HARRY MILAS

MAGICIAN

Harry Milas takes us into the wonderful world of magic.
He is an awarded and highly skilled performance artist, curating
his own shows, wowing guests at private events and emceeing.
We chat about the history of magic, flow state, preparing for
a live show and the humbling role magic can
play in our everyday lives.

*Harry pulls out a fresh deck of cards*

What’s a card you like Hayls?

7 of diamonds.

7 of diamonds? That’s an interesting choice.

*Harry leans in close and points to the very top card on the deck*

Ok, it’s here. Right?

Don’t you dare!

*Leans back in his chair, laughing*

No! I can’t do that!

Oh my god. I was going to say…

Yep. But see how in that moment just then, I created the tension, made the joke, then relaxed. Now, look back to the cards...and
that was the switch, right?

*Harry turns the top card. It IS the 7 of diamonds*

WHAT! WHAT! How did you find the seven in that whole deck?!

That, I won’t tell you. Because it doesn’t matter. As magicians we are just creating a moment, we’re guiding people emotionally.
So much of it is the body language. Shoulders come up, that indicates tension. We focus, then turn the card over, make a joke, relax, look up. Eye contact is such a strong convention too. Even as it gets more uncomfortable, we won’t break it. Right? Magicians use that all the time. If I don’t want you to look at the cards, I make eye contact with you.

Because… if you’re looking here *gestures at eyes* you’re not gonna look there *gestures at cards*.

So, the cool as a cucumber chat all the way through the trick…that’s the whole thing right?

A big part of it. It’s just like when actors talk about being ‘off book’. You’ve gotta know the stuff cold. That’s the starting point. Once you know it cold, then you can focus on presenting it in a charismatic or interesting way. A lot of magicians are really good technically, or maybe they’re a great thinker or a great problem solver, but it doesn’t occur to them to be comfortable with an audience. Magic so often is like ‘revenge of the nerd’ right? That’s why so many people get into it. That’s why I got into it – like, well this is a way I can know something they don’t.

But then you hopefully keep growing, become vaguely well adjusted and leave that behind. A lot of magicians don’t though, and there’s still that bad energy of like ‘I’ve got one over on you’. If you don’t gel with the magician or they’re cocky or arrogant… like
they’ve got a goatee and they’ve got eyebrows, and they’re hitting on you, it’s weird. Like the clichés.

It’s really fun to be fooled...but only by someone
that you like. You know what I mean?

Hands down, most fun start to an interview ever. We are so excited!

It’s really flattering to be asked to talk about what you do. There are a lot of people who I don't tell that I’m a magician, if they ask.
Like Uber drivers. I’m dating at the moment, on the apps, and I don’t say I’m a magician. I say I’m a performer and a creative – which
is truthful – but a lot of people have preconceived negative ideas about what a magician is. Most people think of one of two cliches – the 1930’s top hat and tails, or just like...a creep. Like a David Blaine kinda vibe.

I should really stress I’m actually a huge fan of David Blaine! But he has generated this new wave of magicians who don’t wear a shirt and just walk around and you know…they use it to pick up.

David Blaine is the one who does all the physical endurance stuff? The thing with his hand?

Yeah, it’s an ice pick through his hand. His magic is like fuck off strong. The latest thing he did was Ascension. It was a YouTube live special where he held onto 52 huge colourful helium balloons and went to 50,000 feet unshackled! He had a backup harness, but he was literally just like that *gestures arm upwards*.

So, I don’t usually tell people what I do because a lot of people don’t know what a career as a magician actually looks like.

Totally. So what does it look like?

A lot of magicians do things differently, but for me, the distinctions that I draw are between the things I do for money and the things
I do for creativity. And the way I distinguish that is private and public events. My upcoming public show material is stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily do in a corporate event. I’m paying the bills with corporate and private events.

Some people don’t know this, but the corporate events industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. It’s the backbone of Carriageworks and so many venues in Sydney and globally. This is a pretty common pathway for magicians. Wandering magic is my bread and butter, which is where you move from group to group at an event. I personally really love it.

More and more, I want magic for as few people
as possible. That’s not good business-sense, but it’s where the good stuff is! That’s where it creates an experience that’s really memorable and
potentially meaningful for people.

In terms of making money, the wandering stuff is just plug and play. I have four different wandering sets, and they’re in four different pockets. 1, 2, 3, 4 *gesturing top and bottom pockets of coat*. So if someone follows me to the next group, they’re going to see a completely different set of material.

