On wonderful things, and how they are delivered

This weekend was Cougars Cabaret, produced and hosted by the might and splendid Lily Snatchdragon, and then The Young Magicians Annual shindig at the Magic Circle. They were both ridiculous amounts of nourishing fun, and not as different as you, or in fact I, might have thought.

Cougars - and yes, it’s a cabaret show where all the performers are over 40 - was exactly what its artform should be. The most diverse line-up and audience you could wish for, bringing silliness, glamour, wit and artistry to a gorgeous venue, with the filthiest stage I have ever seen. So much heart. So much community and belonging and fierce group self-validation. What a beautiful thing it was. You should keep an eye out for the next one and go.

And then, on Sunday, to the magic circle. I got there early, fuelled up with coffee, so I could watch the under 18’s stage magic contest. So glad I did. One of the problems with performing magic, in my opinion, is that people just do what they think a magician should do. I talked about this at the lecture I gave at Andy Nyman’s London Magic Convention. So it made me really happy to see about half of the performers here, not do that. Instead that had theatrical ideas that were whimsical, literate, personal.. and then they found the magic in those ideas. Paul Daniels once defined magic to me as “A play about someone who can do anything”, and these young people were absolutely doing that.

I performed for them that night, and then signed books afterwards, and - once again - it did me such good to meet all these kids who had found their family in a magic club. There were cool kids, sure, but also plenty of nerds, neurodiverse folks, giggly hyper kids, shy staring at the floor kids - all unified by the hobby they loved. And you know what? When one of those kids was showing a trick, all the others became their biggest cheerleaders. When they came offstage, there were congrats and hugs and giggles. There’s more than a few grown-ups who could learn something about artistic community from these young performers.

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A few more backstage shots from Cougars Cabaret

I also brought my camera on tour this week

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I’ve been doing a few events to promote my book recently, and it’s been just fantastic meeting kids and hearing their jokes and signing their books and telling them “yes, the book really will teach you how to levitate”, and also chatting to grown ups who I hope see a book with a good heart and enough stuff in it to keep their kids quiet for a while.

But a couple of the grown-ups I’ve met have said something that’s stuck in my head. They’ve said - with a sour look on their face - something along the lines of “This is good because it will pull them away from staring at their bloody screens all the time” - and I see that this is meant absolutely as a compliment, but whenever someone said it, it made me feel a bit conflicted. So I’m going to try to delve into why that is.