifted musician and you know, I I say
• 37:55
  there's a couple of curses that you have been a creative and and
• 38:00
  as as you're rightfully said, magic falls in in that category.
• 38:04
  The curse for me is I, I, I see the potential in other people,
• 38:09
  but they sometimes don't see the potential in themselves.
• 38:14
  And whether that's my me being a motivational speaker or whether
• 38:17
  it's because of something that I do or say.
• 38:20
  But she came up to me and she said, I need to say something to
• 38:23
  you. I need to say something to you.
• 38:25
  I was intrigued. And she said something you said
• 38:28
  last time, you know, changed my life.
• 38:33
  And I was like, wow, that's really, really powerful.
• 38:36
  And that's that's amazing. And it doesn't matter what I
• 38:39
  said. And this again, I always go
• 38:41
  back. This is not about me.
• 38:42
  This is, this is about the moment.
• 38:45
  And it's more about the the fact that she said thank you.
• 38:49
  And so we go back to what you asked me.
• 38:51
  How did I become a magician? Well, the first thing that I can
• 38:56
  remember doing, I mean I had without getting too emotional
• 39:01
  because you can get to two down a rabbit hole where I'm saying
• 39:05
  that's a child you don't know any different.
• 39:07
  But it was safe to say that I had a really bad childhood and
• 39:12
  it was me and my sister. So every time the first thing I
• 39:17
  saw was my father beating up my mother, which is really horrible
• 39:21
  on this on on some steps and trying to make my sister laugh.
• 39:27
  And so I poured cold tea over my head to try and make my sister
• 39:32
  giggle. And I think there was the seed
• 39:36
  to kind of create happiness in other people, take a bad
• 39:40
  situation and change it. And so every, you know, every
• 39:47
  other time it was my mother used to go upstairs trying to commit
• 39:52
  suicide and for an 8 year old kid you don't know any
• 39:56
  different, that's horrible. And my sister who was always in
• 40:01
  and out of hospital, she was the most amazing, strongest person
• 40:06
  ever. She was the mother to my mother
• 40:12
  who was just never there. I had a string of lovers and at
• 40:16
  one stage I got threatened by one of them and it was time for
• 40:19
  me to go. It had already happened to my
• 40:22
  sister and so my sister was made homeless, Five years older, but
• 40:26
  always in and out of hospital. I I also experienced that and
• 40:33
  when I was about to leave, luckily I got taken in by a
• 40:40
  theatre studies teachers. I was about 1617 at the time, so
• 40:43
  I was at Saint John Rigby. There was an amazing teacher and
• 40:47
  his wife called Chris Norris and Chris, Chris took me in.
• 40:51
  He saw something in us before I could get my final grant.
• 40:56
  The university, sadly, don't matter what your political views
• 41:01
  are, is when people get to power.
• 41:02
  I don't know what happens, but you know, I can remember whether
• 41:06
  it be Conservative or Labour. I don't have any, any, any truck
• 41:10
  with anybody, but I just remember Tony Blair going.
• 41:13
  Education, education, education. And then he privatised,
• 41:16
  privatised, privatised it. And it was horrendous.
• 41:20
  And I was lucky that I just got a grant because I wouldn't have
• 41:23
  had a room. I wouldn't, you know, life would
• 41:25
  have been very different. We talked about changing
• 41:28
  patterns within the sand. You know, that that would have
• 41:32
  been one of those where, you know, a paradigm shift that I
• 41:35
  don't know if my life would have changed because of what was
• 41:40
  happening. But anyway, I I I luckily went
• 41:44
  there and so I had a room to stay.
• 41:47
  But before that, before I got to university and I met some
• 41:50
  wonderful people and I started to go to Salford.
• 41:52
  I was in sixth form college and I always wanted to be there was
• 41:56
  a naivety and when I was going through this transition of being
• 41:59
  like kind of forced out of my home, there was again, it's your
• 42:03
  teachers that seem to inspire you as an English teacher.
• 42:06
  And it was my French teacher. I was never ever never any good
• 42:10
  off French. But she saw in me something and
• 42:13
  she went, there's a there's a, there's a there's a place you
• 42:21
  should go. It's a drama school.
• 42:22
  It's in Southport. It's an acting class.
• 42:24
  You need to go there. And so I used to go off and I
• 42:27
  used to just study acting. And if at the end of this, if I
• 42:29
  get side fact, I'll show you the first ever trick that this
• 42:32
  magician showed me. And I went there and I saw a
• 42:35
  magician who's who's still with us.
• 42:38
  He's he's very good. He runs something called Magic
• 42:40
  Carpet Theatre Company. John Marshall and I I saw him do
• 42:45
  this trick and it it just blew me away.
• 42:48
  I was like, that's that's incredible, that's that's
• 42:50
  amazing. And I'd always been fascinated
• 42:53
  by magic. I think I was still doing magic
• 42:57
  at that time. So.
• 43:00
  But when I saw John do, I thought, wow.
• 43:02
  And with that naivety of youth, I either wanted to be a
• 43:06
  detective or this. I was a late lady.
• 43:10
  I was either a detective or a magician.
• 43:14
  They were, they were my 2:00. I've got a friend who is a
• 43:16
  detective, and I'm so glad I took becoming a magician.
• 43:19
  But I always wanted to be a magician.
• 43:20
  And I think it probably was that innocence.
• 43:22
  I don't think I've ever grown up.
• 43:25
  And an uncle had given us an old magic book by a mind reader
• 43:28
  called Dunninger. And Dunninger predates Darren
• 43:32
  Brown. He predates everyone.
• 43:33
  It was like, good evening. You know you're thinking of the
• 43:36
  road. You're thinking of the word
• 43:38
  Cynthia and everyone going, oh, yes, Mr. Dunninger.
• 43:41
  Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. That's amazing.
• 43:43
  But he wrote a magic book. And it.
• 43:46
  And he never tested any of this stuff out and it was like with
• 43:49
  chemicals like potassium cyanide and stuff.
• 43:53
  And he just put this in this book because he was more of a
• 43:56
  mentalist. And me as this like kind of
• 43:58
  naive, kind of 15 year old, got this whole tomb you I showed you
• 44:02
  that other book. But it was like one of those
• 44:04
  books. It was like, you know Donna just
• 44:06
  book of magic tricks and realizing because somebody had
• 44:10
  left it in a in in a garage or stuff and they just passed down
• 44:14
  to me because they knew I was interested in magic.
• 44:16
  For me this was like, it's a real magic book.
• 44:19
  It is like not knowing that Dunninger never tested any of
• 44:23
  these chemicals out and he just put it there to make some money.
• 44:27
  That was so because he was more into mentalism.
• 44:29
  And I I never knew what mentalism was at that time.
• 44:32
  Now I do. Obviously.
• 44:34
  There was Al Quran and there was Chan Canasta and there's these
• 44:37
  great. But the predate that was
• 44:39
  Dunninger. Anyway, so.
• 44:41
  So I got this book, so I was interested in some magic and
• 44:43
  then John Marshall showed me this trick and which I'll show
• 44:47
  you hopefully later. It just it's something just
• 44:51
  resonated. I go back to the story of the
• 44:54
  girl next to me, Tommy, and she's there and she's saying,
• 44:57
  you know, and I know she's a brilliant musician and she's not
• 45:00
  fulfilled their dream. And I'm saying, Tommy, you need
• 45:03
  to to be your creative. You've got to feel your passion.
• 45:07
  You know, I had nothing when I started.
• 45:10
  By the time I was 30, I owned my own house outright.
• 45:12
  It was a small house. It was thinking, but it was all
• 45:15
  through magic. It was through nothing.
• 45:17
  And it was this one decision. So you asked me, how did I
• 45:19
  recover magic? So it's linked to this story I'm
• 45:22
  telling. And the story that I'm telling
• 45:24
  now was it could have all changed.
• 45:26
  And I wrote about this because I just seen Tammy on Saturday on a
• 45:31
  little Facebook post. I don't advertise.
• 45:33
  I never advertise. All my work is generated for
• 45:35
  word of mouth, so it's a little private post.
• 45:39
  And I mentioned about, you know, Tammy being brilliant and
• 45:42
  incredible and just fantastic. And that story reminded me
• 45:47
  because I said none of this, please don't ever think this is
• 45:50
  me and massaging my own ego. It's not.
• 45:53
  It's the fact that Tammy had the opportunity to say thank you.
• 45:57
  I don't think I deserve that. I, you know, but it's I get that
• 46:00
  on a regular basis. People send me emails and stuff
• 46:03
  and say something you've said has changed my life and that's
• 46:06
  really that. I mean, that's magic.
• 46:08
  I don't think anybody should have that responsibility or that
• 46:10
  power. I I like Spider Man, you know,
• 46:14
  nobody should have that, that, that power.
• 46:16
  But Tammy said thank you. So I get back to the story.
• 46:20
  I've had those little inputs of magic, magic, magic and this,
• 46:23
  this kind of like wow world. I've poured a cup of cold tea
• 46:27
  over my head when I was very young and innocent to make my
• 46:30
  sister laugh. And I, you know, I acknowledge I
• 46:33
  could turn a bad situation that bearable.
• 46:38
  So I'm there and it's bleak. You know, I'm working in pontons
• 46:44
  now, so I work, I get to work with John Marshall and John
• 46:47
  Marshall says to me, but I only get a chance to work for a week
• 46:51
  because I need somewhere to live.
• 46:53
  And my sister says, why don't you do pontons?
• 46:56
  It's a holiday club. It's that you'll have a roof
• 46:59
  over your head and you'll have a basic wage.
• 47:01
  And it was £80 a week. I mean it was, it was that.
• 47:04
  I mean they literally worked you to the bone.
• 47:09
  I was literally had six days a week.
• 47:11
  I was working till 10:00 and I literally physically dropped
• 47:15
  and. But it boils down to this one
• 47:17
  point which is really important. So if I can, if you're in a dark
• 47:24
  place and you think ah, I don't know what I'm doing with my
• 47:28
  life, well I want to tell you this and I.
• 47:33
  So I had nothing. I was in between go into
• 47:35
  pontoons. I'm not fully yet a magician.
• 47:39
  I'm not, you know, I tell a lie, I'm not a pontoons yet.
• 47:44
  I'm in six, four. They wouldn't have me.
• 47:46
  So I was 1617 at the time, but naive.
• 47:49
  So I'm not a magician at all yet.
