I’m used to performing for magicians and therefore understand their quirks, how they react differently to non-magicians and so on. I’ve also attended enough public magic shows that I know how it feels having the opportunity to watch other performs strut their stuff.

But with each night of this Evening of Deception run, it became clear that that some of the magicians hadn’t had this luxury before as they behaved a little strangely at times. I’ve seen similar behavior at magic conventions and other shows, therefore, would like to make a few suggestions (each one of these is a direct point based on things that happened during our show, or I’ve seen at other people’s shows):

• Don’t take any props with you and definitely don’t perform (or even worse, expose!) tricks at any point before, during or after the show. The performers are there to entertain and you’re there to be entertained.

• If you’re asked to help in the performance, try your absolute best to act like a layperson would. Don’t try to outsmart the magician or show that you’re a magician yourself.

• Don’t whisper to your friends about methods or suggest that you know what the performer is doing. Just let them do their stuff and allow your friends to enjoy the show!

• Don’t ever try to mess up the performer to show that you’re cleverer than them. It’s not smart and denies the rest of the audience the ability to see the planned show.

• During the show, applaud at the right times, act like everyone else … and most importantly, enjoy the show!

This isn’t to brand all magicians as bad spectators; most of the magicians I’ve seen at public shows are courteous, friendly and enjoy the show. In fact, almost every magician that has attended any of my public shows have been incredibly gracious and respectful audience members. Unfortunately, I guess there’s just a few that haven’t learned the ground rules yet!

• Cool
• Smart
• Funny

While it’s certainly true for comedians, I think it’s equally important for magicians to meet that criteria too. In fact, I’d suggest that to be the best magician possible, you’d need to be all three (perhaps not funny all the time, but certainly be able to use humour when required).

I can think of only a few magicians that truly meet all three. And us magicians have an extra battle too: we have to be incredible magicians too. And those comedians think they’ve got it tough!

Here’s a small sampling of what the lecture contains:

• An introduction to the Master Pushoff
• A decent helping of close-up tricks that I use in my professional performances
• A full stand up routine that fits in a briefcase, yet fills a stage
• A brief talk, with some interesting thoughts on marketing for magicians (depending on if the audience would like me to cover this)
• One or two select items from the Vanishing Inc. line

If you’d like to talk to me about lecturing at your club, please get in touch using the contact button on the right!

Email: the obvious one! I use Google apps so that my email address is andi@andigladwin.co.uk and not a gmail address. When I’m not at my desk, I use my iPhone as my main way of responding to emails quickly.

Calendar: I sync my iPhone calendar with my Google Calendar (which, incidentally is also synchronised with iCal on my Mac) so that I always have the latest version of my diary at all times. I also store all the details about my shows in the calendar so that I don’t need to check through my emails to get the venue or timing correct. It also protects me from losing a physical diary, which is every magician’s nightmare!

Evernote: I used to use the built in iPhone notes, but Evernote is so much better as it records voice, photos, videos and text notes. I keep notes about shows, tricks/ideas and many other things.

Sat nav and maps: I use Copilot Live for my sat nav as it has built-in traffic alerts and you can enter venue details by name only (no need for postcodes and so on). The built-in Google Maps app is also very useful for finding tricky venues that a sat nav can’t quite pinpoint.

Photos and video: the quality of the camera is such that I can have people film or photograph me at events, straight from my phone. This has become an incredibly useful tool for me!

WordPress: if I have any downtime, before, after or during a gig I often use the WordPress app to write a blog post about the gig for my close-up magician blog.

Dragon Dictate: I’m still trying to get used to it, but I’m trying to use Dragon Dictate to write emails as I drive. I always use my car as an office to make the most of driving to shows.

There are many more, but these are the main ones. I also use news apps, web stat apps, iBooks, social media apps and of course … a phone for my business purposes!

The idea is simply this: try to make jokes up about everything. For example, when I read the news, I try to come up with jokes about what’s going on. I almost always forget them and they’re almost always terrible, but the idea is to get your mind constantly bouncing around ideas.

