Presidential...
John Mills
I hope all of our Members and their families and friends had a great Christmas and are at the start of a Happy and Prosperous New Year. I also hope that the workers amongst us had a busy holiday season but without stress or difficulty.
Details for the AGM at the Devonshire House, Edge Lane, on Thursday 12th January are again scattered throughout this issue. The road directions are repeated in Rick’s Editorial.
Whilst on the telephone to Rick the other night the conversation turned to the successes of Mahatma Members past and present who have progressed to higher things in the World of Magic. Here’s some recent and not so recent ones who came instantly to mind.
In 1953 Oscar Paulson was President of the IBM British Ring. Bob Ostin won the IBM Micro Magic Award in 1961. Bob’s latest book ‘A lifetime of magical inventions’ is becoming a ‘must have’ addition to every performer’s library and Bob must be one of the most cited magical authors in magic. In 1977 David Britland won the Mahatma’s Heygate Shield for most promising newcomer. In April 2006 David will receive a Literary Fellowship from the Academy of Magical Arts at the Beverley Hills Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. He will be rubbing shoulders with Paul Daniels who receives a Masters Fellowship at the same event. Steven Tucker was a member at this time also and as we know Steven went on to become our best known inventor, dealer and magic publisher and current Editor of the Budget, the IBM British Ring Magazine.
Also in 1977, Paul Stone won the IBM Comedy Award, the Tom Harris Trophy. In 1978 Paul Stone won the Comedy Award again and the same act took the Conventioneer’s Cup for Originality. Paul’s continuous and extensive contribution to the World of Magic was recognised with Gold Star Membership of the Inner Magic Circle in 2004. Watch out for Paul’s input into next year’s IBM Convention and President’s Dinner.
In 1988 ‘Tarot’ (Brian Farron) became British Champion of Illusion at the Blackpool Convention. John Lenehan was a member briefly and went on to star in his own TV show.
This list is not meant to be comprehensive. Who have we left out? Let us know so we can give our members and ex-members the recognition they deserve.
See you all at the AGM.
Regards, John
Secretarial….
Paul Stone
MAHATMA MAGIC CIRCLE
Secretary’s Report - January 2006
2005 was, as expected, a busy year for the Mahatma, and in many ways, a memorable one too. For any Society to reach its 90th Anniversary is a major achievement, particularly in this day and age when there are so many alternative activities for people to involve themselves in.
The Council and 90th Anniversary Committee decided that we should celebrate this considerable landmark in style by putting on a 90th Anniversary Celebration Weekend Convention in Liverpool. It duly took place in May at the excellent Crowne Plaza Hotel, where we welcomed several top Stars from the world of Magic to entertain us. It is worth reminding ourselves who these performers were: Jeff Hobson, Rocco, Michael Ammar and Eugene Burger from USA, Gaetan Bloom from France and Lennart Green from Sweden.
The Cabaret on the Saturday night Gala Dinner also featured the well known British Ventriloquist and three times Royal Variety Show performer, Paul Zerdin, and Dancing was to the fabulous ‘Overtures’ with sounds of the 60’s & 70’s.
As promised by the Council, the Mahatma Day of Magic & Mayhem was free to all members, and by deliberately limiting the numbers, everyone had a great opportunity to watch and enjoy these Stars of Magic in action, in comfort, and with a great view.
In the opinion of many magical guests, including the Magic Circle President, Alan Shaxon and his wife Anne, Mike Gancia and Liz Warlock, it was a superb weekend and easily the best ‘small’ Convention held for years in UK.
Throughout the year, the Council put on some great evenings with Lectures from some of UK Magic’s top names including Mark Mason and Alan Shaxon, and also the two ‘Michaels’ from USA, Michael Ammar and Michael Close. All these lectures took place in the first class surroundings of the Marriott South Hotel on the site of the old Liverpool Airport. Every lecturer without exception commented on the Mahatma hospitality and the high quality of the facilities we provided for them.
The Mahatma Tour to Las Vegas at the end of October proved to be another memorable week for those members who went, and a huge amount of Magic was crammed into 7 days! Included were an evening at the world famous ‘Magic Castle’ in Hollywood, followed by the ‘It’s Magic Show’, and then on to Las Vegas to see the ‘Rick Thomas Show’ at the Stardust Hotel & Casino, the ‘World’s Greatest Magic Show’ at the Greek Isles Hotel, the ‘V’ Show at the Aladdin Hotel & Casino, starring Jeff Hobson, the ‘Folies Bergeres Show’ at the Tropicana Hotel & Casino, and finally the ‘Lance Burton Show’ at the Monte Carlo Hotel & Casino, after which Lance came out specially to meet our group, sign autographs and pose for photographs. He was a real STAR! It was hectic, but quite a trip!