• 47:52
  I've been tinkering, I've been doing little bits of things.
• 47:55
  I've done, you know, a little show where I've made £10 or
• 47:57
  whatever. And it was my theatre studies
• 48:00
  teacher and his wife who had taken me in completely, you
• 48:05
  know, everything. My world had collapsed.
• 48:09
  And sorry if I get just a touch emotional.
• 48:14
  Yeah. Scott, it's Sam was if we talk
• 48:18
  about real magic and it's I never had an opportunity to say
• 48:28
  thank you and Tammy did to me and that's amazing.
• 48:34
  Sorry for filling up but an old wooden table and I don't know
• 48:41
  what I want to do with my life. It's like God Bannock, I want to
• 48:44
  be a detective. I want to be a magician.
• 48:47
  But I'm naive you you've got youth on your side and there's
• 48:51
  this kind of fresh thing that you know you don't know but
• 48:54
  everything's going to be OK and kind of.
• 48:57
  Chris took me on, sat down and it's an old at a large wooden
• 49:02
  table and he was, he was a large man beard.
• 49:06
  He was like a Santa Claus. And he said to me, you know,
• 49:11
  what do you want to do with your life?
• 49:15
  And I thought about it and I said I want to be a magician.
• 49:21
  And it was like a coin being flipped in the air.
• 49:25
  My life at that moment could have changed, and it could have
• 49:30
  changed for the worse, or it could have changed for the
• 49:33
  better and it changed for the better because of what Chris
• 49:37
  said. And Chris just looked at me with
• 49:42
  a sparkle in his eye and he said, yes, you can be a
• 49:48
  magician. Do it because somebody has to be
• 49:52
  a magician. And I went, Oh yeah, that's
• 49:56
  great. You know what I mean?
• 49:59
  I thought, whoa, But he could have said, don't be ridiculous,
• 50:04
  Nobody can make money as a magician, you frig wit.
• 50:07
  You know you don't be silly. Don't be.
• 50:10
  What are you talking about, magician?
• 50:13
  There are so many people that will do that to you.
• 50:17
  But instead, Chris just went, Someone's got to be a magician.
• 50:21
  Yes. And so you asked me, how did I
• 50:25
  become a magician? It was in the flipping of that
• 50:28
  imaginary coin going up in the air and Chris, asking me that
• 50:32
  one question tied together with pouring cold tea over my head,
• 50:37
  wanted to make my sister laugh. When my mother went upstairs
• 50:41
  every night and used to say you want to commit suicide.
• 50:45
  It was those combinations. I mean, desperately needed a
• 50:49
  roof over my head. And so then I I then saw John
• 50:53
  Marshall. John said work with us for a
• 50:56
  week and in between that I'd auditioned for pontoons.
• 51:00
  Pontoons did not want to touch me with a barge.
• 51:03
  But I was on the back of the list.
• 51:05
  I was like, well, so I didn't get that, you know what I mean?
• 51:08
  I was like, I needed this room. I worked for the audition
• 51:11
  rubbish as I didn't go well, Shell, I said to my sister and
• 51:16
  and Dan, a strange thing happened.
• 51:18
  I'm working a week with John Marshall so I got a week to work
• 51:21
  with him and and and be trained up really.
• 51:23
  But I got a phone call. Pontons want you.
• 51:26
  They want you to start immediately.
• 51:28
  So I'm saying, oh John, I really wanted to work with you and you
• 51:30
  know learn, learn my craft. But it turns out that a boss.
• 51:35
  Who was that? A manager, Andy Quicken.
• 51:36
  He's happily now married to the lady who who becomes.
• 51:40
  They basically sacked the other children's entertainer.
• 51:43
  Because I think Andy fancied my children.
• 51:47
  Well, my my to become children's auntie at the time.
• 51:50
  So we they needed me, they needed a children's entertainer.
• 51:53
  So I've got this job. This has happened in my career
• 51:56
  all the time. I have never gone for an
• 51:57
  audition apart from the first one.
• 52:00
  I've gone for two and I've never got the job and it was out
• 52:03
  somebody's desperation that I've got the job because they're
• 52:06
  gone. Oh him.
• 52:07
  And when I went there I the fan mail I used to always get and it
• 52:13
  same happened because I worked in Legoland as well.
• 52:16
  And it was wonderful because I was employed by Moven Pick.
• 52:19
  And again, I went for an audition, not because I wanted
• 52:22
  the job, but to help a mate out. And basically they went, oh, we
• 52:25
  don't want him like that, We don't want him.
• 52:28
  And then move. And they said, oh, we've got
• 52:29
  this entertainer move and pick. You have him.
• 52:32
  Suddenly I go there and I transform the place and I'm
• 52:35
  getting all the feedback. I'm getting the glowing reviews
• 52:37
  and I'm getting everybody used to get sackfuls of mail off
• 52:41
  children said. I've got a hamster.
• 52:44
  I've named him Paddington. He's just died.
• 52:47
  I got oh crunk. He used to get cycles and
• 52:51
  letters like that said Uncle Barrington and stuff like this
• 52:54
  which again another curse of being being creative and stuff
• 52:58
  and as I think it's a quote from Nelson Mandela is just shine
• 53:01
  because and again it was sat at the table that Chris said.
• 53:04
  He said don't ever do it for for necessarily the money.
• 53:10
  The money will come that that will come and if people don't
• 53:13
  like you or or you annoy the rest of your your your your
• 53:17
  people around you, just do it for the children, do it for the
• 53:20
  kids. In that environment.
• 53:23
  It was for Pont and service, the children's entertainer.
• 53:25
  So he said, you know just just make those kids happy, go in
• 53:29
  there and that's what you do. And that's that was my my first
• 53:32
  port of call, which was I did that and I used to get sacked
• 53:35
  full of mail and fan mail. And then at the end I used to
• 53:39
  always get the biggest cheer, which I didn't really want.
• 53:41
  But then all the other blue coats would hate you, you know
• 53:43
  what I mean? Because you suddenly got got all
• 53:45
  this crap. But it has been a curse of my
• 53:47
  life. It's a great story.
• 53:49
  I've got to tell you one of a little story.
• 53:50
  Sorry for getting sidetracked, but I was doing a corporate
• 53:54
  again, the same thing happened to me.
• 53:56
  I walk into a room. All the fellow entertainers,
• 53:59
  they go Barrington, how lovely you are.
• 54:01
  How wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
• 54:03
  Supposedly as I closed the door, they went off.
• 54:05
  Bloody hell, it's him. We've got to work either and and
• 54:08
  and so somebody said, well, what?
• 54:10
  Right, I get told this. I'll tell you why I know this.
• 54:13
  They all went, oh, Tim, we've now got to work harder because
• 54:16
  he's he's going to get loads of applause.
• 54:18
  We've now got to up our game. Well, my friend Matt was in the
• 54:22
  room, and Matt heard all this, and he's an agent.
• 54:25
  He wasn't at the time and he wasn't.
• 54:27
  So he's thinking, well, why is he putting the fear of God in
• 54:30
  everybody else? To make them all work harder?
• 54:33
  Why is he? So he's like, if I'm going to
• 54:35
  book somebody, who am I going to book?
• 54:37
  I'm going to book him because he's getting the bigger
• 54:41
  reactions and he's getting the bigger laugh.
• 54:43
  But he's also making all the other people in that room work
• 54:48
  harder and and you know, up their game.
• 54:51
  So that's all but that. I only tell you this because I'm
• 54:56
  saying forget about everybody else, forget about anybody or
• 54:59
  anything, just do it. In that instance when it was
• 55:03
  pontoons, just do it for the kids to make them happy.
• 55:05
  Have a strong desire or belief or when it was the corporate
• 55:07
  setting just do it to make those adults back into children again
• 55:11
  so they feel magic. And that Nelson Mandela quote,
• 55:16
  be the lighthouse, just shine. Don't care what any other people
• 55:20
  will thank or you know will put you down or say anything.
• 55:23
  And that's why I kind of want to say to my friend, tell me when
• 55:26
  she was sat next to me and said not sadly, she was stood next to
• 55:29
  me at the 80s disco just recently.
• 55:31
  You've got a talent. There will be curses that come
• 55:35
  with creativity. One of them is what I've just
• 55:38
  said about, you know, people will get jealous, they'll
• 55:41
  they'll try and put you down wherever you can.
• 55:43
  Don't be party to that, just try and make people happy.
• 55:47
  That's what life is all about. Didn't agree more.
• 55:51
  Thank you so much for sharing, man.
• 55:54
  It's it's interesting that you're on my show right now and
• 55:58
  in this moment in my life, because it's a I think and that
• 56:03
  that was a big reason why I wanted to get you on the show as
• 56:05
  well. Like when I started doing this
• 56:11
  years ago, I didn't really know what it was.
• 56:14
  I knew it was just going to be like a show where I would, I
• 56:18
  would talk about things I always wanted to do podcasts.
• 56:21
  And you know, then I started doing interviews and you know,
• 56:26
  I'd I'd sit down, write questions and I still do.
• 56:28
  But then I realized that people were coming on and they were
• 56:31
  telling their life stories. They were sharing stories,
• 56:34
  sharing lessons and it was motivational to sit and listen
• 56:38
  to it and inspiring. And when I sat and I listened to
• 56:45
  your story told through magic toll for your profession, I was
• 56:48
  like, there's a guy who's living the dream for the right reasons
• 56:53
  and he gets it. And you know it's funny like
• 56:56
  when you when you when you apologize and you say, oh, I'm
• 56:58
  emotional sorry, it gets me. It's like, no, I understand
• 57:00
  completely because that's how I feel when I act.
• 57:05
  Everything just stops and I'm in that moment and and it just
• 57:10
  makes sense. And it's funny because when
• 57:14
  we're younger, we're told, you know, oh, you need to repress
• 57:17
  your emotions, you know, you need to keep it together.
• 57:19
  You need to do that. You know, I always tell people
• 57:21
  like, feel your emotions completely, whether it's
• 57:24
  sadness, joy, anger, feel it, But don't let your emotions
• 57:27
  control you. Let them, use them for creative
• 57:32
  endeavours. Use them.
• 57:34
  You know, like I always just if I felt low, I'd write a song or,
• 57:39
  you know, put it into the performance.
• 57:40
  If I'm getting angry on set, great, let's use it.
• 57:44
  Let's do. You know what I mean?
