Paul Daniels

by Paul Daniels

  Despite the fact that I had a scuba diver underneath just in case I went in, I knew that I would sink like a stone. I had even made myself an undersuit created from bubble-wrap, in the hope that this would keep me afloat if it went wrong. Happily, I discovered that it also kept me warmer.

  Fortunately, the stunt worked well, but I still got wet as the raft tipped and bobbed in the water. In breaks between rehearsals and takes, I sat in the back of the car and de-bubble-wrapped myself, with a car hair-dryer aimed at my hands and feet to try and get some blood circulating again.

  The worst accident I suffered was while doing the Indian Rope Trick. We wanted to do it in the open air because that’s where the legend says it was supposed to happen. Dressed in a beautiful white Indian coat and turban, I was given a handful of gunpowder, which I was to throw into the fire. This would give a lovely surprise bang, providing necessary atmospheric decoration. In rehearsals, it was very effective. One of the advisers thought it would look more authentic if I threw the gunpowder from an Indian-looking brass pot. I agreed to try and a small, vase-shaped one was found with a belly bottom and a narrow neck. As I flicked it with my right hand towards the fire, the gunpowder formed an arc, hit the flame and flashed back into the pot, which exploded. It took the surface off my right hand and ignited the nylon lining of my sleeve. The hot nylon melted into my arm and I thought to myself that, if I was to get it off again, now was the time to do it as it couldn’t possibly hurt any more than it did. I pulled it off and said, ‘Oh bother,’ or words to that effect.

  The costume designer was trained in first-aid. Running to the outside catering trucks, she grabbed a bucket of cold water and a bag of ice and plunged my hand into it. The shock waves that went up my arm were excruciating and I could see that the skin was hanging off. For years, I had been terrified of any risk of injury to my hands and even more so recently, during which time they had become my essential means of working. It’s funny, but I never even gave it a thought that my hands were insured for £1 million. My insurance was very strange at the time, anyway, with each part of my body being independently insured, sadly some parts for a lot less than others.

  For some strange reason, with everybody around me panicking, I became very calm and went into my slow motion, dream-like state again. Miles away from a hospital and half-way through a ‘take’, I recommended that we finish off the job and then I would get to a hospital. We could spray some white paint over the blackened parts of my costume and keep the cameras at a certain angle, I suggested. It all worked according to plan, but when it came to me climbing up the rope it was extremely painful. I tried to use my legs and left hand as much as possible, but in order to make it look correct, I had to use my burnt right hand, too. That was so painful, it was almost unbearable.

  Having finished the ‘take’, I put my hand back in the bucket and was rushed to hospital, where they said it was the quick action of the costume designer that had saved my hand. I was very grateful to her.

  The Indian Rope Trick is supposed to be a legend. Every time it has been written up it is always second-hand. Researchers liken it to the legends that we have of Jack and the Beanstalk. Apparently, the Japanese have a story of the cherry tree that grew to the sky and the Native Americans have something similar.

  While putting on make-up, before the accident, I was sitting reflecting on how odd we are. There was I being ‘browned up’ and I remembered going to see the great K Lal show in India years before. In his illusion show, he and his assistants were ‘whited up’. Funny old world. One of the musicians from the Indian band that we had employed for ‘backing music’ to the trick asked me what we were going to do. I told him and he came back with the most surprising comment, ‘the Indian Rope Trick? Oh yes, I have seen that.’ Note the difference here. He did not say that he knew someone else who had seen it, he had seen it.

  He went on to describe something that I believe is the ‘root’ of the legend. Frequently, people have approached me and told me of tricks they have seen me do that I know I never did. I do know what they are talking about but the effect has been distorted, enlarged and exaggerated out of all proportion to the original.

  Apparently, there is a troupe of magicians and jugglers travelling around a particular district of India and they do a trick whereby the magician plays an Indian flute and ropes rise into the air. This, by the way, is fairly easy for a magician to do, so don’t dismiss the story yet. The ropes rise until the bottoms of the ropes clear the ground and the magician gets quite agitated, commanding people in the crowd to grab the bottom of the ropes to stop them rising into the air any further.

  Again he plays the flute and suddenly commands the audience to look up and watch the ropes dance. He plays again and the tops of the ropes dance about in the air. When he stops playing he shouts, and the ropes drop to the floor and the people who were holding the ropes have disappeared.

  That’s a really good trick and the best bit is that it is totally possible using standard magic principles.

  After the accident, we had to have a break from recording for a few weeks while my hand and arm got better. As soon as we could, we were out on the road shooting some more outside illusions, even though I was still having treatment. When we were in Scotland, I went for a change of dressing and was looked after by an Indian doctor who asked me how I had hurt myself. I told him.

  ‘The Indian Rope Trick,’ he replied. ‘Oh yes, I have seen that.’

  Unbelievable. He told almost the same story, coming from the same district, the only difference being that he had seen it when the travelling players came to his school and did the trick in his school hall. What a coincidence.