Our last meeting of 2005, ‘An Evening of Magic & Illusion’ took place at Marine Football Club in Crosby, and was a terrific evening and a great success. Over 120 people were royally entertained ‘Close-up’ by Brian Cattlin, Phil Iredale, John Mills, Paul Sylvester and Rick Tynan, and the Cabaret was provided by Ben Stone and Guest Artist, Craig Christian, featuring his doves and illusions. Paul Stone MC’d the evening.
The venue was ideal and the feedback was excellent. Marine are very keen to repeat the event in the future. Thanks are due to all the performers, and also to the members who turned up to add their support.
I have decided to stand down as Secretary as I plan to travel abroad a lot more in 2006, particularly to USA where I will be presenting a Lecture tour around the country, and so will not have as much time to devote to the Mahatma as over the last couple of years.
Now that our 90th Anniversary year is over, the Council has decided to change our monthly meeting venue to the Devonshire House Hotel, and the meetings will revert to the first Thursday of every month ( with the exception of April, due to Easter ). The Devonshire House is a friendly hotel and is very centrally located, easy to access and with plenty of parking too. It is also obviously less expensive than the Marriott South Hotel.
The continued success of the Mahatma is, as ever, in your hands. Whether we are able to reach our Centenary in 2015 is down to your support and that alone. The Mahatma is, and always will be, what YOU the members make of it. The Mahatma certainly won’t survive if you continue to leave all the work to just one or two people, and expect everything to be done for you.
During this last very important year for the Mahatma, it was disappointing that a number of members didn’t rally round, but rather left it to others. Without John & Rick, there wouldn’t be a Mahatma, so my special thanks to them for all the hours and commitment they’ve put in to support me over the very busy past 12 months.
In my opinion, we do now have some excellent members with a great deal of talent, but it would be nice to see more of them ‘giving something back to the Mahatma’.
I wish you all a healthy and prosperous New Year!
PAUL
Alan Ward’s Mind Miracle
Arun Bonerjee
SET-UP: Get a pack of E.S.P cards. Stack the cards in any cyclic order, replace pack in its wallet, and keep it in your pocket. (You do not have to memorise cyclic order of the cards.)
PRESENTATION: Take out the pack from wallet and hold it face up in your left hand. Pass cards in bunches from your left hand to right hand without disturbing their order. Tell the close-up viewers, that you have got a computerised pack of symbolic cards that you will use to check a person’s prime characteristic as well as trying to find out his lucky symbol. Thus commenting square up the pack and turn it face down. Cut the pack several times apparently mixing it whilst you invite someone sitting opposite to you at the table to participate in the experiment.
Place the pack face down on the table and ask the spectator to cut it and complete the cut. This done pick up the pack. Ask the spectator to tell you his month of birth. Let us say the spectator says ‘October’. Loudly spell ‘O-C-T-O-B-E-R’ and simultaneously shift a card for each letter from top to face of the pack. For the last letter ‘R’ deal the corresponding card face down in front of the spectator.
Tell him that you will return to his psychic selection later. Incidentally, you further comment, that as this is going to be mind-magic, so you have to spell that! Loudly spell ‘M-I-N-D-M-A-G-I-C’, simultaneously dealing a card for each letter in a face down pile on the table, then place aside the pack. Next pick up the spectator’s selected card keeping it face down. State that now you have to feed data to the computer packet! Pass the single card through the middle of the dealt packet, passing it across the width of the packet, then place it back face down in front of the spectator.
Pick up the dealt packet and shift 2 cards top to face of the packet. Fan the packet and mix the cards well without disturbing the 3rd card from top. This card will always match the selection.
State that you are now data processing the packet! Square up the packet and turn over the top 2 cards together face up. Next shift the top 3 cards together to the face of the packet. Again turn the top 3 cards together face up and shift them en block to the face of the packet. Once more turn the top 3 cards together face up and replace them on top of the face up packet. Turn packet face down and place it on the table. This isn’t as complicated as it sounds and leaves the 3rd card reversed in the packet.
Ask the spectator to turn his selected card face up. Let us say the card is found to be STAR. Look at it and then tell the spectator that the STAR represents a person having a strong, determined type of mind. (You will say the same thing whatever may be the selected symbol!) Say that, in fact, this should be very probable for him as he was also born in October! But now, you have to check his psychic selection against the data processed packet!
Thus commenting, insert the face up STAR in the middle of the face down dealt packet. Slap it, spread it and then comes the surprise – a second card is also found to be face up, which is also STAR!
Thus smile and congratulate the spectator for having the STAR as a lucky symbol. As he or she possesses a strong determined type of mind, he or she should make real success in life!