• 57:45
  Like, let's let's try and make. This into something absolutely.
• 57:50
  And, you know, right now it's it's the trickiest it's been in
• 57:55
  a long time and I don't know if it's going to work out.
• 57:59
  And I'm giving it my all and everything you said is there.
• 58:04
  You know, there are people that doubt.
• 58:06
  There are people that believe, many of whom who are listening
• 58:09
  to the shows. Thank you so much and I
• 58:11
  appreciate each and every one of you.
• 58:14
  But there are grader that don't people decision makers often I
• 58:19
  feel overlooked underestimated you name it.
• 58:23
  And it's it's difficult sometimes to keep believing when
• 58:27
  you know you've got all of that and you know you're wondering
• 58:31
  about if you're going to make it to next month and all these
• 58:33
  different things. And so hearing a story such as
• 58:36
  yourself, such as yours, is inspiring because it pushes one
• 58:41
  to keep going and keep trying in.
• 58:43
  Despite of all of that, despite of all those challenges, all
• 58:46
  those worries, concerns, there's always a reason to keep trying
• 58:50
  and keep going because maybe it might work out.
• 58:55
  Not necessarily. Maybe.
• 58:56
  Well, if you, if you put it there and you carry on,
• 58:59
  eventually it will something will click because you've.
• 59:04
  You've. Stayed with it and you haven't
• 59:06
  given up and there is that passionate belief that it'll
• 59:10
  come. I mean the frustrating thing.
• 59:12
  I think David Jason the other day said that he was up for a
• 59:15
  role in Dad's Army and for some reason he was told he'd got it
• 59:19
  and then it's some trick of fate.
• 59:21
  He didn't have it. And so I think, you know the
• 59:25
  actor's life is is is very precarious, isn't it?
• 59:28
  And that, you know, I trained as an actor as well and I think
• 59:31
  that's why some of my, my performance is good as a
• 59:36
  magician because of that acting background.
• 59:40
  And it's interesting because you know, sometimes you're, I mean I
• 59:47
  pinch myself and I wake up it. This is a vocation, isn't it?
• 59:50
  And and you you suddenly realise that you know sometimes I'm
• 59:54
  being paid to be me, which is great.
• 59:57
  Would you know, I literally turn up and I'm suddenly there and
• 1:00:00
  you go to a place and you know I have been to some of the most
• 1:00:03
  amazing places in the world and through magic and but I've never
• 1:00:08
  forgotten where I've come from or what I've been.
• 1:00:13
  And you know, again, I was doing a Hilton's Award dinner last
• 1:00:19
  last. Monday I was doing that, I was
• 1:00:22
  hosting that and I was sat next to the guy, the big managing
• 1:00:26
  director, and we were just having a normal conversation.
• 1:00:29
  And he came out that he started off as a waiter and somebody
• 1:00:32
  that I knew trained him up. But it's because he was a
• 1:00:35
  waiter. He knew he he done the heart
• 1:00:39
  slog and eventually he got there because he had that
• 1:00:44
  determination, that desire and you know, that little bit of
• 1:00:48
  extra month that made him get to where he was.
• 1:00:54
  I always think about Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, when he talks
• 1:00:57
  about he uses this quote and I know it's been overused, but
• 1:01:00
  like, I think it's quite inspiring, especially inspiring
• 1:01:02
  to be, it's be like be the hardest worker in the room.
• 1:01:05
  You know, going back to what you said before with all those
• 1:01:08
  magicians getting booked and they're like, Oh no, we have to
• 1:01:10
  work harder. It's like always work hard.
• 1:01:13
  You know what I'll be doing today later on?
• 1:01:15
  I'm going to be working at the AO, doing work in the kiosks.
• 1:01:19
  That's what I'll be doing, right?
• 1:01:20
  Do I want to be there? No, but I have to be.
• 1:01:24
  But when I go in there, I'll go in there with the right attitude
• 1:01:27
  and I'll work hard. And because here's the thing,
• 1:01:30
  and I've said this on the show before, I'll say it here again
• 1:01:32
  because it's relevant all the time.
• 1:01:36
  Every moment is an audition. Every moment is an opportunity
• 1:01:39
  to wow people, to create opportunities for yourself.
• 1:01:43
  There might not always be the opportunities you're looking
• 1:01:45
  for, but they can lead to other things.
• 1:01:47
  They can put you in front of the right people.
• 1:01:49
  It's about your attitude and working hard.
• 1:01:52
  Like that's the thing. Hollywood people out there, the
• 1:01:54
  decision makers, You can tell me that I might not be right for
• 1:01:58
  the role. You can tell me that maybe you
• 1:02:00
  don't think I have it, but you can never tell me that I don't
• 1:02:02
  deserve it or I don't work hard enough.
• 1:02:05
  That's amazing. It's determination and desire
• 1:02:07
  and somebody will see that and go, wow, you know, if I, if I
• 1:02:11
  want to be, you know, with who would you rather be with the
• 1:02:15
  problem as well, I sometimes felt with creativity, it's the
• 1:02:18
  intensity of it. You don't get it.
• 1:02:19
  But you've mentioned you've been in that zone when you're on that
• 1:02:23
  stage. Wow.
• 1:02:24
  And it is, you know, it's like it's, it's, it's, I think
• 1:02:28
  artists as you know, you hit another level, you hit something
• 1:02:32
  it it's it, you know, it's a beautiful gift.
• 1:02:36
  It's a rare gift when suddenly clump you there.
• 1:02:39
  And yeah, it puts everything kind of into perspective.
• 1:02:44
  When you're on stage, sometimes you said like being in the zone.
• 1:02:46
  Like, do you ever get moments where I don't want to say, like,
• 1:02:49
  it's autopilot, but it's like you're not even thinking
• 1:02:51
  anymore? It's just so second nature to
• 1:02:54
  you and it's like. And that's the time to kind of
• 1:02:57
  leave, like when I was at Legoland, though in a different
• 1:03:00
  context. You know, when I I felt like I
• 1:03:04
  wasn't to in the room, I I I think cross purposes.
• 1:03:09
  I get. I get what you mean.
• 1:03:10
  You want to be in that way you're in a different zone, but
• 1:03:13
  like when you're there and it just becomes run-of-the-mill.
• 1:03:16
  No, that's not what I really. Sparkle in the eye.
• 1:03:18
  I know exactly what you mean. And I I I I get that.
• 1:03:21
  But it is because something else that you said before, you know,
• 1:03:25
  it's a bit like Ying and Yang. I was trying to explain this to
• 1:03:28
  somebody. The best place to be in Ying and
• 1:03:30
  Yang is actually just on that line where the white meets the
• 1:03:36
  black. So you're right in the centre,
• 1:03:38
  so you've got that balance. So you can go to 1 extreme, but
• 1:03:42
  you can go to the other extreme. But because you're in that
• 1:03:45
  central zone, you know how far you can take either way.
• 1:03:49
  So where where USA. Yes.
• 1:03:50
  You want to be in that level where you're completely immersed
• 1:03:54
  in that moment and wow. But what I what I misinterpreted
• 1:03:59
  from what you said, it's back to a little conversation we had
• 1:04:01
  about chairs and stuff like that.
• 1:04:03
  But what I what what I said is where I thought you'd said I
• 1:04:08
  mean I got it wrong was that bit where you go in and you're doing
• 1:04:12
  the same pattern lines and you're saying the same routines
• 1:04:14
  and you are not in the zone you have to have.
• 1:04:17
  And that's the time for me. I go right.
• 1:04:19
  It's time to maybe, you know, move on or go this that I I need
• 1:04:24
  to have that sparkle in my eye. I need to have that you know
• 1:04:28
  where I'm reaching your zone, which is what you're saying.
• 1:04:30
  I just, yeah, I didn't. I didn't phrase it very well.
• 1:04:32
  That was on me. I meant more and I think you
• 1:04:34
  mentioned it before, like this idea of operating on another
• 1:04:37
  level. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:38
  It's like that tampering moment. You can't explain that.
• 1:04:41
  Yeah, you. Yeah.
• 1:04:43
  So I met, I met a lady the other day again, it's somebody.
• 1:04:46
  And I was just sparking ideas and it was like trying to
• 1:04:50
  explain to this lady that I don't know what you've done to
• 1:04:53
  me. And it wasn't anything like
• 1:04:55
  surreal. But suddenly I had all these
• 1:04:57
  creative ideas coming to me going see what would help with a
• 1:05:00
  quick change costume act. Suddenly I'm like that thinking
• 1:05:04
  I need to do this, this, this, this, this easy comic panel.
• 1:05:07
  You know what I mean? This is, you know, you can help
• 1:05:10
  somebody with their dream. That's it.
• 1:05:11
  But it was like, wow, I've got all these intense ideas just
• 1:05:16
  coming through me like Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing Bing Bing
• 1:05:18
  and so so yeah, suddenly getting on to another zone and another
• 1:05:22
  level. I also call call that one of the
• 1:05:24
  other curses. I've no call the curse of being
• 1:05:27
  a creative where suddenly whoa. Unless unless you're another
• 1:05:31
  creative yourself I don't think I think you'll get this you'll
• 1:05:35
  you you've got you suddenly come bombarded with loads of ideas
• 1:05:39
  and loads of things and and trying to filter through those
• 1:05:43
  can be. I am very lucky where as I said
• 1:05:47
  you know I can't get emotional and stuff but I know that I can
• 1:05:50
  get back to my Ying and Yang and go actually I'm very lucky I
• 1:05:54
  know that there is a time as much as I love magic, I can
• 1:05:58
  magic. I can close the door on it and
• 1:06:01
  go actually, you know, I I go for a walk, I go, you know, I
• 1:06:07
  love waterfalls, I love anything.
• 1:06:08
  I go travelling and I go over here, there's there's a good
• 1:06:12
  time to have a have a break from things as well.
• 1:06:14
  I feel like, you know, I just wish I'd have spoken to Spike.
• 1:06:19
  Milligan had that chance to go Spike because I know what it's
• 1:06:22
  like to have all these creative ideas that go into your head and
• 1:06:25
  before you know you get overwhelmed and it would be very
• 1:06:28
  easy I think if you you weren't able to go actually now I can
• 1:06:33
  get my foot off the accelerator here.
• 1:06:35
  I need to you could easily become a get go into the not not
• 1:06:40
  the manic depressive zone if you're not careful.
