IT’S A KINDER MAGIC...
Being sick, most recently with Covid-19, is nothing new to Dynamo. The Queen’s favourite magician has battled illness all his life but tricks and illusions help him cope with adversity
ANEW television series by the magician known as Dynamo could not be timed better. For if there is anyone who can inspire people through adversity and sickness, it is him. Earlier this week the illusionist posted a video reassuring his fans he is recovering well from Covid-19 after suffering “quite severe” symptoms.
Dynamo is in the vulnerable category of patients – he’s on immunosuppressant drugs because of arthritis and Crohn’s Disease – but once again he has escaped danger and is managing to smile through the pain.
Many of us will have discovered an inner strength in the new-found circumstances we find ourselves in.And for Dynamo, being frighteningly sick proved the inspiration for a new TV show – his first in six years – which isn’t just a wondrous and aweinspiring spectacle from the man who once walked on the Thames, but also a genuinely uplifting story of someone who almost lost everything due to ill health.
While the Bradford-born magician, real name Steven Frayne, has always given his work a story, the series Dynamo: Beyond Belief, is about his journey to hell and back over the past three years of horrific illness.
THE series moves between the unbelievable highs of his career – he was the first magician to sell out arenas – to him becoming seriously ill, with his lifelong Crohn’s Disease flaring up after a bout of food poisoning that then led to crippling arthritis.At his lowest he was spending most of his day in chronic pain with shaking hands, terrified he would never work again.
“It is easy to take things for granted, like we are walking through life with our eyes closed,” says the 37-year-old father of one.
“It seems like only yesterday I had the world at my feet. If I am honest, success made me believe I was invincible, but the more successful I became, the less inspired I was. Then, one Saturday in July 2017, reality came knocking.”
That was when he was rushed to hospital with severe food poisoning. Because part of his intestine had been removed when he was 17 because of Crohn’s – an autoimmune condition that develops in the gut – it was to have a particularly dangerous impact.
“The pain was so intense that even the highest doses of morphine barely touched the sides,” he recalls. “But I would have all sorts of dreams and I dreamed my pain was a living thing that could be controlled and tamed. I would wake up in a sweat and furiously write my dreams in a diary.”
He was in hospital for three-and-a-half weeks and left with “hundreds of new magic ideas in my little black book”. He felt well again, apart from some strange pain in his right ankle.
“Over the following months things returned to normal,” he says. “I started performing again and life seemed pretty good. But over time the discomfort which had started in my ankles started to intensify, spreading to my knees, shoulders, wrists and hands.
“My hands would shake and the one thing you need as a magician is a steady hand. I couldn’t even shuffle a pack of cards.
“Some mornings the pain was so bad, I struggled to get out of bed.”
He was diagnosed with reactive arthritis, caused by the shock to his system of the food poisoning, and he was prescribed a chemistry lab of pills, including steroids that made him visibly bloated and still unwell. The series features selftaped videos he made at home from this period, showing how ill he felt and looks.
“My home was my prison,” he explains. “My hips and lower back were in constant pain. I couldn’t use cards anymore so I tried to practise magic with anything I could find. I started to remember the life I once had, I guess it can be hard to appreciate things in the moment.”
He adds, in words which could not be more pertinent for all of us now: “I never really appreciated what I had until I lost it all. That’s the whole tragic point. We rarely take time to stop for a moment and reflect.
“That’s the beauty of magic. It helps us see the world in ways we’ve never seen it before.”
But then magic has always been Dynamo’s salvation.
His mother was just 16 when he was born while his father, who had left the family home when he was four, was in and out of prison. He grew up on some of Bradford’s most deprived housing estates.
“Some of my greatest triumphs have come from dark places,” he admits. “My whole outlook on life came from not having a father figure – someone to guide me. I had to take my own path.”
The Crohn’s meant the young Steven was small and weak and prone to being bullied. He describes the life-long illness as being like “an open wound inside your