by Dynamo
Gramps’s army days meant he had seen a lot of life. He was a wise man. I never told him that I was being bullied, he just knew. He’d meet me after school sometimes and I reckon he saw things happening for a long time, but wanted to make sure before he stepped in. He was like Mr Miyagi – and I was his Grasshopper!
One night, not long after my twelfth birthday, Gramps showed me the ultimate way to take on the bullies. I’d been rolled down the hill for the hundredth time, and my head was hanging so far down it almost touched my toes as I shuffled home. I’d been crying – not because the boys had hurt me but because I felt so humiliated. Nana and Gramps were at our house and I went straight to my room, as always. When my mum called me down for tea, I sat there, quietly, eating. I didn’t say anything to Gramps, but he could just tell. After tea, he came up to my room. ‘You know how to win a fight, don’t you, Steven?’ he said. I looked up hesitantly, shaking my head very slightly. ‘All right, come here and I’ll show you something.’
Gramps didn’t give me a master class in boxing. He did something much better than that. This time, rather than showing me magic with laces and matchboxes, he demonstrated how to, literally, take away someone’s strength. By the end of my ‘lesson’ Gramps was unable to pick me up – his slight, twelve-year-old grandson. It was the most empowering feeling I’ve ever had. I still use the technique today – on the first series of Dynamo: Magician Impossible, I asked world champion heavyweight boxer David Haye to pick me up and after I’d taken his strength away not even he could do it. I’m eight stone max at my heaviest! He looked very confused.
A couple of days later, I saw Paul and Ben and the life-changing moment I described earlier took place. I drained them of their strength. It was the last time they ever rolled me down a hill or threw me into the dam. The look on their faces was an absolute picture. Their jaws dropped and they backed away nervously. I’d found the most powerful way to overcome them – through the power of my mind.
Not long after, I recalled the magic Gramps had shown me with the matchboxes. I’d worked it out by myself and shown it to my mum and my cousins, but not to anyone at school. I reached a stage where I could practically do it with my eyes shut, but hadn’t found my moment. Then one day, I saw my chance. ‘Hey everyone, watch this,’ I said to the kids as they milled around their desks, waiting for the teacher to arrive. By now, word had got round about what I’d done to Paul and Ben. My classmates thought I was a bit weird, and that I had some kind of strange power, so they had steered clear of me ever since. Eventually, though, curiosity getting the better of them, they slowly gathered round. ‘It’s probably a load of rubbish,’ muttered one. I traced Gramps’s move and showed everyone how the green matches were in the red box and the red matches were in the red box, then I closed them and asked one of the kids to shake them. Then – pow – in a flash the matches had swapped over…
‘Wow!’ exclaimed one girl who I’d had a crush on for ages. ‘Show us again.’ The rest of them all stood open-mouthed; some were laughing, some shouting in amazement or shaking their heads. I don’t know what the best bit was: the acceptance of my classmates or the realisation that girls who had previously ignored me began to pay me some attention. It seemed the magic gave me the edge I’d been craving. As I drank in the scene, it was almost as magical as the matchboxes – around me stood boys and girls of all different colours and backgrounds. Usually, the Asian kids kept to themselves while the white kids always stuck together and black kids would drift between the two groups. It was the same when we were all back home on the estate too. But in this moment, magic seemed to have broken down the divide. Slowly, my eyes were opening – magic had powers far beyond those you could see.
From that moment, I immersed myself in magic. I read every book I could get my hands on and practised and practised, day after day and night after night. Magic literally became my world… some might say an obsession. I sat in and practised magic for hours on end with Gramps helping me and encouraging me along the way. I’d spend hours just shuffling cards alone, trying to figure out new ways of moving them around. Hours turned into months, months into years. I was told recently about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours theory – that all experts have practised for at least 10,000 hours to master their chosen field, be that Beethoven, Michael Jackson, Picasso or Steve Jobs. I laughed when I heard that; I reckon I’ve spent at least ten times that practising my magic.
I WAS A loner growing up, but over the years I’ve met thousands of people from all walks of life. It might have scared the kids at school, but as I got older and went to college, my magic instantly won me friends. I chose to go to the Batley School of Art and Design in Bradford, which wasn’t the typical college that you went to if you had gone to my school. Not only was it a creative college, but you had to take two buses to get there from where I lived. But I didn’t care about the journey. It was a fresh start for me; no one knew who I was and no one knew I had been bullied before. The first day I got there, someone asked me what I was into, and I said, ‘I like doing magic.’ I did some, and they loved it and they accepted me. I felt like I could be myself. When I told them about my Crohn’s they just said, ‘Oh, that sucks,’ and that was that. They didn’t act like I was some alien out of space. They were much more mature about it. I found that people wanted to hang round with me, watch me perform with my cards. It created an immediate connection. Magic was my way of bringing people together.
That first time when I took away Paul and Ben’s strength, thanks to Gramps, my whole life changed and I knew my life’s focus would be magic. It wasn’t the idea of fame or money attracting me back then – far from it. It was simply that the most wonderful feeling rose up inside me whenever I showed someone magic; it made people happy. I’ll never, ever get bored of watching people’s faces when they witness something astonishing.