• 1:06:43
  I'm lucky that I've kind of tipped there where I thought oh
• 1:06:47
  you know I'm going to burn out here.
• 1:06:49
  I've. I know what that kind of
• 1:06:50
  burnouts like and go it's not worth it you know.
• 1:06:54
  So it's also being aware of that and I think my time working in
• 1:06:59
  the hospital's environment like a patch Adams has totally shown
• 1:07:04
  me that to go. You can help people, but it's
• 1:07:08
  ultimately their decision. It's their path.
• 1:07:10
  It's their story. You can you can just guide you
• 1:07:14
  can route from them from a side and say I've been there, I'm
• 1:07:17
  thinking of you get yeah yeah help as much as you can without
• 1:07:21
  going to caught up in in in it, you know.
• 1:07:26
  No, I I get it, man. I, you know, it's like I always
• 1:07:31
  think about if it's not going to happen for me or if it's not
• 1:07:33
  working out, the next best thing is to push other people and.
• 1:07:37
  They all work out, but you've just got to.
• 1:07:39
  You've got to. I'm not so sure, man, you know.
• 1:07:44
  What I mean don't ever, don't ever, please.
• 1:07:47
  But you can help in some ways, as I did.
• 1:07:50
  So one last little story, like, you know, there was this girl I
• 1:07:54
  ABS well, I I I want to say that this is back in Legoland day.
• 1:08:00
  So I'm in Legoland days and there was this girl that I was
• 1:08:03
  going on a date with and it was very innocent.
• 1:08:08
  It was you know what I mean? I was still know it's a lot to
• 1:08:10
  be a detective and a petitioner. And I was when I was a clown at
• 1:08:13
  the time. And I remember she actually
• 1:08:16
  wanted to meet up for this date and we we met.
• 1:08:21
  We were meant to be meeting at at Slough train station.
• 1:08:23
  I don't have gotten her name. I don't know.
• 1:08:26
  But all I remember was she never turned up and I'm stood next to
• 1:08:30
  this stuffed dog for some reason.
• 1:08:34
  They've got this stuffed dog in a cabinet.
• 1:08:37
  Yeah, it's like a taxidermy dog if it's either in stains or it
• 1:08:41
  was in Slough. Slough I've been there.
• 1:08:44
  Yeah, it should be a blue plaque.
• 1:08:46
  I've been next to that stuffed dog.
• 1:08:49
  So I'm next to this stuffed dog and it was the greatest thing
• 1:08:53
  she could have ever done for me. I don't know why she never
• 1:08:55
  turned off, but it was one of those innocent love romances,
• 1:08:58
  You know what I mean? It wasn't like major pageant or
• 1:09:00
  anything, but I waited for it and I thought, I'm not going to
• 1:09:05
  wait for anybody ever, you know, like, I'll, I'll wait.
• 1:09:09
  But you know what I mean. Three weeks later, I did.
• 1:09:11
  This time it's a friend called. I won't mention her name, but
• 1:09:15
  it's so it's a friend. And I'm in somehow.
• 1:09:17
  I'm in Bristol again back to another story where I'm telling
• 1:09:20
  it's the first time I put on the clown's nose and I'm crossing a
• 1:09:23
  bridge because I met another character when I was in which I
• 1:09:27
  told him the story called Brian Lee and he told me how to make
• 1:09:32
  money. I think I this kind of vague and
• 1:09:36
  character and he gave me a bag of balloons I crossed isn't Bob
• 1:09:42
  Brunel's Bridge and thinking there was a hot air balloon
• 1:09:44
  festival and it was the first time I had my clown's nose and I
• 1:09:48
  had a chimney sweep. I used to be a chimney sweep
• 1:09:50
  clown and I used to. I went across, I was like Dick
• 1:09:52
  Van Dyke but with a Red Nose. I blew up these balloons.
• 1:09:55
  I didn't make that much money, but on the way back this
• 1:09:59
  complete stranger, an older lady you know, just started to tell
• 1:10:03
  me her problems, started to tell me her life story.
• 1:10:06
  And crossing back from that bridge on that evening where I
• 1:10:09
  made about £8040 or whatever, I'm walking past and she was in
• 1:10:15
  a very dark place at the start of that bridge journey.
• 1:10:18
  But by the time we crossed the bridge she was in a different
• 1:10:22
  zone. She was happier and relieved and
• 1:10:25
  just because she was able to tell her story and I thought,
• 1:10:29
  wow, this is amazing. This little Red Nose that I've
• 1:10:32
  got on is a way for people to just open up to a complete
• 1:10:38
  stranger, tell me their problems and then go on and a little bit
• 1:10:41
  better and that was like wow, that was inspirational.
• 1:10:46
  Take that to the girl who never turned off on the under stuffed
• 1:10:49
  dog with the glass eyes going what am I doing here?
• 1:10:52
  I am never going to hang. There's a message to this which
• 1:10:55
  is I'm never going to hang around and then three weeks
• 1:10:57
  later I do with my friends. So right it's just there's just
• 1:11:02
  don't know what she was called. But anyways so and I still love
• 1:11:05
  her so but I this is just a friend.
• 1:11:10
  It's no romantic date, it's just a friend and it's in Bristol and
• 1:11:14
  they said I'll meet you, we'll meet up and we'll meet, meet up.
• 1:11:18
  Which is funny because it was probably Bristol was where
• 1:11:20
  Darren Brown was taken off later on in his career, but that would
• 1:11:24
  have been a few years later. I think I'm sat there and she
• 1:11:29
  never turned up and it was before mobile phones and
• 1:11:32
  everything and I was so worried for my friend.
• 1:11:34
  I stayed there for about 3 hours thinking what if she's had an
• 1:11:37
  accident or there's something ever.
• 1:11:39
  So I contacted her later on and she's just said, oh, I forgot.
• 1:11:43
  And I just went, what, What? You just you don't do that to
• 1:11:48
  her. You just forgot.
• 1:11:49
  And it wasn't like any animosity.
• 1:11:51
  She just, you know, I just forgot.
• 1:11:52
  But I just thought, you know what?
• 1:11:54
  Never. Going.
• 1:11:55
  To give my time up or And it was the greatest lesson.
• 1:11:59
  It was the greatest lesson to the lady whose name I forgot the
• 1:12:01
  other ladies. Funny enough, I re contacted her
• 1:12:04
  a couple of times and I was doing AI was doing an advance in
• 1:12:07
  a show and I got a ticket for her and her fella again.
• 1:12:10
  I'll be there. I'll be there.
• 1:12:11
  I'll be there. Never turned up but but it gave
• 1:12:16
  me a great lesson and the lesson is a bit like you say those
• 1:12:21
  people are waiting for you. You know you're waiting for the
• 1:12:24
  phone call from the decision makers.
• 1:12:28
  Don't wait for the phone call for the decision makers.
• 1:12:30
  Think of that dog in that glass cabinet and me looking at it for
• 1:12:35
  that date going, she's not bloody turned up, you know, I
• 1:12:39
  could have got very sad and I got, you know, but I didn't.
• 1:12:42
  I went, I am never. And there has been so many times
• 1:12:45
  and relationships in my time, like where I've met, where I
• 1:12:48
  think this is the woman, this is, she's going to be the thing,
• 1:12:50
  blah, blah, blah or whatever. Go, you know what?
• 1:12:54
  No, don't wait for anybody. You've got one life because you
• 1:12:59
  put people on pedestals and you go like, wow, put yourself on
• 1:13:03
  the pedestal. Not in an ego way, not in her,
• 1:13:06
  not in her thingy way. But go, you can want to share
• 1:13:10
  your life with somebody or have your desires with somebody else,
• 1:13:13
  and if it'll happen, it'll happen, but don't hang.
• 1:13:17
  Well, I did like the stuffed dog.
• 1:13:18
  I think me and the stuffed dog, he could have built up a really
• 1:13:21
  beautiful relationship. I mean, but I went to that dog
• 1:13:25
  and I looked at all that stuff. Dog that looks slightly, you
• 1:13:28
  know, slightly beleaguered, didn't have.
• 1:13:30
  Socks on as well if I remember correctly.
• 1:13:32
  Or I just that dog was so inspirational.
• 1:13:38
  It went like that. I am never going to hang around
• 1:13:41
  and wait for somebody ever again.
• 1:13:44
  I am going to go and make sure I go to waterfalls.
• 1:13:48
  I go to thinking if people want to come along more than welcome,
• 1:13:52
  but I'm going to have adventures and it's going to be about me,
• 1:13:56
  not anybody else, not in a nasty way or a cruel way.
• 1:13:59
  I wish you know, everybody really good.
• 1:14:01
  If you want to come along for the ride, please do and I'll be
• 1:14:05
  there. But if you don't show up, guess
• 1:14:07
  what? I'm not bothered.
• 1:14:08
  I'm. I'm I'm going to go for me.
• 1:14:11
  So it's something that you said there, which I'd go, well, OK in
• 1:14:16
  an actor's profession, you're waiting for somebody else.
• 1:14:19
  I'm. I am.
• 1:14:21
  You know you're waiting for that director to phone the decision
• 1:14:24
  or tell you that you don't look quite right, or you don't look
• 1:14:27
  the part or. No, no, you're spot on.
• 1:14:30
  You're spot on. And I I will say this like with
• 1:14:33
  me personally, I'm never just sat waiting around.
• 1:14:38
  I say that much. And I I I'm a big believer in
• 1:14:41
  action. I always say this to to my
• 1:14:43
  viewers that, like, you know, you should there should always
• 1:14:46
  be action. You should always be doing
• 1:14:47
  things. You know, I'm not sitting there
• 1:14:49
  waiting for my agent. I'm not sitting there waiting
• 1:14:51
  for the casting directors. Like for me, life goes on.
• 1:14:54
  I keep doing this show. I keep doing the live streams.
• 1:14:57
  I keep throwing myself out there.
• 1:14:59
  It's just disheartening, you know over time with you know
• 1:15:03
  rejections, the radio silence, seeing everyone else be
• 1:15:06
  successful and you not and wondering why and you question
• 1:15:09
  yourself and then that gets into the the the the months go by,
• 1:15:13
  the years go by etcetera and you're still sitting there
• 1:15:17
  wondering if it's ever going to happen.
• 1:15:19
  That's the headspace I'm in right now.