And you would be able to do it in your sleep?

Yeah. But unlike a lot of other performers who can go on autopilot, magic is a rare performance art where it doesn’t exist unless you’re interacting. So, what’s nice about that is although I know my material cold, no one does something the same way twice...so I have to move with it. It forces me to be super present and in the moment.

It’s different every time…

Exactly! Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian psychologist, he came up with the term ‘flow’. Like being in a ‘flow state’. He charted it on an X and Y axis. The X axis is your ability/skill level and the Y axis is the challenge that you’re being met with. He charted it out so that if your skill level meets the challenge then you will access flow state. It’s brilliant thinking! Whereas say, for example, your skill level is low but the challenge is high, you’ll be in the stress category. If the challenge is low but the skill level is high, you’ll be bored. When I’m performing I get into flow state automatically. I completely forget about every other facet of my life.

It’s meditation!

It is! It’s very much meditative.

What have you learned in running your own business?

It’s about consistency. Getting repeat clients and creating new offerings so they want to get you back. If you do it right, you can charge very well. If I want to learn a new facet, my model is to seek out mentors. While it may seem that Sydney is a small field, it’s actually a great place to try and thrive because there’s actually a lot of events and not many people that can do it well. The feedback that I get more than anything else is ‘that’s not what I expected’. I think it’s potentially how I present, as well as my material. I want that. I want people to go ‘it’s better than I was thinking it would be’.

A part of my job is to create expectations. How I interact with a new client vs a return client couldn’t be more different. New people are excited to have me, but their questions are like ‘what does this look like? What happens?’ You have to be malleable. When I turn up to a gig I have everything I need inside this small bag. Being easy to work with is so key. That comes with experience, but it also comes with just expecting the unexpected. It’s exhausting being surprised when something doesn’t go right. The client didn’t listen to
a request, or the sound guy is being difficult. I got so tired of having to deal with sound guys at conferences that I just bought my own equipment. I have a microphone on a stand with a fucking cord. No one can fuck this up.

You must be crazily comfortable in front of crowds…

Yeah. It’s unusual to be as comfortable as I am. I think a lot of magicians hide behind their material.

If I had a choice between closing with an absolutely impossible and amazing magic trick, or closing with
a really genuine message from the heart
– from me as a human being to you as the audience – I would choose that every time.

Whereas a lot of magicians are like ‘and BOOM!’ then ‘goodnight everybody!’. It’s like, ‘who was that?’ That over-reliance on material, you know, it’s just like they’re bored of their field.

Do you create your own tricks? Or do you learn them from mentors?

Both. Magic is the most published art form in history, in terms of its library of published works, by a LONG way. Because it’s become tradition to output material into books. Not only that, but we have what’s called mechanics, which are people who don’t perform but they invent material for the marketplace.

Oh so they just figure out the tricks?

That’s right. They have a concept in mind. The magic book is a beautiful art form in and of itself. There’s beautiful hand drawn illustrations of very complicated movements with decks of cards and coins, it’s stunning.

It’s so complicated, but the lineage is strong. Shit’s really picked up hard from about 1940 to now. Magic output quadrupled, and then quadrupled again. The marketplace of magic is overflowing with material, most of which is not very good and created from a twist on a twist of an idea…when the original idea is a beautiful concept that audiences would love.

A lot of magicians are just afraid of doing a standard, basic trick from, say, Stars of Magic, which is a classic book from the 1940s, with perfect material that you wouldn’t change for the world.

Would you like to see a trick from Stars of Magic?

YES!

Ok, so we call them plots, right. The plot of the trick is what happens – the effect. It’s important that this starts from a shuffled deck.
You can check [the cards], just shuffle and mix them so you’re happy we’re starting from a random place.

I’m gonna take out a prediction card while we’re talking. Here’s my prediction:

*Harry shows card – a jack – and he sets it aside, face down on the table*

And I’ll just go like this...

*Harry is flicking through the whole deck of cards rapidly*

Haylee, say stop…

Stop!

You happy there?

Yep!

Ok. Don’t look at the card, just take it out and hold onto it.

Ok, so the idea is that if my [prediction card] is a jack, yours is also a jack. Right? Before we see whether we matched, I actually think if...

*Harry flicks through the deck again, same as earlier*

Grace, you say stop for me…

Stop!

I think we’ve managed to find… oooh yes. That would be the third jack.

*Shows us the card, a jack*

Whaaaaat!

And now.. the fourth jack...

*Harry continues shuffling*

I’m searching as I’m shuffling…I’m gonna take a chance on….that guy...

