It’s (a kinda) magic
The jury might be out on God but magic is real. Donal O’donoghue uses his illusion
Many moons ago, a travelling magician would sometimes stop by our school.
ere seemed to be no advance warning, he just appeared as if by you-knowwhat, with his twirly moustache and unlikely tan. Crying ‘sim sala bim’ he weaved his spell, but there was something vaguely scary about this man with razor eyes that could see into your soul; or at least the innards of your pocket, from whence he would extract a never-ending paternoster of gaily-coloured handkerchiefs. With the cynicism of age, I now know our magician was a cut-price version: no uttering doves or bedazzled rabbits ever emerged from his battered hat and there was no chance at all that he could make ‘Sir’ disappear.
But we wanted to believe. At home, my older brother would demonstrate his own little bit of DIY illusion, arming himself with the bread knife to saw o half his nger. “Hey Ma, he’s done it again,” we’d holler in mock-horror, happy to be part of the act. Yep, magic was scary and we loved it, in the esh, in print (from Mandrake the Magician to Dr Strange) and in that fake glass of brandy which the visiting uncle would fall for every time, sucking relentlessly at the rim before eventually turning the trick drink upside down and realising he’d been fooled again.
On TV, there was e Magician; Bill Bixby as a conjuror outwitting criminals with his mind. Bixby would go on to play Dr David Banner, the mild-mannered scientist with anger management issues, in e Incredible Hulk and e Magician would be sorted of reincarnated years later as
e Mentalist, in which a mind-reader helps the CBI (California Bureau of Investigation) put away the bad guys. Around the same time, Patricia Arquette’s Medium was also helping the law enforcement agencies by talking to dead people who spilled the beans on cold cases.
Years back, when he was king of the Magic World, with the ability to make the Statue of Liberty disappear and supermodels appear at his side, I met David Copper eld. It was like an audience with a deity (albeit one dressed in slacks and a polo neck): his entourage fussing while his coi ed hair seemed to levitate independent of his body. David was from another planet, whereas the late, great Paul Daniels was from a house in the heart of the English countryside. I know this because I visited him there amid his treasure trove of magic memorabilia which may or may not have included Excalibur, the Ark of the Covenant and a Blankety Blank cheque-book and pen. Magic has moved on in some ways. Now the magician is the illusionist or the mentalist or the guy frozen in ice for days on end. But it’s still scary and exhilarating and the school kid inside us will always want to believe that a man can y, or a cut nger can be miraculously regenerated, or that you can never have enough knotted handkerchiefs.