• 1:15:22
  But the crazy side of this, the other side of it, is that I'm
• 1:15:27
  meeting amazing people right now, such as yourself, and it's
• 1:15:32
  inspiring. You know, it certainly pushes me
• 1:15:34
  and it makes me believe. And it's, I'll say that much
• 1:15:38
  this shows about magic and there's nothing more magical or
• 1:15:42
  powerful than the power of of belief.
• 1:15:45
  When you really start to believe and you feel that belief.
• 1:15:50
  And sometimes people will never feel it like for a flitter in
• 1:15:53
  their life, a moment, you know, maybe they're doing a particular
• 1:15:55
  activity or they one day get to do something they love and they
• 1:15:59
  just go, oh wow, that felt amazing.
• 1:16:01
  See, one of the reasons, guys why I'm chasing my dreams above
• 1:16:06
  all else is because I want that feeling all the time.
• 1:16:09
  Because that's the only feeling that makes sense.
• 1:16:11
  Because every other job I ever had, like me working at kiosk, I
• 1:16:16
  can do that. I can do that really well.
• 1:16:18
  But it doesn't feel magical to me.
• 1:16:20
  It doesn't inspire me. It doesn't make me want to jump
• 1:16:22
  out of the bed in the morning go yeah.
• 1:16:24
  But when I'm on set, when I'm doing voice acting, when I'm
• 1:16:27
  doing it interview, that feels amazing every time.
• 1:16:33
  And why wouldn't you chase things that feel amazing?
• 1:16:36
  Absolutely, yeah. I'm I'm worried about your time
• 1:16:43
  because I think I've taken quite a bit of your time.
• 1:16:45
  So I'm going to what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you a
• 1:16:49
  couple of questions that I ask every one of my guests
• 1:16:52
  completely unrelated to today, but I just want to kind of get
• 1:16:54
  your, your thoughts because this has been an amazing show.
• 1:16:59
  What's the biggest mistake that you've made that you learned a
• 1:17:03
  valuable life lesson from? Probably just what I'll tell
• 1:17:07
  you. Like waiting for that.
• 1:17:10
  But that was a great, that was a great all of them.
• 1:17:13
  I mean, there's something that I say is a mistake is only a
• 1:17:18
  mistake if you don't learn from it.
• 1:17:19
  If you learn from it, it's education.
• 1:17:22
  So it's trying to get your head around that.
• 1:17:25
  But yeah, you know we're having conversations about them.
• 1:17:28
  All the stories I've told you of the mistakes, some none of my
• 1:17:31
  choosing, you know, like I didn't choose to have really,
• 1:17:35
  you know, bad parents that wasn't, you know, that was the
• 1:17:38
  funny enough. It's the cards that have been
• 1:17:40
  dealt to you, but it's how you react to that decision.
• 1:17:43
  Is it going to be a negative or like that coin flipping up into
• 1:17:46
  the air? It's somebody giving you that
• 1:17:48
  positive to go, yeah, you can do this, you know?
• 1:17:52
  Just a quick question on that because I I agree with that
• 1:17:55
  Natalie, it is a choice, but how do you come to that choice?
• 1:18:00
  Because I don't know. For me, I always just thought
• 1:18:04
  that it doesn't make any sense to walk around and think, oh,
• 1:18:08
  I'm a victim. Everything sucks.
• 1:18:09
  I've been in that mentality when I was younger, certainly.
• 1:18:13
  But then one day it just didn't make sense anymore and I was
• 1:18:16
  like, why spend all my time being angry and frustrated?
• 1:18:19
  Why not try and do something about?
• 1:18:21
  It well, I think it's it's easy when you're a child because
• 1:18:25
  you've got nothing else to to realise that what you're going
• 1:18:29
  through is actually really bad. You know you've got no so I can
• 1:18:33
  it's that kind of wonderful naivety of kind of you for
• 1:18:36
  childhood that you kind of bumble along.
• 1:18:38
  When you get older, you get a bit more cynical.
• 1:18:40
  And the sad thing is that element of child like wonder
• 1:18:44
  that as we go back to the word enchantment disappears.
• 1:18:49
  And as a magician if I can give you a bit of enchantment or that
• 1:18:52
  magic belief to go, you know what?
• 1:18:55
  Magic is real. It might not be a trick.
• 1:18:58
  It might not be about. It's communication of of, you
• 1:19:00
  know, it's that connecting with another soul and going, yes, you
• 1:19:04
  know, wow, that's that's powerful.
• 1:19:07
  That's amazing. You know, some of the
• 1:19:09
  experiences I've experienced working in the hospital
• 1:19:11
  environment has just moved me completely and and puts
• 1:19:16
  everything into context, you know, So yeah.
• 1:19:21
  What's the best advice you've ever received?
• 1:19:24
  From Chris Norris Sparkle eye Yes yes, you can do it.
• 1:19:31
  What's the biggest life lesson you've learned so far?
• 1:19:34
  Biggest life lesson again. It was a flip at that invisible
• 1:19:37
  coin. You know, descending and going,
• 1:19:40
  you know, with a little bit of mad naivety and that kind of
• 1:19:43
  foolhardy thing. I would say yes.
• 1:19:46
  The quote is that is my favorite quote is the grass is always
• 1:19:51
  greener in somebody else's field, but you've still got to
• 1:19:55
  know it. So, you know, somebody else
• 1:19:58
  might achieve something else or want something else, but you
• 1:20:02
  know that they've probably, you know, you heard that, you heard
• 1:20:07
  the, like the dreadful horror stories of people who have got
• 1:20:11
  it all, like, you know, Owen Wilson or somebody who's got.
• 1:20:14
  You know everything. And then it's contemplating
• 1:20:16
  committing suicide or stuff, you know, back in the day.
• 1:20:18
  I think he's, he's recovered now.
• 1:20:19
  But you go like what? So even if you have all the
• 1:20:22
  fame, all the glory in the world, no matter what you have,
• 1:20:26
  there still comes with it people's insecurities and stuff.
• 1:20:29
  And yeah I mean wow it's yeah so so yeah I would say say probably
• 1:20:39
  probably be lucky for what you've got and gratitude there's
• 1:20:44
  quite a lot to be said about gratitude the small things this
• 1:20:47
  conversation as I said you know we we were doing the thing in in
• 1:20:50
  Salford and I'm I'm there going you know you want to help and
• 1:20:56
  you you want to Lloyds just contacted you and he's your old
• 1:21:00
  lecturer from back in the day and and you're there going, well
• 1:21:03
  I've got this I've got that I don't know if I've got enough
• 1:21:05
  time to do this or that or that. I'm so glad because I've met you
• 1:21:09
  and you know, there's a really passionate script that people
• 1:21:13
  you know have have wrote and it's really good and maybe you
• 1:21:17
  know, some goodwill come from that.
• 1:21:20
  You never know. So and maybe the good that will
• 1:21:23
  come from that will be maybe without you realising it.
• 1:21:26
  You've touched somebody's life by your stories that you've told
• 1:21:30
  all the conversations that you've had with people.
• 1:21:33
  Well, and it might, you know, it might be just one person you've
• 1:21:37
  touched or you've moved. Well, I I know for a fact, as I
• 1:21:41
  said, I don't advertise or I don't do anything.
• 1:21:44
  And it's intriguing to to think this is, this is a good lesson
• 1:21:48
  that I say when I I can write forever, I can just type away or
• 1:21:53
  you know what I mean? They do Facebook both and I've
• 1:21:55
  got a long like just ramble and but I get people.
• 1:21:59
  It's really funny. I get people who never like my
• 1:22:02
  posts or whatever, but they'll know what I've been doing.
• 1:22:06
  They'll go off and it's not about that.
• 1:22:08
  But I get one or two people and all it takes is one person.
• 1:22:12
  It might be Tammy or it might be another person that I said,
• 1:22:15
  he'll just go over to me and said thank you what what you
• 1:22:18
  said made a difference. And I get down a regular
• 1:22:22
  occurrence and it's like, wow, that's that's amazing.
• 1:22:25
  I don't think I deserve it, but it's powerful and it's it's
• 1:22:29
  great. And if I can help somebody.
• 1:22:31
  So you might be helping somebody and you don't even know it.
• 1:22:35
  And you've just got to be true to yourself unto thine own self,
• 1:22:38
  be true. And as day to night must follow,
• 1:22:40
  thou can't be false to any man, which is Shakespeare's Hamlet.
• 1:22:44
  But it was Polonius who then gets stabbed.
• 1:22:46
  So I don't know what that means. But be true to yourself is is
• 1:22:50
  that and don't worry about anybody else.
• 1:22:52
  As I said, I you know, whether your posts get 38 views or likes
• 1:22:58
  or whatever, I've got another. It's interesting.
• 1:23:00
  Again, it's back to one of those conversations where where you
• 1:23:05
  know, you try and help somebody and then you realise that they
• 1:23:10
  when you leave there, they're saying not very happy things
• 1:23:14
  about you or whatever. And you go, it's sad and it
• 1:23:19
  obviously effects you, but it doesn't.
• 1:23:22
  It's not letting that take hold and go.
• 1:23:24
  Well, maybe they they need that. Maybe more than you.
• 1:23:27
  They need that justification or that kind of thingy.
• 1:23:31
  I don't do that. I I do it because I want to tell
• 1:23:33
  my own story. Be in control of your own story.
• 1:23:37
  No matter what happens. You're telling your own story.
• 1:23:41
  And it might be a really hard story.
• 1:23:43
  But like when you bought that bicycle and you decided to give
• 1:23:46
  it away and buy that guitar, that makes that your music 10
• 1:23:51
  times more powerful than anybody else's because you really
• 1:23:55
  passionately believed in it. So passionately believe in your
• 1:23:58
  talents and shine. That's all I can say.
• 1:24:02
  You know, did you want to be that person?
• 1:24:05
  So I think tying this together do you want to be that person?
• 1:24:09
  And please God, I hope you know I'll put that in a message.
• 1:24:13
  I did an open letter on Facebook and she heard I think which I
• 1:24:17
  said you need to get yourself a keyboard.
• 1:24:18
  You need to start playing music. I've seen your YouTube clips.
• 1:24:20
  You're amazing. This this this lady's amazing
• 1:24:24
  and fantastic. She she's and again this is just
• 1:24:29
  a friend. It's no I have no any any other
• 1:24:32
  kind of romantic inclination or anything.
• 1:24:34
  It's just somebody I've seen talent.
• 1:24:37
  And she said thank you and and I've gone.