  Somewhere in the middle of all these magic shows, a children’s show, Saturday Morning Superstore, asked me to be a guest. I seem to remember that the host was Mike Read and I had to be ‘on the floor’ by 9.00am. That meant being in by 8.30am so that I could get changed and have my makeup done. I drove up to the entrance in Wood Lane and stopped the car just short of the car park barrier, the usual long arm that swings up and down. From the glass-walled office by the gate came the usual ‘man in a cap’.

  ‘You can’t bring that car in here,’ was the cheery early-morning greeting. I felt I was in an Al Read sketch, if you are old enough to remember that brilliant comedian.

  I looked into the empty car park, lines all painted and not a car in sight.

  ‘I’m here to do Saturday Morning Superstore.’

  ‘I don’t care what you are here to do, you can’t park that in here.’

  ‘Well,’ I pointed into the back of the car, ‘I’ve got all these props to unload.’

  ‘You are not taking that car in there.’

  He did not bother to tell me how I was supposed to get all the props into the studio. I hate people in any business who demand of someone, ‘do you know who I am?’ so I took another route.

  ‘If you look on the list in your office you will find that they phoned me yesterday for my car registration number and organised the car park for me.’

  ‘I don’t care what they did, nobody is parking in here.’

  I was left with no option but I did manage to find a different way to put it.

  ‘Er, do you know what I do for a living?’

  ‘I don’t care what you do, I am not letting you into this car park.’

  I gave up. ‘OK, I’ll go home. Would you phone the studio for me and just tell them that I was here, and I’ve gone home?’

  I drove home.

  While appearing at the Prince of Wales, Giffard’s Barn had proved too far to get to on a regular basis. I lived in the Kensington Hilton for about nine months and then bought another house in Royal Crescent, a beautiful row of Georgian buildings opposite. Somehow, I had managed to buy one of the few houses in the crescent that had not been converted into flats. New bathrooms and a kitchen were installed and all the lights and curtains were voice activated. I was ahead of my time and, remember, he who dies with the most toys, wins. The
house had one other big advantage – it was just around the corner from the studios.

  In no time at all I was sitting having a coffee, feet up and watching the television. On came the programme and Mike said the usual greetings and then, ‘Paul Daniels is supposed to be with us but he must have disappeared. Never mind, I’m sure he will be here soon.’

  ‘Oh no I won’t,’ I said to the set, but he didn’t answer me.

  After about ten minutes the phone rang and it was the ever-efficient Joyce.

  ‘What are you doing there? Have you forgotten you are supposed to be in the studios?’

  I explained what had happened. Joyce had worked at the BBC for years and I had stolen her to work for me. She couldn’t believe it.

  ‘I’ll ring you back,’ she said.

  Sure enough, she did. ‘They are going to send a car for you,’ she said.

  I told her to ring them back and cancel it. I had a car and it was packed with the props. It was ridiculous to use licence-payers’ money on a car when I was prepared to drive myself there and park in an empty car park.

  ‘I’ll ring you back,’ said Joyce.

  Yet again, she did. ‘Can you be there in exactly 15 minutes’ time, don’t go beforehand. They are going to send him on a tea break to prevent any embarrassment.’

  I went and did the show. On the following Tuesday evening, I was coming out of the Television Centre when I spotted a camera crew shooting a very strange-looking machine. It. turned out to be the Sinclair C5, an attempt at a one-person electric vehicle. A little lamp came on in my head. I watched as the very low-slung ‘car’ went round and round the inner courtyard and found the man in charge of it.

  ‘How much is that?’ I asked and he told me that, fully fitted with the bright orange tonneau covers and the rear flash that made it much more visible to other traffic, it was £450.

  ‘Here’s a cheque,’ I said. ‘I’ll take it.’

  He argued back, ‘Oh you can’t have that one. That’s the first one and it’s our demonstration machine.’

  ‘Get on the phone to Sinclair’s and tell them that you are selling it to me and that tomorrow I will drive it right through London for them.’

  They delivered it round the corner and the next day I had it charged up and ready to go. True to my word, I drove the C5 through London and the press loved it. I, and Sinclair, received full-page publicity and they never cashed my cheque.

  A few days later, having made some phone calls to find out when he was on duty, I drove the C5 up Wood Lane and turned into the entrance to the BBC Television Centre. Out ‘he’ came to find out what my business was and I lay back and drove the machine under the barrier and into the car park. It was hysterical. He chased me round the car park and I drove it back under the barrier, raised my fingers in a ‘formal’ salute, and went home. Worth every penny, even if they’d cashed the cheque.

  I’ve never used it since, other than to show nephews and the like. For a while, Dad and I considered hanging it on divots on the back of the Ferrari but we never got round to it.

  I suppose the most famous trick I ever did at the BBC was the Iron Maiden escape. John Fisher had either approached the bosses or they had asked him to make a Hallowe’en magic special. John called the team together and we went over various ‘spooky’ concepts. Eventually, he asked me whether I could come up with something that would really ‘spook’ the nation, ‘like Orson Welles did in America when he announced an invasion of Martians’.

  Various ideas were mooted until I came up with the idea of a trick going wrong. We worked on this show for longer than most and eventually the following went out as a live show on 31 October 1987. We shot the whole thing in a rather gothic setting and style.

