Paul Daniels (38 page)

We collapsed – me, the audience and the cameramen.

When I started doing the game shows, I could not believe how inefficient the system was. Whether it was mine or anyone else's game, we would record two shows on, say, a Saturday evening and two shows the following Saturday and so on. The whole of the set with its electronics and lighting rigs would be erected and taken down and so on until eventually it got tattier and tattier. I asked why we couldn't do two on a Saturday and two on a Sunday, reducing the wasted time putting the sets up and down. They thought this was a great idea. I was amazed because I knew in America they do five shows a day for a week and then they have twenty-five shows in the can.

After a season of four shows a weekend, I tried to persuade them that we could do the whole series in one bash by recording day after day until it was all finished. This, I pointed out, would be more economical for all of us. I wouldn't have broken weeks in my calendar and could take on more live work and they would reduce their costs enormously because they wouldn't have to put the sets up and down all the time, wouldn't have to re-set all the lighting, and the cameramen would know all the shots.

The bosses told me that the strain on the crew would be too great. What the bosses didn't know was that I was very friendly with the crew, who were equally puzzled by the inefficiency of the system and had also asked why they couldn't do shows day after day. They had been told that I couldn't stand the strain.

So eventually we started to do shows day after day, taking a day off half-way through the recording of the ‘season' to make sure everything was working all right and so that we could take a breather to check the coming questions and prizes.

In the meantime, the
Magic Shows
had developed not only a following of millions in the UK but they had also developed a reputation in the world of circus and cabaret. Video tapes came
in from all over the world from acts hoping to be on the show. They knew that the BBC would make a better job of recording their performances than anyone else. At that time, the Corporation had the finest lighting, sound and cameramen in the world. They really did it better. I asked one of them about it and he commented that occasionally they would be having a drink with some of the crews from the commercial channels who would boast of better pay and conditions.

‘So we have to do it better so that we can just smile and say, “Yes, but the end product is not as good, is it?” '

The commercial channels could never be as good for me, anyway. I hate just getting into a good play, or interesting show, only to have my interest shattered by the overblown sound of the commercial breaks. I don't want the show to be interrupted at all!

Once again, America came into my life. They had seen what I had done with the American game shows in the UK and they wanted me to go over there and present them in the same style. Most game shows came from America. I turned them down. My family was, and is, very important to me and I hate being too far away from them. I even get twitchy on holidays abroad. The Americans, as is their way, thought it was a money thing and upped the offer. It was very hard to explain to them that money didn't come into it and they went away, no doubt muttering about the crazy Limey.

ITV made me an offer to cross the channels and go to work for them. I considered this carefully and said that I couldn't go without my production team. They offered to take on the production team and put John Fisher, the Producer, on their permanent staff. We would all be on increased salaries. I reported this back at the next planning meeting. John Fisher said that he would not leave the BBC, believing that his future lay with them. Despite the considerable increase in money that
it would have brought me, I decided not to break up the team and I stayed with the BBC. In retrospect I think that was a mistake, but I have no regrets. Spilt milk and all that jazz.

Time was flying by, shows came and went. Huge illusions and tiny tricks poured out of the studios and into the living rooms of the nation. Every week hundreds of letters would arrive asking about the various effects we created. To the general public they were entertaining. To the magicians they mostly commanded respect because they realised that hardly any trick arrived on the screen without being either a totally new invention, a totally new presentation or just twisted around somehow in the method. Some magicians copied the stuff, some got jealous. It didn't matter, that is the way it has always been.

The biggest talking points over the years were the Bunco Booth, the Magic Kettle that poured out any drink asked for by the audience, Silverstone race track with Jackie Stewart, the Vanishing Elephant, the British Library book test, the Disappearance of a Million Pounds, the Houdini Water Torture Escape, my ‘death' on Hallowe'en, the chimpanzees and the Christmas Specials.