• 1:24:41
  I really want to be that person like you see and really those
• 1:24:43
  bad kind of movies where they're suddenly playing a concert and
• 1:24:48
  then you're just in the back of the room discreetly and then you
• 1:24:50
  go to the car and you go, ah, don't you know, I've helped.
• 1:24:54
  That's when I deserve the thank you.
• 1:24:56
  That's when I. Because do you want to be the
• 1:24:58
  person who's just not pursuing your dream and just in that kind
• 1:25:03
  of, you know, just existing to be the person who at least tries
• 1:25:11
  to get that dream, go for it and, you know, attempt it.
• 1:25:15
  And maybe one day, Christian, maybe maybe you'll come up to me
• 1:25:18
  and say thank you and I'll be the bastard.
• 1:25:21
  I'll do a triple add on when you're on stage.
• 1:25:23
  And I'm going, yeah, you know what I mean?
• 1:25:25
  That would make my life happy. And then I'll go next door and
• 1:25:29
  see Tommy play our concert and I'll go, yeah, you know, because
• 1:25:33
  it is about following your dreams and it is about, you
• 1:25:36
  know, I'm lucky. But it's not lucky.
• 1:25:39
  It's been hard work and it's been damn hard work.
• 1:25:41
  But again, tying it together, it's that bit with that, that
• 1:25:45
  waiting for that girl in that box and going, I can wait for
• 1:25:48
  the decision makers, I can wait for them.
• 1:25:51
  They're never going to come. You said about what was your
• 1:25:54
  biggest failure. The biggest failure was.
• 1:25:56
  But I started that quote with something that Woody Allen said,
• 1:26:01
  which is 80% of success is turning up.
• 1:26:06
  I'll say that again, 80% of success is turning up.
• 1:26:10
  Other people don't turn up. You asked me about my failures.
• 1:26:13
  I failed that pontins. They didn't want to touch me
• 1:26:16
  with a barge pal. It was because Andy Blassem,
• 1:26:20
  he's now with Lisa, fancied Lisa that they got rid of the
• 1:26:24
  children's and there was a vacancy.
• 1:26:27
  Bottom of the list. Bazza gets the job.
• 1:26:29
  When I'm there, I am just me and I shine.
• 1:26:33
  The decision makers didn't give two hoots at first, but suddenly
• 1:26:38
  this guy's getting loads of fan mail and wow, that's incredible,
• 1:26:42
  you know? Did I fail at Legoland in
• 1:26:47
  pontoons? The entertainment team didn't
• 1:26:49
  want to touch me with a bleed and barge pole.
• 1:26:53
  We've got this guy at the bottom of the list, Move and pick.
• 1:26:56
  Have him Barrington Powell I've got.
• 1:26:58
  I got the phone call I've got with it.
• 1:27:00
  The move and pick. It was the best thing ever.
• 1:27:02
  They didn't, they didn't know how to use an entertainer.
• 1:27:05
  They're a restaurant business. I'm going in, going off.
• 1:27:10
  I'm sat there at the at the table.
• 1:27:12
  Remember before I was on £80 I got up to £200 a week.
• 1:27:16
  I'm sat at this table and we're having an interview and the
• 1:27:19
  woman saying to me you'll be on like 80.
• 1:27:21
  This is back in the day, you'll be on £80 a day And I went, I
• 1:27:26
  like that now this is like 20 years ago.
• 1:27:29
  She thought, I was shocked at the pool she went, we'll make it
• 1:27:32
  90, we'll have a £1010.00 additional retainer for you.
• 1:27:38
  And I was like, no, I used to get ache.
• 1:27:40
  When we got up I kept stump and then like I'm round the around
• 1:27:44
  the table And then Matthew was like she used to walk in like
• 1:27:47
  one of my managers. I'm going to his wedding in
• 1:27:48
  France and in a couple of months time I went in and he was like
• 1:27:54
  bleeding out. You used to come in and it was
• 1:27:56
  like a whirlwind. You used to like throw
• 1:27:57
  everything over the air and we were like, oh, like, Oh my
• 1:27:59
  goodness, we like it was amazing, you know.
• 1:28:03
  And he said, but I I saw how much he went out and I was like,
• 1:28:06
  how much is he get it is he was going, Matthew, I thought
• 1:28:09
  exactly the same. I was like what you pay me for.
• 1:28:13
  And now I realise the power that I had because when the letters
• 1:28:17
  kept on coming, but I never did it for the money.
• 1:28:19
  I did it because of what Chris had said.
• 1:28:22
  I did it for the kids and to make people happy.
• 1:28:24
  That was my motivation. It was never.
• 1:28:26
  I did not have a beam. Remember, I was broke by the
• 1:28:30
  time I finished Legoland. I had enough to own my own
• 1:28:33
  house. If you want something that's
• 1:28:35
  really powerful and it's nothing religious or anything like that,
• 1:28:39
  you know I'm an optimistic atheist.
• 1:28:40
  Please let there be somebody out there.
• 1:28:42
  I'd love that to be. Well, there was a book called
• 1:28:45
  Think and Grow Rich with Peace of Mind.
• 1:28:48
  It's it's a sequel, it's Napoleon Hill and it was
• 1:28:51
  inspirational and it just said before you go to bed, write out
• 1:28:55
  what you want. And for me it was I want to own
• 1:28:58
  my own house and have £32,000 I think it was.
• 1:29:01
  It wasn't anything major or extortionate, but I had
• 1:29:03
  absolutely nothing. I used to say that every night,
• 1:29:06
  before I go to bed, just on a piece, I I want this time, this
• 1:29:10
  amount of money. Used to read it as I went to bed
• 1:29:13
  at night and I used to read it when I got up in the morning.
• 1:29:17
  That was it. Nothing.
• 1:29:18
  Nothing major, nothing big. But what it did was, and at the
• 1:29:22
  end of that year I'd realised that I'd had enough money for my
• 1:29:26
  own house and I'd got it and I was like, that's just a bit
• 1:29:28
  weird. And it was because I think
• 1:29:33
  you're influencing your subconscious mind.
• 1:29:36
  You're basically saying, this is what I would like.
• 1:29:39
  And so instead of when people are thinking about baked beans
• 1:29:42
  or, you know, what they're going to have for dinner later on
• 1:29:44
  tonight, you're thinking, oh, actually somewhere working in
• 1:29:47
  the back of your mind, you're going, how am I going to achieve
• 1:29:50
  my goal, that dream. And it's interesting because the
• 1:29:54
  reverse there is, is reverse psychology.
• 1:29:56
  Now, magicians like Darren Brown, a guy called Richard
• 1:29:59
  Wiseman, who says don't don't go for those girls, don't have
• 1:30:04
  those because they're sometimes not obtainable.
• 1:30:07
  For me though, however, because I because I had nothing, I just
• 1:30:11
  had that that book, It was actually Brian Lee who gave me
• 1:30:14
  the first book on Think and Think and Grow Rich.
• 1:30:18
  It it it shaped my life. I can remember being in Bristol
• 1:30:21
  when I was back in that time in Bristol and I walked across that
• 1:30:24
  bridge with that Lady and she told me I had problems.
• 1:30:27
  I'd got that book and I read it first the thinking Grow rich and
• 1:30:30
  I went no load of rubbish put, put away.
• 1:30:33
  And it was when I was in Bristol and I saw it in a in one of
• 1:30:37
  those second hand book shops like like the works or whatever,
• 1:30:40
  not second hand but, you know cheap discount.
• 1:30:42
  And there was Think and grow Rich with Peace of Mind.
• 1:30:44
  And I went a load of rubbish and I walked down the street and I
• 1:30:48
  went, but Brian Lee, my teacher tell me about this book kind of
• 1:30:51
  teacher as in mental, the one who tried to completely fleece
• 1:30:55
  me. And I went, oh, I'll go back and
• 1:30:58
  I went back and I went and I got the book and I read the book.
• 1:31:03
  And there's a difference between reading and reading and it's
• 1:31:06
  like, yes, you say again on that other level.
• 1:31:08
  And so I read it and I went because I made the effort and
• 1:31:12
  because I went to the book, it really cemented, I think.
• 1:31:17
  And I kind of just did what it said.
• 1:31:19
  And it was just loads of stories about, you know, how people like
• 1:31:22
  Edison got where he was. Basically this guy called Hill,
• 1:31:26
  which must be a pseudo name. Nobody's called Napoleon,
• 1:31:28
  although I'm called Barrington and there's my real name but.
• 1:31:31
  I wondered that as well. Can I ask that?
• 1:31:35
  Is it? It's not a stage name, it's my
• 1:31:37
  real name. Not only when my parents really
• 1:31:40
  bad they gave me a really posh name and stuck me in a Liverpool
• 1:31:43
  comprehensive. The other kids could beat me up.
• 1:31:46
  It's like we'll just we'll just let them do the work for you so
• 1:31:51
  but but it was that and it was it was basically Hill that's a
• 1:31:55
  guy called Carnegie. If you go to any library around
• 1:31:58
  it used to be a Carnegie library Carnegie and and it was
• 1:32:04
  basically a Scottish philanthropist moved to America
• 1:32:06
  the Carnegie Hall by creating that there's two Carnegies but
• 1:32:09
  it's not Dale Carnegie it's the other Carnegie and he was
• 1:32:14
  Scottish for land for a steel magnet made his money in America
• 1:32:17
  back to America again just when it was becoming he was the Steve
• 1:32:20
  Jobs of his day and basically he said to hill write My
• 1:32:24
  Autobiography. I'm going to introduce you to 50
• 1:32:27
  of the top most wealthiest people in the country at the
• 1:32:31
  time. So Woodrow Wilson Edison Henry
• 1:32:34
  Ford and he said I want I want you to find out what makes them
• 1:32:39
  tick. What makes them make money?
• 1:32:41
  And so basically Hill went off and he found stories and he put
• 1:32:45
  it in a book. Think and grow rich.
• 1:32:47
  And then he got the better one, which I think is better.
• 1:32:50
  Think and grow rich with Peace of Mind because you can have all
• 1:32:53
  the wealth in the world. It will not make you happy.
• 1:32:56
  Nothing will make you happy. Money doesn't make you happy.
• 1:33:00
  And you can still go to dark places if you've got money.
• 1:33:03
  As I was saying, you know with with all those celebrities that
• 1:33:05
  you're here, so yeah, it was think and grow rich with with
• 1:33:09
  Peace of Mind and within a year from having absolutely nothing.
