“Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef” - Tod Robbins

Art is the greatest deception of all; a lie that reveals the truth. By giving yourself over to that lie you are able to experience something amazing. We  allow the medium of film to deceive us, and in doing so take us on amazing adventures; positive illusions based on deception. Magic requires that you are willingly complicit in the deception, meaning that you essentially deceive yourself.

Magic is an advanced deception game. A piece of experimental psychology informed by imagination, aesthetics, interaction, skill and showmanship. The power is not in the trick we think we see, it’s the act itself, the moment the magician creates, the way it makes us feel.

Like any other discipline, mastery of magic in any form will take many years of hard work. Almost everything I do requires extreme levels of skill developed over many years by many hours of research, experimentation and practice. My job is to hide that work, to make it look effortless and impossible. To create a moment of magic.

For some interesting information on this subject click here.

You my remember back in January I appeared on the ITV1 show ‘Penn & Teller: Fool Us’ and managed to fool Penn and Teller (click here for more details). As a winner on the show, I was awarded the opportunity to appear on the Penn & Teller show live on stage at The Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. I flew out to Vegas on June 1st with the brilliant John Archer who also fooled Penn & Teller on the January show, and we spent the best part of a week with the ITV crew filming our trip and eventually, the show itself. Originally I was supposed to open their show…then it changed and I was closing.

The week was packed full of meetings and visits to some of Vegas’ best locations, we took a helicopter flight over the strip at night which was amazing, we hired a 1957 red Chevy and drove it to some of the coolest sights in Sin City, and then, on Saturday night, the 4th of June, I closed the Penn & Teller show at The Rio to a packed theatre. Leading up to the night, I was apprehensive – I am not a stage performer, and what I do best is perform up close and ‘in-the-hands’ so this would be a new experience for me, but when the moment finally arrived for me to take to the stage, I suddenly felt incredibly confident and as I waited in the wings backstage and I couldn’t wait to get up there and do my thing. Penn Jilette gave me a very warm and incredibly smooth introduction, which made for a great transition from their act to mine. I performed an advanced close-up magic set utilising a live camera feed which fed to  huge screen above me, giving the audience a clear view of exactly what my hands were doing at all times. I called a spectator up onto stage to join me and demonstrated close-up exactly what I did on the ITV1 show which fooled Penn & Teller. The crowd loved it (well, they applauded ferociously which I took as a good sign) and the spectator, who was suitably impressed, went back to his seat. I then went on to do a complex card routine accompanied by some really unique music put together by a friend o mine who is an incredible music producer. As the music ended, the audience gave me a tumultuous round of applause, and I even managed to get a standing ovation from a large portion of the crowd which was unexpected and completely humbling. All in all it was a truly amazing experience, and having the opportunity to do it on a huge Las Vegas stage is one I will never forget.

“Ben Earl took our audience & killed them all deader than doornails!” -  Penn Jilette

“Ben Earl was exquisitely virtuosic.  What a show!” -  Teller

The Penn & Teller show is without doubt the best magic show in the world, a fact agreed by magicians and lay people alike. Being in a position to close their show was an honour and a privilege which came with a lot of pressure and a certain amount of responsibility. After the show, Penn & Teller themselves gave me some fantastic feedback. Penn told his followers on Twitter that night, that “Ben Earl killed ‘em deader than doornails” and Teller said he loved my performance and that I was “exquisitely virtuosic”. These are great complements which mean a lot coming from not only experienced Las Vegas veterans but the best magic act in the world.

I was recently asked by a government sponsored company to use my skills as a magician to ‘create potential solutions to high risk situations in which human life is at stake’. Yes it’s a mouthful. My brief was to use my knowledge of magic & illusion to devise new solutions to current problems in these fields. That is all I can say right now, otherwise I’ll have to kill you all. It was a fun day and a good break from the normal schedule of close-up magic performances at weddings, parties and corporate functions across Surrey.

Over the next few months I will be trying to concentrate on performing close-up magic in Surrey, Sussex and London only. I have a number of interesting projects to get involved with over the next few months that will be taking up a lot of my time so limiting my travel to Surrey, Sussex and London will make that much easier. I may write about some of these projects here in the blog.

I am now officially a Surrey based magician as I have just moved to the lovely Camberley. I have been booked to perform close-up magic many times in Surrey as it is a relatively affluent area with hundreds of amazing venues which are perfect for close-up magic. There are not many professional magicians in the UK and even less based in Surrey; so if you are looking to hire a magician to perform close-up magic at your next event in Surrey, then I’m only a stone’s throw away.