*Harry picks a card and places it face down on the table*

Yeah, there we go! So that will be the fourth jack. Let’s have a look. Turn it over, let’s see if they match…

*The card isn’t a jack, it’s a seven*

Hmm?

*We look over at our other pile of three jacks*

Oh my god. Don’t tell us that those are all now sevens!

*Harry flips the pile of jacks, they have all changed to sevens*

AHHHH! What?! Fuck’s sake. I love it! I love it.

That’s a classic from the forties. You know what I like about that? It’s actually…there’s drama. There’s a little story to it.

But I SAW you put the jacks over there…

Yeah, I mean that’s my job though right? That reminds me of this whole other aspect of why I don’t tell people I’m a magician.
I mentioned the dating thing, but the other connotation people have about magicians is this idea of manipulation. And I take that really seriously. It’s just like with hypnosis. People are under the impression you can make someone do something they don’t want
to do, which is just not the case at all. It’s a fallacy.

I purposefully don’t perform socially really at all, because I want it to be very clear when I’m ‘on’ and when I’m not. When I was younger, like 18, 19, I would perform socially all the time. It was a crutch, a safety net for interactions. And what I noticed was, as time passed, even with people I knew very well, I would start to tell a story and they’d be like ‘oooh… where’s he going with this? What’s he gonna do?’ I realised that trust was becoming a factor.

I really value being trustworthy and I realised that my magic was getting in the way. So I had to figure out a way of sort of bracketing the moment where I’m ‘on’.

So, the thousands of hours of practice aside, is magic just 99% psychology?

The only place magic exists is in your head. If I’m doing magic for both of you, the only place magic exists, where the impossible can exist, is in your heads.

It’s not like the impossible thing is happening in my hands…I know how it’s done! So in essence, yes, it’s entirely psychology. But also there’s a lot more to it than that, because my goal isn’t to create the impossible thing in the moment, my goal is to create a memory for you of an effect that I didn’t do. I’m guiding you so you’re not focusing at the moment where I’m doing the ‘thing’.
And then when you refocus, I’ve done the thing. And then it’s over.

And I’m screaming.

You know the term ‘misdirection’? Magicians actually don’t use that term. Magicians call it direction,
cos that’s what we’re doing. We’re actually
directing attention and gaze.

It’s an incredible skill.

Yes...and you get better at it as you go along. Managing people is a hard part of the job. Like corporate events! White collar men over 40 are not used to not being in control, and they don’t appreciate it. As someone who’s been hired at the event, I’m gonna make them my ally and I have stuff in my arsenal to make them look good early on. It just makes my job so much easier.

A lot of people wanna fuck with me. People imposing a challenge or you know, grabbing the cards and re-shuffling and saying ‘now do it!’, or like holding onto the card and going ‘change it now, change it while I’m holding it!’.

I used to give that time of day. Now I’ve got a new move, which is to gently lean in and just say, ‘I know you’re having fun, but let’s enjoy this as a group’. There’s so many little bits of psychology like that. Another example is when I’m doing wandering magic – people enjoy it, but their state of surprise means they’re kinda not sure how to react. If I’m at a corporate event, I want those little fountains of applause and laughter, so after my finale I’ll lean back, start clapping and go ‘thanks so much guys, that was great’,
and that will invite them to start applauding me.

That’s amazing!

And they’ll always do it. And I genuinely notice gratitude on their faces, of ‘oh, good, I get to express my thanks’. Cos it’s awkward right?

Let’s go back to the very start… to 4 year old Harry. What made him want to learn magic?

I saw David Copperfield fly on tv, and it hit me like a tonne of bricks. I just loved it. My mum was so great at fostering stuff that my brother and I were interested in. She got me a magic set for Christmas. I loved it. But then I kept at it. And the joke is, like, when everyone else moved on to trucks and dinosaurs, I just stayed with it. It’s the polar opposite of why I love it now. Back then, it was
an excuse to be alone. Mum looked in the fucking yellow pages, cos it was 1996, and she found a magic shop not far. It was called Taylor’s Magic Shop and it was run by a guy called Sean Taylor. We had dinner last week. He’s been my mentor for a very, very long time.

He’s the real deal. He really knows his stuff, he’s a really experienced performer. And he saw it in me. When I was 16 and I started working at the shop – which was ah-ma-zing – I saw it too. I saw it in some kids that came in, it’s like ‘they should stick with this’.
And I maintain to this day, I always recommend magic as a hobby for children.