• 1:33:13
  I remember giving up when I started Legoland, I I bought a
• 1:33:18
  statue with my money. I just left Chris Norris's and
• 1:33:22
  as I said he was the teacher who told me you know, do this, be be
• 1:33:26
  see what you are, which is a magician.
• 1:33:28
  Someone's got to be a magician and a clown.
• 1:33:30
  And I bought this sculpture and it was a hand moving chess
• 1:33:33
  pieces and it cost me £300 and it was the last of my money.
• 1:33:38
  But I gave it over as a thank you to the people who was giving
• 1:33:40
  me a lift to Legoland because I just knew something inside was
• 1:33:45
  this was it. And I was an escapologist.
• 1:33:48
  I used to escape from a straight jacket and stuff and entertain
• 1:33:50
  the big crowds. First day, best, best thing
• 1:33:53
  ever. I locked a knuckle locked into
• 1:33:56
  my house I was renting and I couldn't get out.
• 1:33:58
  We got Dino Rod, but suddenly the name Barrington Pole got
• 1:34:01
  around the place and from then on, because it was Movenpick
• 1:34:04
  restaurants, the the letters just kept on coming in because I
• 1:34:08
  wasn't bothered about anybody else.
• 1:34:09
  I was just bothered about doing my job and doing good stuff.
• 1:34:12
  I mean, the frustration was when I went to Pontons, I didn't know
• 1:34:16
  people were going to Pontons to meet loads of ladies and have a
• 1:34:19
  wild time. I was there because of what
• 1:34:21
  Chris had said, because I needed somewhere to live and to make
• 1:34:24
  those holidays extra special and for those kids.
• 1:34:27
  So you used to walk past and you used to see the lifeguard saying
• 1:34:30
  next to another pretty lady going, you mean the world to me.
• 1:34:34
  You're fantastic. And you said that last week to
• 1:34:37
  that what that's all about. So you used to get all stories
• 1:34:42
  like that. And I was just so I think naive
• 1:34:45
  and innocent. And I think there's something to
• 1:34:46
  be said about being naive and innocent.
• 1:34:49
  So yeah. Oh, well, listen, before I go, I
• 1:34:52
  should do one last trick. Oh, amazing.
• 1:34:54
  Thank you so much. Very quickly over here.
• 1:34:57
  So again, it's just because of the maybe I need we'll use the
• 1:35:04
  globe. We'll use the globe just so that
• 1:35:07
  it's in view. I promise I only cheat a little.
• 1:35:10
  So you can put this let's put this here.
• 1:35:15
  I've got. I've got something.
• 1:35:16
  I'll just get. Wait there for one second.
• 1:35:18
  Sure, sure. Got some hat boxes.
• 1:35:25
  I've got a hat box. I think that makes it in view.
• 1:35:28
  I'll lower that one. That box.
• 1:35:31
  I think Christmas decorations holiday there.
• 1:35:33
  We go. And so.
• 1:35:37
  You can see that the glass. The gloss.
• 1:35:40
  We've got the gloss, and we've got over here, a deck of blue
• 1:35:45
  cards over that. Now, because you're not here,
• 1:35:47
  I'll put the blue cards in the blue glass.
• 1:35:50
  OK, there. We go right and what I'm going
• 1:35:53
  to do because I would normally get these shuffled.
• 1:35:55
  So let me do a fancy, a semi fancy shuffle because you would
• 1:35:59
  normally be doing this if you were here.
• 1:36:01
  OK, then what I'm going to do, I'm going to deal the cards.
• 1:36:04
  I'll put the box to one side, but you can still see it.
• 1:36:06
  I'm going to deal the cards one at a time onto the glass and
• 1:36:10
  just say stop whenever you want. So I'll just carry on like this.
• 1:36:14
  Stop. Now do you want this one or one
• 1:36:18
  down? You want me to put the card, put
• 1:36:21
  the card, put the. Card down, Put the card down.
• 1:36:24
  I'm going to put those there like so.
• 1:36:27
  That's eight maybe. I don't know where I put the
• 1:36:30
  other glass, but it doesn't matter as long as you can still
• 1:36:33
  see that glass. I can.
• 1:36:34
  I don't want to cheat. I've got some more here I'm
• 1:36:36
  going to carry on dealing like this so and just say stop again.
• 1:36:43
  Stop. Right.
• 1:36:45
  I don't know what you've stopped at.
• 1:36:46
  Let's have a look what it is. It is.
• 1:36:49
  Can you tell everybody what it is?
• 1:36:51
  Can I say it? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:52
  It's the two of diamonds. That's amazing.
• 1:36:56
  The reason why this is amazing is because if I go through over
• 1:37:01
  here and just show, all these cards are obviously blue.
• 1:37:07
  Except for that there's one card which was red.
• 1:37:12
  You see, there was one card that was red.
• 1:37:14
  I can show you they're all different.
• 1:37:16
  They are genuinely all different.
• 1:37:18
  And the only red one is the two of diamonds.
• 1:37:20
  But that's not the big thing. Maybe I influenced you and I
• 1:37:24
  just want to show that all the cards are genuinely different.
• 1:37:28
  But you see, there was 1 red card and you know, I I got you
• 1:37:33
  to stop before and it's in this glass.
• 1:37:35
  Maybe you thought I did some sleight of hand, some trickery,
• 1:37:38
  but in this glass here, where you told me to stop at, that's
• 1:37:44
  also oh. My God.
• 1:37:46
  And it's there's something wrote on the two of diamonds and
• 1:37:49
  they're all blue as well. And on the sticker it says I'll
• 1:37:53
  read the sticker because it's hard but and it'll be flipped
• 1:37:55
  over wrong. So you'll have to read it I.
• 1:37:57
  Knew you would choose the two of diamonds?
• 1:38:00
  How? So maybe I thought, I did a
• 1:38:02
  sticker, put the sticker on and maybe that was yeah, but that's
• 1:38:05
  not it. You see, because in the box, in
• 1:38:07
  the boxes, you might have thought I did some sleight of
• 1:38:09
  hand when you weren't seeing that.
• 1:38:10
  I could have done that but actually on the box it also yes.
• 1:38:14
  In there it says I knew you would choose the two of
• 1:38:19
  diamonds. So that is the the two of
• 1:38:22
  diamonds. TWO of diamonds.
• 1:38:24
  So maybe you thought I'd put the but but what doesn't gas.
• 1:38:27
  It's on this desk that's been there all the time.
• 1:38:29
  It says a giant 2. Oh my God.
• 1:38:31
  Come on. Which is always a little bit
• 1:38:33
  bizarre, really. Oh, I should end on the trick
• 1:38:37
  that really. Because when we we first met, I
• 1:38:41
  saw it. I want to saw you in half and I
• 1:38:44
  want to saw over half and half. You're over half, half, half in
• 1:38:50
  half. So I'm going to shuffle these
• 1:38:52
  cards. This was the trick.
• 1:38:53
  I think I told you before I go about John Marshall and he did
• 1:38:56
  this and he did a trick and it was this trick.
• 1:39:01
  So I should end on this trick. I met the guy who invented this
• 1:39:03
  trick. A guy suddenly passed away.
• 1:39:05
  Now in Glasgow he used to work behind a little shop.
• 1:39:08
  It's an amazing trick. I love this again.
• 1:39:12
  What? What?
• 1:39:13
  You know what What helps you become a magician.
• 1:39:17
  This was the first trick that I saw.
• 1:39:18
  Just say stop whenever you want. Stop.
• 1:39:26
  There's no time delay on this. This is amazing.
• 1:39:28
  I'm going to take the cards and there was a gentleman.
• 1:39:32
  Obviously I'm conscious that there might be people listening
• 1:39:35
  to this that that, you know, can't see this.
• 1:39:39
  But I'll explain as we go along. I am going to, I don't know what
• 1:39:42
  cards you've stopped at. You've stopped at a queen of
• 1:39:45
  clubs and you've also stopped at, oh, another two.
• 1:39:49
  Well, that's the two of hearts. That would have been amazing if
• 1:39:51
  it was the two of diamonds. I will write the name of your
• 1:39:56
  good selves. So Christian, I shall write
• 1:39:57
  Christian. It's a bit a bit my my
• 1:40:01
  handwriting is normally good, but because I'm kind of writing
• 1:40:04
  this at an angle, what's the date today?
• 1:40:07
  It is the 9th of February. 9th of Feb 24123 It's there, sealed.
• 1:40:16
  I will put my name. In fact I've put my name on the
• 1:40:20
  other side so that way the cards can't cheat.
• 1:40:26
  There we go, scribbly scrawly right now and just to as I've
• 1:40:32
  completely forgot the date. What was the date again?
• 1:40:35
  It is the 9th of February. I'll put that down South.
• 1:40:39
  My memory is so you now know that is genuinely the cards.
• 1:40:44
  So I'm conscious now I want you to listen to this people over
• 1:40:48
  here because I've got two playing cards that from a
• 1:40:51
  shuffle deck that Christina said stop up.
• 1:40:54
  This was the trick that changed my life.
• 1:40:56
  If you get a chance go on YouTube and I got a little bit,
• 1:41:00
  my hand got stuck, then I'm going to see the video, I'm
• 1:41:05
  going to fold this in half. I would normally get you to do
• 1:41:07
  this but because you're not here in Porthought, I shall fold the
• 1:41:12
  card in half and I'll put that in my mouth like that.
• 1:41:14
  So I apologise if I sound muffled.
• 1:41:17
  I'm not going to fold the other card the other way, which is the
• 1:41:21
  queen of clubs now. It's good it's the queen of
• 1:41:24
  clubs because this is the world famous PT Selbert trick and PT
• 1:41:28
  Selbert saw the lady in half, which is what I did when I first
• 1:41:33
  met Christian for the group and the talk I gave, because I want
• 1:41:36
  to show them another different branch of magic.
• 1:41:39
  As I said, there's illusions as well.
• 1:41:41
  The Soaring in Half is over 100 years old, but only just 100
• 1:41:45
  years old really, which is is quite amazing when you think
• 1:41:48
  about it. Now, I've put the other card
• 1:41:50
  inside the queen of clubs and Christian will vouch that it's
• 1:41:54
  popped out the other end. Correct?
• 1:41:57
  Correct. I will even show you that that
• 1:42:02
  that she's, she's here, see, the queen of clubs is here.
