‘I WISH I WAS STILL ABLE BODIED. BUT THAT’S LIFE. YOU HAVE TO GET ON WITH IT’

THE Mercury’s Lee Marlow spoke to Wayne in 2001. Here is an extract of what he had to say...

WAYNE Dobson and his baffling magic tricks were a staple of prime-time ITV in the late 1980s.

TV moguls loved it. They loved his flash manner, his cheeky-chappie bonhomie, his rolled-up suit sleeves and his laid-back style.

And they loved the spiky-haired former Countesthorpe College student’s ratings even more

A Kind of Magic – 7.30pm on ITV, with glamorous assistant Linda

Lusardi and a Liverpudlian rabbit called Ringo – drew audiences of 11 million.

Dobson, who grew up on the Braunstone estate and started his working life as a sock dyer at a factory in Leicester, was the young pretender of magic. No-one did close hand magic better.

He married a Glaswegian dancer, bought a £60,000 red Ferrari, insured his crafty hands for £1 million and set up a £500,000 lavish love-nest in poshest Surrey.

But fate had a cruel trick in store. Flash magic shows went the same way as tight jeans and Margaret Thatcher at the start of the 1990s. They vanished. Work dried up.

And all the time he was hiding a tragic secret. In 1988, after continually losing his balance, Wayne went to see a specialist. “It’s your inner ear,” they said reassuringly and treated him for vertigo.

The balance problems didn’t get better. “It’s not inner ear – you’ve got multiple sclerosis,” he was told.

For seven years, Dobson kept the news to himself and selected friends and family. But in 1995, he decided to come clean.

“People started to notice things,” he says. “It made life very difficult but I wanted to turn it into a positive thing. That’s the way I am.

The entertainment industry had other ideas. They weren’t interested in magicians – especially magicians with MS.

New love Marianne helped turn his life around, he says. And despite his fall from prime-time TV grace and the MS, Wayne is still cheery, still smiling and insistent that the last thing this piece should be is selfpitying.

Life is a hand of cards, he says, and it’s up to you how you play them.

“I don’t have any regrets...” he says. “Hmmm, well I suppose I do,” he adds.

“I wish I never had this. I wish I was still able bodied. But that’s life. You have to get on with it.”