MAGICAL SALUTE: To Alan Ward, as the handling of the packet of cards in this trick was developed from one he applied to his card trick, ‘HAVE A NICE HEART’, published in January ’04 issue of THE MAGICIAN magazine.
Arun Bonerjee
Neil Walker writes….
Hi Everyone, I hope you are all well. I am not sure when you will be reading this article but hopefully it will be the New Year now and you've all had a great Christmas and did many shows— some you may want to forget about but others you don’t.
First, I would like to recap on an article I wrote last year. It was all about my two neighbours and the link to magic that they had. Also the gentleman whose uncle was a friend of Siegfried & Roy or at least one half anyway.
Well dear Members, I have yet another story to tell you and please believe me when I say that these are all true stories and from people I have met.
This story is again to do with a show I did in Wilmslow on Saturday 8th of October. The lady that I mention here I have worked for before. However, I have only met her father once and a nice chap he is.
I shall begin at the beginning which I suppose is a good place to start.
The show I did went well, as they always do. (Can I say that or do I sound big headed?? It's just that I can never find a hat that will fit me, that's all!) Anyway, after I had finished Jane Coburn came over to pay me my fee and offer me a drink, which I heartily accepted.
I was packing my props away and the drink arrived. It was brought over by Jane’s father. I never did find out his name so for arguments sake I will call him Mr Coburn. The conversation went along the usual lines about how the children enjoyed the show etc. etc. Then Mr Coburn took time to tell me about his father who was in the war.....now you may be thinking why would I be interested in a story about the war ??
Well if, like me, you are an avid reader of the history of magic you may recall a certain well known magician who was involved in the war or rather helped in the war effort- Jasper Maskelyne. Now this fellow magician was commissioned to fabricate illusions to throw the enemy ‘off the scent’ and help us win the war.
I always believe that it is not only we magicians that have an interesting story to tell when it comes to Magic. The tales that Mr Coburn was able to relate, told to him by his father, were most interesting and opened my eyes to what really happened all those years ago. Well Mr Coburn enthralled me with the story of a complete airfield that was really a mock up. His father and his air crew were forced to land in the airfield only to find when they emerged from the plane that it was, in fact, a "dummy" airfield and designed to do just as I mentioned previous.
Further into the chat I was told how a complete street was made up to look like a real one from the sky and the use of search lights to act as street lights so the German bombers would think they had come across a real town...Oh the story went on but sadly I cannot recall all of what he told me but have tried to write what I can remember of it for you all to read. Eddie gave me a newspaper article some time ago and that was about a film being made on this very subject. If you know any more about it let me know.
That's it from me till next time....regards and best wishes to you all...Neil
Editorial…
Rick Tynan
On Thursday 12th January 2006 we have our AGM at the Devonshire House, Holt Suite. This will be our venue and Thursday our normal meeting day for all of 2006. Minutes, Nominations and Agenda (so far) are published in this issue for the second time. Other nominations, proposals or points for discussion are all welcome.
Directions: Come off M62 and go straight toward the City - you will be on Edge Lane. This is a dual carriageway. Count the Traffic Lights including the pedestrian ones. Keep going straight ahead for about a mile. There are 8 sets of lights. At about 8 there is a high fence on your left with a wavy line painted on it. Down the centre of the road is a railing and on the far right pavement look for a Texaco filling station. Go to end of railing and do a 'U' turn back the way you came. (If coming from town use Edge Lane and arrive with the Texaco filling station on your left.) You need to turn up the near side of the Texaco. At the back of Texaco turn right across behind it and then do 2 lefts. The door to the hotel is on the right of the car park. Many members will have been to the Devonshire as we have held a couple of our dinners there.
Our last meeting of 2005 was our Christmas Spectacular at Crosby Marine Football Club …. And it was a ‘cracker’. The turnout from Members and their Guests was excellent and the football club provided a great family audience who enjoyed the night immensely. The evening had everything….Close-up Magic, Cabaret, a great atmosphere and a Quiz.
The Close-up Workers in action that I saw were Phil Iredale, Paul Sylvester, David Brandwood, John Mills, Brian Cattlin and myself. Thanks to these members and others who performed to table on the night. The generous audience applause spoke volumes about the standard of entertainment.
Congratulations to Ben Stone who provided expert technical support and then made his ‘stand-up’ debut. Ben gave us strong magic, well presented in Ben’s own confident style to a well deserved and warm reception.
Craig Christian provided the finale with an excellent and highly commercial illusion act. This was all the more impressive as it was performed virtually ’close-up’. The levitation was awesome!
Many thanks to all those who took part and also all those who supported our last event for the 90th Celebrations and made such a memorable meeting.
All the Best in
Magic ….Rick