The Magic Kettle was a very old trick and we did it more than once, each time adding a new twist in method and presentation. A man called Robert Swadling, a great designer and maker of magic, had come to John Fisher with a new way of doing it and I had added a presentational touch so that four members of the audience could merely think of a drink, clean a glass out, pick up the kettle themselves and pour out the drink that they were thinking of. That made one magic magazine write that we had used stooges in the audience to do the trick. John was incensed and made them retract the statement. I hate stooges in the audience. American acts even ‘plant' people to stand up at the right time and ‘lead' a standing
ovation. How do you ever know how good a standing ovation really is if you do that?

In series seven in 1985, I was taken to Silverstone and taught how to drive a racing car that had been designed by Jackie Stewart. The idea was that I would be handcuffed, tied into a sack and that would be locked into a large wooden crate. The whole box would be swung up into the air by a crane and lowered into the middle of the track. As this was happening, Jackie would get in this car and drive it once around the track and, as he completed the circuit, aim it at the wooden box in the middle of the track. He was to crash through the box, but to the viewers' astonishment, it was me who got out of the car and Jackie was seen to have been driving the crane. This was a difficult illusion to make work on screen because we had to make it obvious that no camera tricks had been involved. No camera trickery was ever used in my shows, because there just wasn't any point. If you use such methods, and I have seen them used in magic shows, then anybody could have done the stuff we did.

So I trained hard to drive the car at high speed. I was a genius. I could take on the world. I spun Debbie and others around the track to show off. Then Jackie Stewart, three times World Champion, turned up and drove me round Silverstone. I had been going backwards with the brakes on. He was the genius. The trouble was that Jackie burnt out the clutch. He had his own mechanic with him who refused all help but managed to replace the clutch in under half-an-hour. A few weeks later, the clutch went on my own car and the garage told me that it would take three days. I told them I would pay labour for half-an-hour. I knew about such things, you see.

As we got closer to the first real run-through, I noticed a man getting into a crash helmet and I asked him who he was.

‘I'm the stunt man,' he said. ‘I'm going to do the first drive through the box to see what happens.'

I don't think that I am any braver than the next guy, maybe just a bit more stupid, but I couldn't let him do it. Nobody knew for certain what would happen when the car hit the crate but, as it was my idea to do it, I couldn't risk someone else getting hurt. I drove the car and I can tell you that as you approach such a solid-looking object all your instincts scream out for you to turn away and miss it. What happened was that, every time we tried it, the box exploded over and under the car. So that was all right. The ‘mistake' that we made, but it turned out to be a bonus, was that we used a red sack. We had never intended to tell the guest commentator, Mike Smith, what was going to happen anyway, so that we would get a real reaction from him, but when he saw the sack being dragged under the car after the impact, he thought that not only had I not escaped, but that it was me being dragged up the track. He nearly fainted because it looked like I had been thrown all over the place. It gave Mike a very bad turn and I don't think he got over it, asking that it never be shown on television again. It was good TV though.

In the great age of the Variety theatre, or vaudeville as it was known in America, one of the most publicised illusions of all involved the disappearance of a very large elephant. John Fisher came to an early prerecording planning meeting and asked me whether I could vanish such a large mammal. Of course, I knew all the methods that had happened in the past and I outlined them all. Elephants, as everyone knows, vanish in boxes or cages and usually in a theatre or even a cabaret environment.

‘No,' said John, ‘I want it to vanish outside.'

John had two good qualities. He was the best of researchers and he always tried to get me to push the limits of what had gone before. ‘Wouldn't it be wonderful if it could vanish from a football field?'

‘Yeah, right!'

The team didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I did what I usually did in such situations – let it fester away in my mind. At the next meeting, I came up with a logical, but very expensive, way of vanishing an elephant in the middle of a field, football or not.

Note the word ‘expensive'. I could never understand the BBC's thinking when it came to expenditure. We were getting millions of viewers who were all paying their licence fees but we had a smaller budget than other programmes that had much lower ratings. Ah, if only I had been artistic, darling, I would have understood it all.

