As a professional magician one of the questions that I get asked almost on a daily basis IS NOT "can you make my wife disappear?" Although that does crop up from time to time, the question in fact is "how do you get into magic, what got you started?" The honest answer is there is know one correct answer it just kind of happens.
Let me explain you could ask a hundred magicians how they got into magic or what or whom inspired them and I'm pretty sure each and every answer will be different!! So boil the kettle put your phone on silent and let me take you through my wonderful journey which has seen me come from a magic obsessed hobbyist to a full time professional who has performed across Europe! In the beginning...
I was fifteen years old when I first got the magic bug it was when I went on holiday to Butlins in Minehead and I seen a pair of masked performers make the canes they were holding defy gravity by dancing round their bodies...
from that moment on I was hooked! So I started off looking in the joke shop they had on the Butlins site and to my amazement they had a "very small" magic section in there with these little packet tricks for sale so I bought two of them and began practising the very same night.
The two tricks I purchased were as follows the first was called the "cup and balls" where three red balls pass through a three plastic cups repeatedly which had been checked by a spectator at the start! (If my memory serves me correct I performed a more advanced version of the cup and balls to help me pass my full adult audition into the Leamington and Warwickshire magic circle.
The second was called the Dynamic Coins, where a stack of 10ps jumped from empty one brass cap into another which of course was empty as well.
(years later I would demonstrate both these tricks to customers when I worked at the House of Illusion magic bar in Spain) At that point I also knew a card trick my Dad had shown me so armed with the tricks I brought and my card trick I went into the pub on site (I believe it was called the half-moon I could be wrong as I have slept since then!?) And I began asking if people would like to see some tricks!! Looking back I at myself laugh as I had no clue what I was doing my only saving grace at the time is that I've always been a people person so i think people given me the benefit of the doubt for being as rubbish as I was! As I was Performing "I use that term loosely" A man said to me "why don't you become the next Paul Daniels" there and then I had what I can only describe as brain-wave and I decide to make magic my life! When I returned home I went to my local library and read the books there they had on magic and from then I wanted to get more involved at the time I didn't know where to turn as I didn't know or had ever heard of any magicians, so my granddad suggested that I find one from the yellow pages and he would be able to help, and I just want too say it was the best move I ever made as "Myles Pollack" *I CANT THANK YOU ENOUGH* helped me get in touch with all the right people at the Leamington and Warwick magic society " I remember there was a lot of ringing and waiting around wondering before I finally talked to the right person who eventual invited me to attend one of the magic meetings as a junior member to say I was over the moon was the understatement and a half!! and from that moment I've never looked back.
So far in my career I've worked on ferry's in Norway and France spent a summer season performing at a magic bar in Spain as well as the world famous Edinburgh fringe festival and London's west end and hopefully just the begin.
To be good at anything times, hardwork and patience, stick with the magic as you ll have one of the greatest hobbies in the world.
I did, and its be the single most rewarding thing I've ever done!