Today (7th of January) I appeared on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, shown on ITV and hosted by Jonathan Ross…and I fooled them, so very soon I’m flying to Las Vegas to open their show! If you missed the show, you can catch it again on ITV Player online, but the basic premise was for magicians to perform in front of legendary duo Penn & Teller in a bid to fool the pants off them. If you managed to fool them, you’d be invited to Las Vegas to open their nightly show on the Las Vegas Strip. Quite a challenge, but one I accepted and ultimately managed to do! (pats self humbly upon the back)

Being involved in the show was a great experience and one that I will never forget. I specifically chose to perform a sleight-of-hand piece of my own creation that is very difficult to do. I chose to avoid the traditional magic presentation and opted for a gambling/sleight-of-hand piece beginning by openly telling them what I was doing…Penn & Teller are renowned for explaining their methods, and I thought they’d appreciate the subtle homage. I wanted to challenge myself to do something very difficult under very difficult conditions and I saw this as an opportunity to test my ability in a high pressure environment. Walking out onto the stage in front of 600 people, bright lights, world famous magicians and a very cool TV host, not to mention millions of viewers at home is daunting enough, but on the night those conditions were even more challenging than I would ever have expected and so my skills were genuinely pushed to the limit:

I knew that the effect I was to show P&T was tough, but I also felt confident I could pull it off; that was until Teller handed me his own deck of cards. The trick I performed can be achieved with a borrowed and shuffled deck, but Teller’s own deck had been sat in his back pocket for the past few hours in a hot studio, and when I took them out of the box, they resembled pieces of damp cardboard, just like the sort of deck you’d find in the back of your wardrobe that’s been in the family for years. Like I said, I can perform this piece with any borrowed deck, in the same way a professional golfer can play with any golf club, or a tennis player can play with any racket. But if you were to give a pro golfer a borrowed stick from a nearby tree and the tennis player a frying pan, they’d struggle to pull off their best work! As you can imagine this massively effected my touch, timing and technique. Without going into too much technical detail I basically had to improvise techniques live whilst thinking about what Penn & Teller and the audience could see; I was surrounded by people and multiple HD cameras including a camera shot from above. The pressure was on to pull something amazing out of the bag, and with the deck I had to use coupled with hundreds of pairs of eyes on me, I am still shocked that I managed to remain calm, think clearly and successfully pull it off! I don’t think I’ve ever been in such an intense position before, but the adrenaline that I felt after I managed to fool them was enough to make me want to do it all over again.

Teller came up to me after the show and said that he had no idea how I was managing to locate the Aces from memory so effortlessly. He was even more impressed that I managed to do what I did with the deck he had handed me. I just wish I could have shown them what it looks like when the deck of cards is in a good condition! I chose to perform something on the show specifically to fool Penn & Teller and in a way that couldn’t be exposed, it isn’t something that I would normally do for the public but I was more than happy with the result. My main aim was to go on TV and really push myself to my limits, the fact that I get to open their Las Vegas show is a huge bonus.

As a professional magician, I perform for corporate and private clients all over the world. I also lecture for magic establishments at conferences and conventions, train other magicians and create magic for myself and other magicians. I feel like an incredibly lucky individual as I love my job and I feel even luckier now that this year has started with such an unexpected bang. I’m looking forward to opening the Penn & Teller show at the Rio in Las Vegas later this year, and with a few more exciting projects in the pipeline, 2011 looks set to be a good year. Watch this space…

If you’d like to contact me for corporate or private bookings then please click here.

Happy New Year folks!

I hope that this new year is filled with less snow, less ice and more winning lottery tickets.

I am starting work on a consultancy project on the 8th of January to create lots of original magic for a TV show as well as train the magician (improving his skills and handling etc). This is an intense project but one that I am looking forward to as it will be creatively challenging and more interesting than the banal rubbish that normally presents itself at the beginning of January. I may be flying out to Taiwan soon to complete the project but hopefully I can finish it all here…in the comfort of my own pants.

On a trip to Las Vegas in 2009, a very friendly taxi driver told me about the Neon Graveyard: Three acres of arid dessert housing decaying neon signs that once proudly served as magnificent advertisements for many establishments on the Las Vegas strip. It is a very haunting place which is simultaneously sad and beautiful. Punctuated with flashes of colour and the sound of creaking-metal yielding to the wind, It is a form of retro art gallery where one expects to find a ‘Bond villain’ kicking his heels into retirement in an underground top hat made from 2000 light bulbs.

The non-profit Neon Museum has refurbished a small number of the original signs and displayed them around the city, breathing life once again into these iconic metal & light sculptures (allowing the world to see some of this city’s oldest cultural relics restored to their former brilliance). I hope that the Neon Graveyard is always a part of Las Vegas as these signs have just as much charm in restoration as they do in death, dereliction and decay.

I have such a busy December that is unlikely that I will be able to enjoy any of it. I shall be creating a human shaped blur all over London and the south of England. I am now regretting my temporary move to Southampton and shall be moving back to London as soon as possible (before I go mental with more hours spent in trains and cars than is probably healthy).  At least on Xmas day I will have a temporary rest before starting again (fuelled by rich food and mulled wine).

I went to see Penn & Teller recently in London. I saw them in Las Vegas and their show was 10/10, the show in London was a 8/10 in comparison and yet still better than any other magic show out there. They are a class act and incredibly cool. Their energy and stage presence is as vibrant and contemporary today as it was 20 years ago. I can recommend their performance to any human being on the planet who want to see what a magic act should be like, but if you get the chance see them in Las Vegas.