Off I went on my merry way, conjuring around the world, because that was what I had to do in between all this television world of wonder. The lads were growing up and I had a life outside the studios. Incidentally, it was while I was doing one gig that I was ferried in a bus from one venue to another, or maybe it was back to the hotel, I can't remember. I do remember that a young comedian called Jim Davidson got into the bus with his girlfriend and on the way I did a couple of card tricks. The Krankies were also in this minibus as I recall. Years later, in his autobiography, Jim wrote that I tried to ‘pull' his girlfriend and was rather uncomplimentary. What he obviously didn't know was that I do card tricks for everyone. I always have a pack of cards in my pocket and it's good practice for me.

The other thing is that I didn't fancy her at all. Jim has his taste in women and I have mine.

I came back to the next planning meeting and, surprisingly, there were all the technical boys from the visual effects department.

‘Go on,' said John. ‘Tell them the details of how you want to vanish the elephant.'

Well, to be honest, after gallivanting around the world, I couldn't remember. It had been months since I had muttered
my offering. Gil Leaney, magical adviser and a lovely man, offered help.

‘We are going to use your method,' he said with a twinkle in his eye, peering into my face, as I desperately tried not to look confused.

‘It's the one with the tent,' prompted Gil. I couldn't believe they were going to spend that kind of money.

My brain kicked into gear and I laid down the details of what would happen. The football field, I was told, was one the Gurkha Regiment used in their barracks. These lads are great soldiers and you don't want to upset them, believe me. I kept it as simple a plot as I could.

We would drive on to the field in a Land Rover. I would be with the Commanding Officer and a celebrity, Johnny Morris, the presenter of Animal Magic. Alighting from our vehicle we planned to walk over to and across the back of the tent. We could do this because all the sides would be laid flat. Volunteers would be allowed to stamp around or poke whatever they wanted, in and around the tent.

The greatest elephant trainer in the world, Bobby Roberts from the Roberts Circus, would bring on an elephant with Debbie riding on top and lead it into the tent. I would fire a cannon, the tent sides would fall down, a crane would lift the top off into the air and all that would be left would be Debbie. A spectacular vanish.

And that is what we did, exactly that. From concept to recording. Perfect. It cost a fortune to set up and rehearse. The elephant had to come overnight in a special truck all the way from Scotland and the trick was over in a few minutes of recording time.

The effect was so clean one newspaper printed that it had to be a camera trick, which it wasn't. Then they said that we had carefully chosen the camera angles to hide the elephant behind
the tent top, which we didn't. What they had forgotten was that, as always, we had a live audience there on the field with us.

It was a great trick to pull off and when anybody asked me where did the elephant go, I always replied, ‘Have you ever seen Debbie eat?'

The person it seemed to affect most was Bert Weedon, a wonderful solo guitarist and the author of the famous
Play in a Day
book. He couldn't let it rest. He wouldn't let it rest.

‘Where did it go?' was his constant cry every time we met. Of course, I wouldn't tell him so he asked me to whisper it in his ear on his deathbed. I refused. Knowing Bert, he might recover.

The years went by and I asked Bert to come to the studio and play his guitar ‘behind' a trick I was doing at Christmas called
Spirit Painting.
A member of the audience chose Marilyn Monroe from a list of celebrities and, as her picture appeared on a plain white piece of paper, Bert played ‘Candle in the Wind'. Elton John wrote this famous piece of music, so we had a visual and audio link. Lovely.

The trick finished and the audience applauded.

‘You think that you were only here to play the guitar, don't you Bert?' He nodded, obviously puzzled. A clap of my hands and stagehands appeared from everywhere and totally dismantled the set. All we were left with was the concrete floor and the bare walls of the studio. The audience were invited down to examine everything and Bert stood there as puzzled as a man can be.