• 1:42:07
  And now for the difficult bit. I'm going to try and fold this
• 1:42:11
  in half and this is where the magic starts to happen.
• 1:42:16
  So all I've done in in listening land is taken 2 cards and I
• 1:42:20
  folded them so that the queen of clubs is horizontal and the
• 1:42:26
  other one is folded over the card creating a sort of box.
• 1:42:32
  Now if I was to take my finger and pretend it was a saw and
• 1:42:36
  chop the card in half, it would mean that the queen of clubs
• 1:42:40
  would be split in half, which is difficult to demonstrate on a
• 1:42:46
  with a big illusion because you need a big room and a big space.
• 1:42:50
  But you can do exactly the same with this playing card because
• 1:42:55
  she melts when she pops out the other end.
• 1:42:57
  You can see her face, which was the back of the car just a
• 1:43:00
  second ago. In fact, you can put it to the
• 1:43:04
  point where it splits together. You can even see the writing
• 1:43:10
  that I just wrote a second ago with the date on.
• 1:43:14
  I can even get it to the point where it fuses together.
• 1:43:18
  Now I think magic is great, but the storytelling.
• 1:43:23
  What happened was a magician showed me this trick.
• 1:43:26
  It might sound a little bit unusual, but this one trick
• 1:43:31
  changed my life. I couldn't work out how the card
• 1:43:35
  had split in two between my very eyes that I could see.
• 1:43:39
  There was no additional cards. There was no extra cards, but it
• 1:43:43
  was when the magician took the card and ripped it in half and
• 1:43:51
  got rid of the other pieces. And to prove beyond any shadow
• 1:43:57
  of doubt that the Queen had indeed split in half completely,
• 1:44:06
  it absolutely fried my little brain and made me become a
• 1:44:11
  magician. And that is a very interesting
• 1:44:17
  card trick. Incredible.
• 1:44:22
  I yeah, I these tricks kind of blow my mind because I don't
• 1:44:27
  know like exactly like sometimes you get you can kind of like
• 1:44:32
  envision how a magician might go about them.
• 1:44:35
  All those tricks you've done. I have no idea.
• 1:44:38
  I'm like, what's? How?
• 1:44:40
  How has he done this? Well, you're a magician as well.
• 1:44:43
  It's a storytelling everybody, all your listeners, if you've
• 1:44:46
  got a dream, if you've got a passion, follow it.
• 1:44:49
  You know, don't be that person at the end of the day where they
• 1:44:52
  go. I wish I'd have done it.
• 1:44:54
  I wish I had. You know, you've got one life
• 1:44:59
  and it's not going to be easy, but it's nothing should be.
• 1:45:03
  You should want to give up your child, your your chopper racing
• 1:45:07
  bike. If you want to take and play a
• 1:45:10
  guitar, you know do it. It's.
• 1:45:13
  And I just hope my my other friend, she gets that keyboard
• 1:45:17
  and she plays. She used to play.
• 1:45:18
  I've seen clips on YouTube and my goodness, she's had a voice.
• 1:45:22
  But again she's she's been battered with with people saying
• 1:45:25
  no you can't, you can't do this, you can't do that.
• 1:45:28
  Don't be ridiculous. Never let anybody tell you you
• 1:45:32
  can't. Otherwise, I'll come around with
• 1:45:34
  me magic wand and I'll turn them into a frog.
• 1:45:39
  Final question for you, Barrington, Do you have any
• 1:45:41
  upcoming projects or final thoughts that you'd like to
• 1:45:43
  share with our listeners? Well, well, we're working on
• 1:45:46
  that little project and as I said, it's, it's been a joy.
• 1:45:49
  There's been times when I've been thinking, oh, I've got so
• 1:45:51
  much on I can't do this or that. And you know, even like, you
• 1:45:55
  know, travelling over over things and, you know, doing
• 1:45:59
  stuff. This morning I was talking about
• 1:46:03
  going back to the Maldives. That'll be my ninth time.
• 1:46:05
  I've been more times there than I have Wigan.
• 1:46:08
  So we're working on that on this morning for the for for some
• 1:46:13
  very special thing that I'm working on.
• 1:46:17
  But again, you know, every week I'm going into a hospital and
• 1:46:21
  I'm making children laugh. I mean that is just the best job
• 1:46:25
  in the world. I I'm I'm lucky as I said and
• 1:46:32
  and it's it's just not you know I've got a dentist appointment
• 1:46:37
  next week it's like whoa. But then I've got a managing
• 1:46:39
  director. I've got to make a peer
• 1:46:41
  magically. And so fun little projects that
• 1:46:44
  they're, they're all there. And there's a bit of variety, a
• 1:46:48
  bit like acting. You don't know.
• 1:46:50
  You know, you can view podcast and then one minute you can be a
• 1:46:53
  magician and you can be doing this, that and the other.
• 1:46:57
  So yeah, there's, there's, there's lots of exciting things.
• 1:47:00
  And usually when you change that mind pattern, which I'm hoping
• 1:47:05
  that maybe when you go back to a Slough or stage and you look at
• 1:47:10
  that glass dog and that, you know, I thank that girl for not
• 1:47:14
  turning up that day. I mean, I could be happily
• 1:47:16
  married now. That could be a disaster.
• 1:47:17
  So you know what I mean? That might be, it might be good.
• 1:47:21
  But I swear to you, I think I've had a better life because you
• 1:47:24
  didn't turn up, which is horrendous, you know.
• 1:47:28
  But but if you are happily married, that's fantastic.
• 1:47:30
  Don't, don't. That's great.
• 1:47:33
  I envy you like that. But always be yourself.
• 1:47:37
  Go have adventures on your own because it's, you know, life is
• 1:47:42
  short and you shouldn't rely on somebody else to make you happy.
• 1:47:46
  What I was trying to say, though was in a roundabout way, is
• 1:47:52
  people will start to come to you rather than you know.
• 1:47:56
  As I said, I've never advertised.
• 1:47:58
  I've been really lucky. Have I been lucky or has it been
• 1:48:00
  hard work? It's one of the others that
• 1:48:02
  suddenly your talent will shine. So keep with it and then be.
• 1:48:07
  But be the person who has those adventures and then the people
• 1:48:13
  who really want you will then come to you rather than the
• 1:48:16
  other way round if that makes sense that you you then get rid.
• 1:48:20
  You filter out the the people who want to phone up and go, how
• 1:48:26
  much is the clown? Oh, do you do a good party?
• 1:48:31
  How much is the clown you go like?
• 1:48:36
  Quite difficult to find. So when that phone call rings I
• 1:48:41
  know it's a genuine thingy and I'll be there for them.
• 1:48:44
  I never let anybody down. I try try my hardest because
• 1:48:47
  your words, your bond, that's who you are.
• 1:48:49
  So, so if if if you have that, then suddenly and suddenly that
• 1:48:55
  mindset changes and and and you have something valuable to offer
• 1:49:00
  and people will come to you rather than you having to go to
• 1:49:05
  the decision makers and the decision makers making those
• 1:49:08
  decisions. I always want to stick two
• 1:49:12
  fingers up at those people really and go, go, you know,
• 1:49:16
  just because I don't look like it or whatever.
• 1:49:17
  As I said with the two stories, I've said I've never.
• 1:49:21
  But when I get there like you know, wow, it's so, so yeah.
• 1:49:26
  And then suddenly you get that reputation, the word gets out
• 1:49:29
  there and they go, you're reliable and you're trustworthy
• 1:49:32
  and you're going to do a good job because you're not bothered
• 1:49:34
  about frustratingly getting your leg over on holiday makers.
• 1:49:39
  You're there just to do your job and to be as good, because
• 1:49:43
  that's all people want. They just want a good job doing
• 1:49:45
  and know that they're in safe hands, you know?
• 1:49:47
  And if you can do that, you'll shine.
• 1:49:50
  And people, people will, will recognise your talents for what
• 1:49:54
  they are. Thank you so much.
• 1:49:57
  It's it's been an absolute, just blast having you on the show and
• 1:50:01
  I'm really, really grateful. So thank you really.
• 1:50:05
  Thank you. It's been really nice speaking
• 1:50:07
  to you, Chris, and I hope all the best with whatever you do.
• 1:50:11
  And I now I think I'm spreading a little bit of magic there.
• 1:50:14
  It's going to happen. It's going to be tough.
• 1:50:16
  It's going to be hard, but I think you've already done the
• 1:50:18
  tough and the hard stuff. It's going there.
• 1:50:21
  Hope you're right. For everybody listening and
• 1:50:24
  watching, well I'll first thing I'll say is make sure you go
• 1:50:27
  watch the video version of the show available on YouTube and
• 1:50:30
  Spotify so you can see the amazing magic that Barrington
• 1:50:33
  did. It's you'll you'll want to see
• 1:50:35
  it, it's incredible. And go check him out online as
• 1:50:37
  well. He performs all around the world
• 1:50:40
  and he does public speaking as well.
• 1:50:42
  And honestly it's something that you want to see in here.
• 1:50:45
  It was really inspiring for me. I couldn't believe I got to
• 1:50:49
  witness it in person and it's it's even more amazing that I
• 1:50:54
  was able to have him on the show today.
• 1:50:57
  But yeah, massive thank you for everybody listening and
• 1:50:59
  watching. As always.
• 1:51:00
  Just quick reminder, as I always say, I know it's annoying, but
• 1:51:03
  make sure to leave us a review on Pod Chaser and whichever
• 1:51:08
  platform that you're watching or listening to the show on, be at
• 1:51:10
  YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, make sure you leave us
• 1:51:13
  a review, like share, subscribe, all that jazz.
• 1:51:16
  It really helps us out in terms of growing the show, pushing
• 1:51:19
  ratings, maybe reaching more people, which I think if we've
• 1:51:22
  established anything today is kind of the whole point of it
• 1:51:26
  all really, isn't it? It's reaching people and
• 1:51:28
  inspiring people, so massive thank you there.
• 1:51:31
  And yeah, also, if you want to get access to bonus content and
• 1:51:35
  support me in the production of this show and other things in my
• 1:51:38
  life, make sure to go to patreon.com/christian Reeve and
• 1:51:42
  you can get yourself monthly content, access to the Discord
• 1:51:45
  community, behind the scenes stuff and much, much more.
• 1:51:49
  Thank you so much for watching and listening, guys.
• 1:51:51
  And until next time, see you in the next one.