Why’s that?

It’s just so good. Its hand eye coordination, logic, problem solving, performance training, physical dexterity. Just trying at something and getting better and better, you know.

Tell us more about the ‘magic marketplace’...

It’s a whole thing. The magic marketplace is very big, and you can buy a lot of tricks online. It’s very common when you’re coming up in magic, and even as you get older, to buy your tricks – to buy a thing that does a thing. Whether that’s like a gimmick playing card, or a magnetic coin. Some of those items are genius. Like, incredible ideas and ways to accomplish something that seems absolutely impossible. There’s a site, Vanishing Inc. If it’s for sale, you’re allowed to do it as a performer. I almost never buy this stuff, this isn’t my message. But they also sell a lot of books, and maybe a concept or idea or mathematical principle. A lot of magicians put out their work. They may have retired a piece and to make money off it they sell it on the marketplace. A lot of it is just pre-existing, regurgitated, recycled stuff. Every now and then someone comes out with something really strong.

A good solid 80% of what I work on is just a completely pure deck. 52 cards. No trick deck, no nothing. And I have no problems with trick decks. But like I said earlier, books are where the really good value is, where the good thinking is. Every time I went into Sean’s magic shop, I always wanted these bits and bobs, this or that, and Sean would just make me get books every time. So by the time I was like 18, I was really conversant in magic literature. Sean was just giving me the classics, one after another. By the time I was 18, I had read and studied all of Card College which chronicles pretty much everything you need to know about cards. I’d read Classic Magic of Larry Jennings, Stars of Magic by George Starke, Card Magic by Harry Lorayne…all of these classic perennial books... and that’s what carried me through.

When did you start to think performing magic could be your job?

For years and years, it didn’t occur to me to do it for money. For the longest time, when I was a kid, it was entirely an excuse to be alone.

I was very shy and pretty badly bullied in primary school...so you know, you just retreat. I didn’t perform much, except to my mum.
I did a bit of theatre sports and improv in high school and was relatively adept at it, and then after high school I was getting to know people and started doing improv at Sydney Uni. That really brought me out of my shell. Sydney Uni at the time had this real lineage, real comedy names who had come through. I just happened to come at a really amazing time, and I instinctually married those two skills sets – being a confident improviser and the magic skills. And that’s what cracked it open as something that I could do. I realised if I can get up here and do a 40 minute, non-stop improv performance, then I can do those tricks.

So how did you start?

I knocked on doors. Cold calling, researching who I needed to talk to. Friends of friends. I tried to find agents. It was a shotgun approach – I took any chance I could get to perform. I used to host shows at 34B on Oxford St, the burlesque club. That was a baptism of fire – fucking brutal. The audiences there weren’t exactly dickheads...but they weren’t there to see me. I had to win them over and learned very quickly that I was not going to do that with amazing magic, I was going to do that by being a person.

I used to do stuff at The Hopetoun too. I’d open for my brother’s friend’s Motown cover group called The Bonettes. Someone in the crowd sees you and then it just vaguely grows like that. I took every chance I could get to perform, I just did everything. You just roll with it. And Sean Taylor, my mentor, was keeping an eye out for me too. He pushed me in the right direction a few times, like ‘you don’t need an agent right now, don’t worry about that. Just focus on racking up your time. Get your hours in.’

You’ve just gotta fuckin’ do it. Especially at the start.

I did children’s parties, Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, busking. Something I'm trying to get set up right now is just a weekly regular spot. Like
a CBD, Wednesday night gig – three hours wandering. That stuff keeps me sharp as well, which I love. Everyone gets a business card. You get it happening.

Have you failed in front of a big crowd?

Yeah! But just like in so many performance-based skill sets, you fail forward. The whole idea of a prodigy or whatever is a myth – it doesn’t exist. You have to be comfortable with failure. I ate so much shit in my early days as an improviser...a completely misplaced joke, ruining the joke, whatever. But then I’d wake up the next day and be like, ‘ok, I didn’t die. I want to do it again’.

Failure is just a part of the process – it’s not some devastating thing.

With magic specifically, it’s fine because most of the time people don’t know what the trick is until it’s over. So if something goes wrong, but you have chops or an ability to roll with the punches, it’s ok.

Also, you know how jugglers drop the ball? Say a juggler does an eight minute juggling act…they will drop a ball most of the time. They do that on purpose. Because if they don’t, the stakes aren’t clear. It’s like ‘oh this guy can just do anything he wants...whatever’.
That sets the stakes.

