Of the River Kwai
That was three months’ pay on 18-hour days to buy an egg.
“He wrote it on a piece of paper and got me to go to the cookhouse, where the cook asked me in sign language what I wanted.
“I wondered what was on the paper and thought, ‘Maybe it says, ‘give him what he wants’.
“So I asked for 50 eggs and took them straight back to the hut where we made a 50-egg omelette.”
The trick he performed that evening went well – but next day came his brush with death.
He said: “I was summoned to the commandant. He was glowering and said in English, ‘ You do trick, one egg – where 49 eggs?’ Now, you could get your head cut off for stealing a potato. And here’s me with 50 eggs.
“I thought I’d be dead within the next 10 seconds. They always had a sword. But I managed to get out of it by telling him that his show was so important that I had needed to rehearse all day, so he let me go.
“I remember walking back to the hut saying, ‘ You fool, you could have been dead’.”
Referring to the river in Thailand which gave him his nickname Fergus said: “When you were working on the Kwai it was 120 degrees, 18 hours a day.
“They used to give us 10 minutes every hour when we could get river water, boil it and drink it. While that was being done I would start doing some magic for the guards. They got very interested and asked for more.
“I sometimes made those 10 minutes last for 45 while my mates pinched potatoes from the stores.”
Fergus, who says the Japanese were “horrible swines” but that he does not hate them, first learned to do magic as a four-yearold. He said: “I would do tricks for my family and they would pretend to be amazed. Every year I would get another trick and work my way up.”
At 18 he joined the Magic Circle and remained its youngest member for five years, performing as an amateur for the Scouts and WI.
After the war he worked as a lecturer but also earned extra cash performing as a semi-professional magician four or five times a week.
He is still a regular visitor to the Magic Circle’s London HQ, where he is now the oldest member.
He joked: “I have been a member for 79 years. I’m getting the hang of it now.”