The man who conjured up a very English form of magic
Paul Daniels must rank as the most taken-for-granted magician of modern times. For 15 years his BBC show pulled in millions of viewers. His was a household name to conjure with. And yet I can’t really remember a time when it was acceptable to voice appreciation for him. He was the magician it was acceptable to sneer at.
Was that because of his political preferences (Tory), age (particularly vis a vis his showbiz partner/wife Debbie McGee), baldness, diminutive stature or huge success? Most likely, it was a combination of those things, along with unfortunate timing. The cultural landscape was shifting during his prime-time heyday, and it made him seem old-guard even when he plainly had a huge appeal for the young; he was mainstream, alas, when to be “alternative” was in.
Even though the pendulum has swung back in favour of light entertainment, with shows such as Britain’s Got Talent making variety the spice of popular viewing once again, Daniels never returned to the fold. As a reviewer, I saw him crop up in panto, on the Edinburgh fringe and one night by the seaside in Bournemouth: he was on the bill with Cannon and Ball, the Krankies and Brotherhood of Man – as though they were all time-locked in the Seventies.
I’d forgotten how good he was – he somehow produced an audience member’s £20 note from the inside of an acorn (“Now that’s magic!”) and his repartee was crackerjack, too. Like his direct contemporary Terry Wogan, he had the gift of the gab; not as warm or cuddly, but with its own charm and wit.
There’s a clip of him on YouTube conducting “the world’s oldest trick” – his high-speed “chop cup routine”, where he keeps you guessing whether the white ball is in the cup, his patter a blur of words. Equally assured is the way he engages with a teenager in the audience, establishing that he has come from round the corner to the Shepherd’s Bush studio: “How nice of you to drop in, it’s home from home isn’t it?” he says quick as a flash.
Where is that combination of lightning-fingered magicianship and spry showmanship to be found now? Daniels is credited in his own modest fashion with having made magic less staid, paving the way, like John the Baptist, for the Messianic rock ’n’ roll spectacles of today. Does that argument hold, though? Isn’t Houdini a more obvious inspiration for David Blaine, Dynamo, Derren Brown and their seeming-impossible feats?
I think the truth of his legacy is more prosaic and more interesting. He bequeathed us an example of theatricality that didn’t have a capital “T”; he had a twinkling approachability that refused the melodrama of flashing-eyed mystery and reflected an unobtrusive Englishness.
In his shtick you heard the creak of the music-hall stage and pier planks but also the sound of someone wheeling their bin out at the correct time of day. He was the mildmannered Prospero of our isle; his restraint inscribed in that catchphrase: “You’ll like this, not a lot… but you’ll like it.”
We may have laughed at his puppet on Spitting
Image and consigned him to the margins in the quest for something new, glamorous, different. But watch him in action and you see that he understood better than many that good magic entails a form of storytelling.
You thought you knew the world? Look, listen, prepare to be amazed.