It’s the same when I do my mind reading show. I try to leave a lot of room for error.

Mistakes, very counterintuitively,
totally strengthen the show as a whole!
If everything is bang on the money,
I think that’s dull. It's not interesting.

I got a residency at the Old Fitz, and once a month a director and I would come in and just work on it. We did runs of 12 shows, and
the first five shows were TERRIBLE. Like SO boring, SO uninteresting. But then we got it! Failure is just part of the process.

It has to be done!

How did you set up the residence at the Old Fitz?

I scoped out the Old Fitz specifically because I think they’re the best theatre in Sydney. Pound for pound, in terms of their output, I think they’re the best by far. So I just went in and begged aggressively. Andrew, the creative director, was a bit hard to get a hold of, but
I met everyone else and just kind of hung around.

If you tell people you’re a magician and they realise that you’re not a buffoon…generally, they’re interested. Because it’s different.
It’s unique. It’s a different kind of theatre and people really respond to it.

What do you think the role of magic is in 2021? What do you think it does for people?

For me, magic is a message of transformation.
Change. And I think that's a great message to entrench; the idea that change is possible and
happens all the time. It’s the currency of the universe.

On a different level, I think magic is a great reversal for humility, for facing mystery. No matter how much we learn, the universe is just going to open a new layer. We are never going to know it all, and there’s a humility to that.

On a different level again, how I'm guiding your memory – we humans do that 24/7. Every story we tell ourselves in our head is
a hyperbolised and heavily edited version of what happened. It's because we search for meaning. So often what is actually happening is absolute chaos. And I think magic is a really good rehearsal, or reminder, that we are actually unreliable narrators of
our lives. A reminder to be more sceptical of how we view and interact with the world. It’s powerful stuff. I like to operate on that level.

There's a really great magician Max Maven, he has a quote, “magicians of the 20th century manage to find something perennial and miraculous, and render it trivial”. I want people to think about what I do for them years later. To have it as a memory.

Even though I loved seeing the technique you used earlier, and was so impressed, a little part of me was like…aww.
A part of me really wants to believe in the magic..

Yep. But the technique is so strong. Like I could do another card trick for you right now, and use the same move, and you just wouldn’t see it. Again and again. That’s the beauty of it.

I think it means a lot to people. I think a lot of people really want to see a magician. And a lot of them haven't! Like when I do wandering magic, the amount of times that someone is like 68 years old, and is like ‘I’ve never seen anything like this!’ And if anyone talks in the group they’re like, “shut up! Shut up!!” They’re so into it.

That’s what's so beautiful about it! It’s so rare that we get properly surprised!

It’s such a wonderful feeling, genuine surprise. My hope is to humble, that’s what I’m shooting for. I don’t get there most of the time.

What do you think is the biggest challenge of being a magician?

Consistency. Especially post-covid, people are very reluctant to part with money. Just like any creative, I spend most of my time justifying my fee. While I understand that’s part and parcel, there are times when it’s remarkably insulting. People are like ‘Oh. I thought it would cost X?’ And I’m like…‘based off of what?’

People don’t fathom the thousands of hours that have gone into preparing, researching, practicing, rehearsing…

Yeah. I just cut out hourly rate, as part of my quote. I just cut that out, because it inferred that you were paying for [the hours],
as opposed to the experience.

What’s the weirdest gig you’ve ever done?

A funeral. It was a funeral for a magician. That was pretty weird. It was a great memory, but it was different. If anything, I think the audience was more reactive than normal, just because it was such a potent, heightened moment. Doing the burlesque clubs was hilarious too. It was great. I was 16.

It’s really common for creatives to grapple with marketing themselves. You’re not on social media. At a time when you’re trying to expand your client base, what are your thoughts on this?

Yeah so, here’s the problem…it’s not just because I don't feel like it. It’s based off the value I'm putting on the show. I get it, you do this flashy stuff on instagram. I think it’s partially an aversion to it. But I’m also terrified of any virality.

Last year with covid, a lot of magicians pivoted to
a zoom show…I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to give the impression that what I do is malleable
in that way, and for a quarter of the price…
it feels really fickle to me.

My material isn’t that flashy, it’s not instagrammable.

It seems like you feel technology negatively impacts the field of magic...

Yeah. So magicians have a term for that – I’m called a purist. A lot of magicians use gimmicks and I have no issues with that. There are some purist magicians who are really judgemental.