  As I remember, there was a version of a levitation done using Debbie and then, inside an old mansion, I performed a version of Fogel’s Houdini Séance routine, with magic tricks to illustrate what happened at the last real séance held to try to contact the great escape artist. Eugene Burger, a strange-looking, bearded, dramatic magician created a couple of intimate magical moments, personifying ghost-storytelling with a twinkle in his eye. As I have always tried to be up to the minute with technology, the electronics company Panasonic provided a blank tape, still in its cellophane from the production line, and we put it into a free-standing, battery-operated video recorder, which was only attached to a battery-driven video camera. We recorded a shot of the house clock coming up to midnight, but little happened, only an ornament fell over. When we played the tape back, however, a ghostly shape could be seen to walk across the room.

  Finally, I asked the invited audience to go next door, back into the hallway of the house. Standing on a large table base was an evil-looking illusion. This was a kind of iron Maiden cabinet, the interior of both the cabinet and the door having large metal spikes. There was obviously no spare space for anyone inside. A paper door covered the interior also and, when I was chained into this, a hopper of metal balls was opened, allowing the balls to drop through to another container that, in turn, was connected to the door release.

  When this second container reached a certain weight it pulled the pin out of the release and the enormous door swung shut, metal spikes tearing through the paper and into me, if I didn’t get out in time. This was all demonstrated, checked and in I went. What the viewers didn’t know was that all week I had been escaping from this beast, bursting out of the paper door just before the spikes came swinging round. They also didn’t know that until the afternoon of the recording, only the close members of the production team knew that I wasn’t coming out. I had designed two illusions in one. We told the cameramen on the afternoon so that they would not over-react that night.

  On the night of the live show I went in, the invited audience sat around, the illusion started and, as my foot started to come out through the paper door, the metal spiked door slammed shut. There was a stunned silence and then the director cut the screen to black. Instead of the happy music that always ended our shows, there was total silence except for the voice of the floor manager being cut off in mid sentence, ‘Would you all please go to the next …’ The credits for the show rolled up stark white against the black screen and, at the BBC, the phones went mad.

  In the house, which was well out in the country and cut off from civilisation, the audience went, uncomfortably, back into the lounge. The stage hands pulled the door open and tore away the paper. I was still standing, chained, in the same position I had occupied before the trick started.

  ‘I can’t get out,’ I said and a stage hand said, ‘Oh bugger, he’s still alive so we’ll have to come to work on Monday morning.’

  Once released, I went in to the next room to reassure the audience and to remind them that this was Hallowe’en and we had just said ‘BOO’ to the nation. Anne Robinson, the journalist who now presents television shows, looked at me in amazement, total amazement.

  ‘Get me a phone,’ she demanded, knowing she was on top of one of the best stories of the year. We wouldn’t let her get to a phone because we didn’t want a leak to the papers before they went out for the next day. She has never given me a good write-up since, saying in no uncertain terms that she doesn’t like me as a person. Amazing that she has this perception seeing as how, apart from passing her once in a corridor, that was the only time that she has ever met me. I can’t tell you how that breaks my heart.

  Meanwhile, the switchboard at the BBC was blocked. The telephonists couldn’t give an answer for quite a while because they didn’t know what the answer was. John Fisher was dancing around the house in delight that we had pulled it off and we all had quite a party after the show. The phone lines were blocked for three days and we had created an ‘event’ like Orson Welles and his War of the Worlds.

  The BBC being what it was, and the schedules being so tight, despite the live Hallowe’en show being created on the Saturday night, we all had to be in the studios for a Sunday recording of one of the series.

  I sailed in bright
and breezy, still on a high and went into my allocated dressing room. The team were already in and waiting for me. John’s face showed one of his tight upper lips.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re happy,’ he said, ‘because you might have cost us our jobs.’

  I couldn’t believe it. The whole event had been approved by John, I had come up with the concept, it was all built and recorded under his supervision and the night before he had been dancing on air. Now, in one sentence, it was all down to me. We had done what we set out to do, we had made a good programme. He should have stood his ground. Apparently, the BBC were not happy about the fuss and the publicity. The Head of Light Entertainment made one of his rare trips to visit us at work and started to give me a ticking off based on the fact that the Sun newspaper had said that our viewers had phoned in their thousands to complain. I called the BBC operators to find out what was happening and their comment was, ‘Well, you’ve given us a lot of work with everyone phoning to ask if you are all right. When we tell them that it was a trick, mostly they just laugh and say, “Oh no, he’s fooled us again.” ’

  They may have had a few complaints but the problem with the BBC is that it gives enormous credibility to the few complaints it gets out of the millions of viewers who don’t.

  ‘Be that as it may be,’ said the Head. ‘The Board are not very happy.’ ‘Then let me go and talk to them,’ I said. ‘Let me tell them about the operators and the people’s reactions. Let me tell them that the viewers must be sick to the back teeth of plastic television and knowing what is going to happen next. What this place needs is more Hitchcocks and Spielbergs and Cecil B De Milles. And if it keeps everybody happy I’ll tear this bloody thing up.’