I’d spend hours shuffling, figuring out new ways of moving the cards
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CHAPTER 2
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HUSTLE AND BUSTLE
‘I’VE WORKED IT out; I know how you do it!’
Every now and then my friends or my girlfriend will suddenly, out of nowhere, announce that they’ve figured out how I do a certain piece of magic. The funny thing is it’s always something random. I haven’t done magic like my shoelaces tying themselves since 2004. But just recently, one of my oldest mates came up and said, ‘I’ve worked it out!’ The thought of people sitting around talking about how I walked on water blows my mind.
There are so many elements involved in every single thing I do. The average person doesn’t understand all of the technical intricacies that go into one piece of magic. They might see how one element is done and the illusion is broken for them. They think because they’ve seen one little thing they know everything,
‘I saw you do something behind your back.’
‘Oh, right. What did you see?’
‘Well, I don’t know, but you did something, so that’s how you did it!’
Unless you’re into magic then it can be hard to appreciate the way someone actually does something, rather than just the end effect. It often takes someone who’s really into the art to understand it. I watch other magicians all the time because I appreciate the spectacle, the art, the style of that magician. It’s beautiful to watch magic when it’s perfectly executed.
Take music, for instance. You’ve got so many unknown kids out there who have the same potential as some of the biggest, most famous rappers. But the normal person on the street wouldn’t appreciate the fine detail that they put into their wordplay. It would take the ear of an emcee to hear a rapper from the UK and say, ‘Wow, that kid’s cadence, his punch lines, the way he structured the lyric, his use of double entendres is amazing.’ Sometimes it takes an artist to fully appreciate an artist.
I don’t mind that people want to work it out. But I hope that my magic is strong enough that ultimately people just enjoy it. I really want people to believe in my magic because then anything
is possible. There’s something that Joseph Dunninger, a pioneer of magic, once said: ‘For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not, none will suffice.’
That’s very, very true. I think magic is a feeling, it’s an emotion. It’s something that is brought out in someone when they’re witnessing something they can’t explain. They think, I can’t explain that, it must be magic.
I THINK THAT part of my success as a magician comes down to a combination of factors that informed my childhood years. I was ill a lot of the time and I lived on a rough estate, so my mum didn’t like me playing outside. I spent a lot of time indoors cooped up in my bedroom. I had days, weeks, months and, ultimately, years to perfect my magic.
As a kid, I would practice with my cards, with bits of string, or matchboxes, for hours and hours after school. I bought those ‘starter’ magician boxes but would bore of them immediately and instead use the props that they came with to further my own ideas. I was absorbed in the world of magic and what I could do with it.
My room was pretty small. There was a window to the right of the bed that I’d sometimes stare out of absent-mindedly while shuffling cards. I’m a Bradford City fan so I painted my walls in claret and amber in honour of my football team. It was me, on my bed, watching films and working on my magic.
As I got older, my mum let me go out a little more after school, even suggesting I could get a part-time or Saturday job. She didn’t have money to spare, so if I wanted to buy myself clothes or CDs, then I’d have to earn my own way.
I had a couple of different jobs as a teenager. I got myself a paper round and then, when I was fourteen, I got a job in a local video store, which I really loved.
Although it wasn’t that glamorous, the video store inadvertently informed a huge part of my approach to magic. I’d get to see all the new films before anyone else. I’d go home with two or three of the latest releases and watch them until my eyes were too heavy and I’d fall asleep. I’d spend hours absorbed in the world of Superman, Spider-Man and Batman. I became even more obsessed with film than when I was a kid and almost without realising it I built up an encyclopaedic knowledge.
Someone else who worked in a video store is the film director Quentin Tarantino. It’s perhaps no coincidence that we both ended up in the creative industries; although Tarantino’s a filmmaker and I’m a magician, I don’t see what we do as particularly different. We both entertain people in a very visual sense. Film and magic are able to transport people away from life as we know it, to the realms of the impossible.
When I was seventeen I started working at a hardware store as pretty much the dogsbody. When I wasn’t lifting and carrying I’d be sent out back to bag up nails. I’d have to count them one by one and I’d be covered in cuts and dust. It was hard work but the boss was really cool. He even bought me a magic book!
OVER THE YEARS, I’ve tried to push the envelope with what I do, but there’s nothing purer than having a pack of cards in my hand and just jamming. I can entertain myself for hours. I can create art with cards. I can generate moments of astonishment. All I need is me and a pack of cards, and I’m pretty sure I could walk into any room anywhere in the world and do stuff that no one’s ever seen before. I practise with my cards the whole time. I’ll be watching TV and not realise that I’m doing it. My cards have become an extension of me.
A deck of cards is a pretty magical thing in itself. The more I found out about their history, the more fascinated I was by them. Did you know they were invented in ancient China during the Tang dynasty? They spread throughout Asia in the 1300s and came into Europe, via Egypt, in the fourteenth century. There are four suits in each deck and there are four seasons in the year. If you add up all the pips (that’s the suit symbols) on all the cards, they add up to 364, plus one for the Joker, that comes to 365. There are 365 days in a year. Everything stands for something.