For me philosophically though, I like coming out with just 52 cards, four coins and using my hands. Simple. I just think it’s beautiful. When I walk out to do wandering magic, I have a deck of blank cards in one pocket, a deck of printed cards in another pocket, I have four coins in a purse…the end. Other guys I know have plastic things in their ears, a magnet in their knee, two invisible thread reels that they can pull out and will snap back into their jacket, a Rubik’s cube...and that’s fine if that’s what you like doing! But personally, I think audiences can tell the difference. Magicians underestimate audiences, and it’s a massive error.

At the heart of it, magicians are one of the only performers that work really hard to make it look like they did nothing at all.

There's a really great magical thinker called Eugene Burger that I love. He was the head of philosophy at Yale, he had a long white beard, wire rimmed glasses, a deep baritone voice...very wizzy. He was a great thinker and he talks about magician’s guilt. Magician’s guilt is the stress and the pressure of knowing the secret when no one else does, and that weird desire to want to tell people. Because YOU DON’T KNOW HOW HARD I’VE WORKED TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE I DID NOTHING AT ALL!

You’ve had work assisting security in casinos. Can you tell us a bit about that?

There’s so many moves, where you can operate under the radar in plain sight. The magic’ Venn diagram crosses over into gambling quite easily. There’s a classic book called The Expert at the Card Table from 1867, by an anonymous author. One half is gambling secrets, or using cards to cheat, and one half is magic. I thought there were some interesting things in the gambling half.

I've worked really hard at the techniques. There's a move that I do, where I'm dealing out the cards but I'm dealing the second card from the top each time. So you can save the top card for whoever you want to give it to. See? It’s something I love to practice and
I think it’s a beautiful thing as well.

Whoa, that’s amazing. You’ve just told me that you’re doing it and I still can’t see that you’re doing it.

It’s an old gamblers’ move. It’s all stuff that hides in plain sight. It’s meant to look completely innocuous. ‘The Pass’ is a really important skill, which is being able to get a card to the top of the deck any time you need it. Obviously false shuffles are a really important part of it too, it’s called the Zarrow shuffle, where the cards don’t move at all.

*Harry shuffles the cards, but slows it right down and we see the cards are staying
in exactly the same spot*

Back in the day there used to only be the one ‘eye in the sky’ camera, directly over the top of the hands. So this shuffle used to be the most common [for cheating], because from the top it looks perfect.

I learned a few of these gambling moves and then, through magic, I knew some guys who played poker. I can do a ‘gin pick’ which
is an old fashioned move where you pick up two cards instead of one. A really quality gin pick looks like nothing.

Word just got around that I could do these moves. The casino brings me in from time to time, and they make me watch dealers and ask, ‘what are they doing here, are they cheating?’ I’ve also done workshops with the bosses on technique. The casinos are far more concerned with protecting and enforcing rules on the dealers than they are on the players. They call it ‘getting turned’, where someone will come in and pay the dealers so they will win. I was once scouted by a guy who tried to get me into rigging games.

If you ever want an insight into how that industry really works, the movie Casino is bang on the money.

What’s ahead for you?

I’m very, very lucky to do what I love.
There’s no end in sight.

There are ups and downs just like any industry. I relish diving pretty deep into this, that’s where the good stuff is. I’m practicing every day and I’m learning every day. There’s always new things. The thing that I’m working on right now is flash memorisation. Flashing through the deck and trying to remember the 52 cards in order. I’m close, I’ve nearly got it. If you embrace the nerd aspect of it. That obsessive nerd element is part of it, and you’ve gotta own it.

And more literally, your new show ‘The Unfair Advantage’ is at the Old Fitz this weekend!

The show is not easy… so we’ll see how we go! We are filming it, and we’re getting a million people to see it as a showcase. We are threading a lot of needles in one go.

Will you ever spill your secrets?

No. Never. Never ever ever ever.

There has never been a secret to a trick
that is more interesting than the trick itself.
It’s always disappointing.

There’s a phrase I love – ‘magicians don’t keep secrets from you, they keep them for you.’ I live a more boring life than you.
Tonight, you have a more exciting life than me. I soak up your energy. If I do a good job and you react, that’s what makes me feel good and motivates me.

Getting this practice down, you have to be an introvert and an extrovert at the same time. You have to be very comfortable sitting and diligently doing something repetitively. Like I said, you have to know it cold. To the point where you are not even thinking about
it consciously. Flow state. That’s the key to it.

You’ve gotta be an extrovert when you perform, but then you’ve gotta come home and tinker and focus. It’s a weird combo.
It’s a weird job!

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