dgmagic - UK magic blog by magician Dan Gifford

One of my favorite magical effects is ‘Holey Moley’ by Jay Sankey.

For those who don’t know it, you show two washers (metal discs with a hole in the middle of each) the spectator chooses one to hold in their closed hand, you take the other and magically remove the hole. The spectator opens their hand to find their washer now has two holes.

It doesn’t form part of a big routine, it’s just a quick bit of magic that I show people when they want to see ‘just one more’.

So, I performed it for a couple towards the end of a gig last night. They were suitably stunned, so much so that the man (who was the booker) said it alone ‘was worth the fee’.

Maybe I’ll drop all my other material! I’ll just walk in, perform Holey Moley, pick up my cheque and go home……

A big thank you to all the members at Coventry Magic Circle who gave me a really warm welcome last night. Performing to magicians can be difficult because they generally don’t react like ‘normal’ people - but the guys at Coventry responded and reacted in all the right places.

It’s also nerve wracking explaining your ideas and pet magic tricks to other magicians, what if they think your stuff is rubbish!? Thankfully, I think everyone took away some new idea or technique last night.

I am hoping to present my lecture ‘High Impact Magic’ at a few other magic clubs and societies over the next year. The lecture is a mixture of close-up magic, stand-up magic and mentalism effects with an emphasis on strong, direct magical effects. When I have confirmed a few more dates I’ll post some information up here.

If anyone is interested, drop me an email: dan@planetstrange.co.uk

What is a nightmare for a magician? Performing to a room full of magicians? Well, yes, but almost as bad is someone who appears to know exactly what you are doing when you are performing to them - by that I mean the method used to accomplish the magic. This happened to me at the weekend.

Sometimes people guess a method and get it partly right. Some people just need an explanation, whether it’s right or wrong, which is fine. But this was really disturbing, this person was getting everything spot on.

Magicians reading this will probably think that means I wasn’t performing very well - there should be no way anyone could see the moves used to achieve a magical effect. But you don’t need to see moves to know they are there, or work out out what they might be. Magicians do this all the time when watching other (good) magicians. They know how a magical effect is achieved even without being able to actually see the moves - they fill in the gaps because their minds work in the right way.

The problem was this wasn’t another magician, it was a very perceptive 11 year old girl! Luckily, what I was doing was still flying by everyone with her - I don’t think they believed her when she managed to work out and describe exactly what I was doing.

How do you cope with this? Confusion.

I was into the next effect before she’d finished saying “But didn’t you just swap those two over and ….”. It became pretty comical, although I must admit I wasn’t laughing on the inside!

It’s interesting how people remember magic.

At a gig I performed at tonight an elderly gent was telling me about a bar bet/magic trick that a friend of his (not a magician) showed him years ago. It involved tying a loop of string around the handle of a beer mug and betting that no one could remove it without untying the knot in the string or breaking or damaging either the string or the mug. (more…)