When I was a teenager, I used to go to the MAPA Youth Club in West Bowling. You could play football or learn breakdancing. I was really into my magic and I was beginning to want to take it in my own direction. I would practise breakdancing every week and then I’d do my magic after the classes or during the breaks.
There were three guys who used to teach us breakdancing – Rash, Jimmy and Dennis John, who choreographs a lot of my shows now. Rash and Jimmy were two Asian guys who were amazing body poppers. One day, I had been learning how to do the glide where you move from one foot to the other in a seamless way. I’d practise it in between some body popping. Messing about, I did the glide and, at the end, combined it with popping. Jimmy said, ‘Oh that’s amazing, you should keep practising that’. It suddenly fell into place and made sense. I could combine elements of dance with shuffling.
It’s like when you’re cooking at home and you accidentally put the wrong ingredient into something, but then it tastes better and you’ve suddenly created this great new chicken sauce. I combined two things that shouldn’t have been together, but they worked – they tasted good!
I soon discovered that body popping could transform my act. Anyone can shuffle cards with a bit of practice, and I quickly learnt how to do it like a professional gambler. I would ‘riffle’ the cards, which is when you split the deck in two and then interweave them as they fall. I could do the cascade where you lay the whole deck out flat in one smooth motion, and I learnt how to work the deck so it would fly through the air from one hand to the other.
When I did those moves at school, the kids were impressed at first, but they soon lost interest. But when I showed them my new ideas, they were in awe all over again. Thanks to breakdancing and body popping, I learnt how to incorporate the moves into my card shuffle, giving me another way to appeal to kids my own age. A few years ago, I taught myself to shuffle in slow motion. Now it’s second nature to me, but it took a lot of attempts to be able to stack them at odd angles or flick a card up on the air and kick it behind me.
Really, I am my own audience so it made sense for me to work alongside the culture that inspired both me and the kids around me. I always wanted to make sure that no matter what people thought of my magic, there should be enough skill displayed that they have to respect it regardless. Even if they think what I’m doing is a ‘trick’, hopefully they’d still appreciate the dexterity of my hands, the expertise behind it, and my approach.
YOU’VE GOT TO put your heart and soul into it if you want to succeed at this game; you won’t make money overnight and you have to look at the bigger picture if you’re heading for the top. I’ve achieved a lot so far, but I haven’t touched where I want to go. It’s not easy – you will get knock-backs – but you have to take the criticism. You have to have good people around you. Listen to everyone’s advice and take it in, although you don’t always have to do what they say. But listening and making a considered judgement on what you hear is so important. I don’t take criticism as a personal attack. I know when someone’s intentions are honest and when they’re just being jealous. Even if it’s delivered in a horrible way, I think it’s still important to think through what someone has said rather than dismiss it straight away as someone ‘hating’.
When you’re doing what you do – whatever it is – you’ve got to set high expectations because these days everyone is competing on a world scale. If you want to make it as a singer you’ve got to think that you’re going up against Adele, Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. If sport is your thing, consider the Beckhams, the Bolts and the Messis. I looked to Blaine, Copperfield and Penn and Teller in the hope that one day I might be mentioned in the same breath as them. If you read up on these kinds of people then you will find the beginnings of their stories are somewhat similar to mine. In all those cases, those guys, like me, worked relentlessly on their chosen craft from a really young age. If you’re fortunate to discover that you’re not only good at cooking, piano or table tennis, but you love it, then keep at it and work as hard as you can. In later years it will pay off, even if it’s not in the way you might have expected.
And it’s never too late!
It takes hours and hours of work. I’m talking in the thousands. I was stubborn, I kept on going, and I worked harder at magic than anyone could have done. If you really want to do something, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. So many people told me I couldn’t do it and they were wrong. You have to be stubborn but be smart with it. If you think you can prove others wrong, go for it.
For a long time I felt quite shunned by some circles of magic. At first they thought I was destroying their idea of magic; that it wasn’t supposed to be done on the street by a guy in a hat and a hoodie. I’m more accepted now, as I’m inspiring the younger generation to get into magic, which is good for the whole art form.
PEOPLE BEGAN TAKING me more seriously as a magician when I hit my mid-teens. I started to get asked to work around the estate at birthday parties, or my mum’s friends would want me to come over and perform at a party or a christening. Word spread slowly around Delph Hill, then Bradford, then Sheffield, and before I knew it, I was performing all over the North of England at clubs and parties.
Initially, people would just offer to pay for my petrol; so if I was playing a show in Leeds, I wouldn’t make much money. But me and my boys found a great system to make a few tips. I always liked people to tip because they wanted to. That said, sometimes of course you have to give people a little nudge.
Though I didn’t have many friends at school, I made lifelong friends when I was a teenager. Alex, Johnny and Marcus were my boys back then and still are today. I had all of them involved in my work: Alex would drive us, Marcus would be security, and Johnny would collect the cash and deal with the bookings.