An easy way to get started is to think about things that laypeople often say to you and think of ways to respond. “I wouldn’t want to play cards with you,” is always a common one. How could you reply? One idea I came up with is, “You’re right … I only know how to play strip poker, and that won’t be a pretty sight!” It’s not laugh out loud funny and I’ll probably never use it, but it did it’s job: it turned my mind to something creative.

It’s a minor variant that allows you to deal out a Royal Flush for your hand instead of a full house. I think this is theatrically sounder as it shows with conviction that you had planned to beat the participant with a great hand and didn’t just get lucky. This is vitally important with a one-phase Poker Deal.

You’ll need to learn the original handling for this to make any sense. It was published in the October 2006 issue of MAGIC Magazine and also on Joshua Jay’s Talk About Tricks; one of the best DVD sets to be released in a long time.

Remove the following cards and place them in order from top down:

• King – Ten of Spades in any order
• 9 of Spades and Ace of Spades in either order
• Two Nines and two x cards in any order

The handling is now identical to “242 Deal.” There are two possibilities: you win with a royal flush or you win with Nine, Ten, Jack, Quick, King of Spades. Either way, it’s much better than the participant’s pair or trips.

I experimented with ways to get a Ten to Ace royal flush but the tradeoff wasn’t worth it as the best part about Vollmer’s handling was that you carried out the same procedure every time and I wanted to keep that with my variant. I hope you find it of use.

Gambler’s General Store: supplies for everything related to casinos, including many, many decks of cards that I’ve never seen before (many by USPCC). They also stock many cheating and casino protection books that I’ve not seen elsewhere.

Non-magic shows: with so many magic shows in Vegas, it’s easy to ignore the other places to see magic. Variety shows such as V or Peepshow at Planet Hollywood often have illusions in their shows. I also believe that you’ll learn more about magic from a Cirque Du Soliel show than any magic show in the world.

Neon Boneyard: first pointed out to me by Ben Earl (and recommended here, on his blog), this is a great way to find out the story of Vegas, told around the history of Neon in Vegas. I just visited it a few days ago and throughly enjoyed the tour.

Houdini’s: these magic shops for the public are everywhere in Las Vegas. Why do I suggest you visit them? To watch the pitch! Pitchmen are a forgotten art in magic, but to see some of the better performers at Houdini’s perform and then sell a trick is quite a treat. They also give a simple lesson: the most direct magic effects are often the best received.

Casinos: I’m fascinated by how croupiers and players handle playing cards and often spend time taking in their styles etc. It certainly gives you an interesting view into how other professions handle the same props.

The trailer shows me performing some of the mail techniques taught on the DVD, including:

• Breakless double and tripple lifts
• Pushoff second deals
• Double deals, tripple deals and more
• A pushoff tenth deal

You can check out the trailer at the Vanishing Inc. website. Feel free to leave any comments here!

When talking about this idea with other magicians, I’m often asked what I do to create a unique experience. I think it purely comes down to this simple formula:

I believe you should take your act and find ways to make it mean something to each and every group that you perform for. That doesn’t mean that the magic necessarily needs to be meaningful (although it helps), but that it’s relevant to your audience, venue and event.

Vanishing Inc. isn’t really about me or Josh; it’s about the customers and the great people that we work with. Therefore, I don’t really spend a lot of my Vanishing Inc. time writing about my own ideas or thoughts about magic. I moved The Clog (my blog at the time which I ran with a couple of great costars) over to Vanishing Inc. thinking that it would be a good soapbox to a wider audience, but I never found the time to write it. Therefore, I’ve decided to start blogging again on my own site.

Things have changed a lot since the days The Clog. I’ve gone from an IT geek who spent his day in the office to a professional close-up magician. I’ve learned a lot about magic whilst performing it, so I think my views and opinions may be a little different to some of the ones that I wrote on The Clog.