Dynamo: Hand pain stops my magic tricks
Star’s health battle halts work
DYNAMO has told how he had to put his career on hold due to his battle with Crohn’s disease and arthritis.
The magician, 35, yesterday said the painful condition meant he “won’t be able to use my hands like I normally would” when performing tricks.
It comes after Dynamo, real name Steven Frayne, revealed he had been suffering for the past eight months, having been hospitalised with food poisoning and Crohn’s. Arthritis is a side effect.
Yet the star said a recent trip to Syria had helped put his health battle into perspective.
He said: “I wasn’t able to perform much magic because of my illness, so it allowed me to go out there and do something to help other people, and really focus my mind on not thinking about my illness and [instead] thinking about helping other people.
“It really put into perspective what Syrian children and families are having to go through. It makes my illness feel like nothing in comparison.” Dynamo added he had “taken a lot of this time to re-evaluate my approach to magic and some elements of life in general”. The star is working with global children’s charity Theirworld to get half a million Syrian refugee children into education by the end of the year, and will take a petition to the United Nations. He told BBC Breakfast: “They were promised an education from the governments who met in 2016 at the UN, they promised all this money to get kids in school and they didn’t deliver. “They’re meeting again in a few days and I’m going to go there.” Dynamo added of rebuilding his career: “I’m working with a physio and doctors to find a way to get the right medication and the right treatment, so I can hopefully come back on stage and show you some new magic. “I’m always working on new ideas and I’ve got many ways to do my tricks, some of them don’t need as much dexterity. I use my mind, which is still intact.”