Magician Drummond Money-coutts on performing tricks at Eton for his schoolmates – and the Queen

THIS PICTURE WAS TAKEN in 2004, in a little studio above the old Latin classrooms at Eton. I was in my final year and by this point was being asked to perform spontaneous magic shows at every 16th and 18th birthday party going. I was an awkward teenager and late social developer – looking back, I think I hid behind my hair and my magic tricks. (I had a dream a few months ago that my hair was falling all over my eyes and I had to keep pushing it aside as I used to. I woke up feeling quite bereft – I no longer have a single hair on my head.)

I look terribly serious and I’m afraid I was. There is inevitably something exaggerated and theatrical about a magic show, but I think I might have been a particularly hardcore, devoted 18-year-old magician. It was a bit of a self-preservation thing. I thought if I took it seriously then perhaps everyone else would. These days my friends and family fail to take any of [my magic] seriously and nor do I, really. I love my job, but I will avoid even mentioning it if I can.

Back then, I had no notion I’d ever do it for a living. It wasn’t until university that I dared to dream – I started to get regular work, and by the time I left university I could just about get by. But I’ve been infatuated with magic since I was very small. I inhaled ghost stories and had fixations with anything the slightest bit magical. One week it would be Ancient Egypt, the next it would be conspiracy theories.

When I was eight, in an effort to channel my obsession into something productive, my father took me to the magic shop Davenports under Coutts on the Strand. (An ancestor of mine founded the bank; my father worked there for years.) He got me the catalogue and from that moment on I was lost to its world, spending every spare moment learning new tricks and reading about magicians. It all started with a deck of cards. I didn’t move on to bigger stunts – raceagainst-time tricks such as tying myself to two golf buggies driving in opposite directions – until later. I had a great friend who was as obsessed as I was, and we spent all our time at school swapping techniques. I even invited Uri Geller to come and perform at school, and was often asked to do spoon-bending tricks for classmates.

Ironically, as I grew older and magic became my party piece, it was something I had to get comfortable doing in front of other people. For some, magic is a means of courting attention, but it was the opposite for me. Tricks were a useful distraction technique from what a painfully awkward teenager I was. In fact to this day I don’t tend to mention my magic if I’m on a date and I certainly don’t sit at dinner with women performing tricks.

The more magic I did, the more hooked I became. Certain teachers knew I did it and would have me stand up at the front during a lesson and do whatever I’d been working on that day. Or I’d be at a party and find myself performing in front of a small group of people. It is intoxicating to be generating emotions in people and it became very addictive. I even got to perform for the Queen once when she came to school for a function. That was a huge honour. She seemed to be enjoying it. She wrote a very kind letter to Sir Eric [Anderson], former provost of Eton College, afterwards, in which she mentioned the magic. I do hope someone had made me get a haircut by then.

— Interview by Eleanor Steafel

Death By Magic, in which Money-coutts travels the world attempting his own versions of ‘the stunts that cost magicians their lives’, is on Netflix now

I don’t tend to mention my magic if I’m on a date and I certainly don’t sit at dinner with women performing tricks

Drummond Money-coutts at Eton in 2004, where he ‘hid behind’ his magic