Who am I, what's my history and how did I get to be doing what I do?
And why does this photographer have me kneeling in the road for the sake of an arty photograph?
Like most people, my life has twisted and turned in unexpected ways. At various parts of my life I've been a Sun newspaper cartoonist, an actor, a candle maker, a film director, a radio presenter, a stand-up comedian, a Japanese chicken shed cleaner, I've worked on the Harry Potter movies and for many years now I've been a full time touring magician and entertainer. I've lived in England, Scotland, Wales, Hong Kong and Japan and I've worked in around 30 countries. And I have a face that people are sure they recognise but can't quite place where from.
So now I've got to condense all of that in a way that makes sense and fits on one page. Heck, writing your biography is hard!
Shall we start with childhood? I guess it's as good a place as any.
Imagine if you will the sort of wibbly-wobbly swirly effect TV and film editors use to show we're slipping back into memories. We're going way back to the end of the 1960's, to a small town on the sunny coast of Cornwall where a pair of twin boys have just been born. Yes, twins!
Twins are expected to think alike, act alike and be alike, right? No, not these two. One had a very technical mind and was destined for a life in computers and business. The other one, me, had a creative mind and was destined for a life in the arts. As a child I always - and I mean ALWAYS - had a pen or pencil in my hand. I drew things. A lot! It was clear to everyone that I was a very gifted artist. I sketched buildings and faces, I painted landscapes, I drew cartoons. At junior school while the other kids shivered outside in the rain at playtime I was allowed to sit in the school hall drawing posters. The school was full of them, every corridor and every classroom had my artwork on the walls telling kids the school rules, telling them to throw their litter in the bins and to eat healthily at lunchtime. Every school show, sports day and jumble sale was advertised with my drawings. (Yes, my mother was very proud!)
Now as I said, my brother was into computers. Home computers were very new when we were kids, they were still quite rare and only the major computer nerds had them. Out of the three computer nerds in our school my brother was one of them. When the new ZX Spectrum computer had just been released my brother and I created a computer game for it. I designed the graphics and animation and my brother wrote the code and made it work. We were 15. Bizzarely we managed to get the game manufactured and released. The game was called Wriggler and went on to become a chart hit becoming one of the most popular computer games of 1985.
Yes, I know! Not a bad achievement for a pair of 15 year olds still at school in Cornwall.
Much to the pride of our mother us young twins made some money out of the game. Then much to the annoyance of our mother we spent it on buying some great big machines from the seaside amusement arcades. We got ourselves Space Invaders and Pac Man filling up the back of the house. I got a juke box for my rapidly expanding record collection. Hey come on, we were 15 year boys in Cornwall!
The twins aged, I guess, about 6. I'm the happy chappy on the left. (Let me know when you've stopped laughing!)
Aged about 8. It was the 1970s so every mother dressed their kids in brown!
This was a chart-topping computer game in 1985 and I'd created it! I also drew the cassette cover. Note it's all done in childish felt-tip pen. I was 15!
I continued to draw. By now I was specialising in cartoons. But in the rural backwaters of Cornwall surrounded by fishermen and farmers, drawing cartoons wasn't seen as a useful skill. I had to go where I could do something with my talents. I had to go to London. So at 17 I jumped ship (well, train actually) and headed for the bright lights and bustling opportunities of the capital, leaving Cornwall and my Cornish accent far behind me. Arriving in the big city I taught myself how to speak like a civilised Englishman. No one takes anyone seriously with a West Country accent! I mean, Hollywood even dubbed out the voice of Dave Prowse when he played Darth Vader in Star Wars. It didn't have the gravitas they were looking for. "Ere Luke, I'm yer father! 'Ave a cider and a pasty!" just didn't work for them!
By day I was working for the guy who helped us publish our computer game, dealing with all the mail orders for Wriggler and his other handful of releases. The company was called Romantic Robot. This was still the late 80s so this whole computer company was him, his partner who developed hardware, and 17 year old me. Three of us. At the cutting edge of the fledgling home computer market! Damn, a decade later I could have been Steve Jobs!!
In the evenings and at weekends I set about learning a whole range of (some would say) useless skills. I learnt how to juggle and unicycle. I learnt Japanese. Most importantly however I ambitiously set about my big dream of becoming a cartoonist for the national newspapers.
I designed all the magazine adverts for Romantic Robot and did all of their graphic design. I was 17.
1989 myself and my friends on a daytrip to Alton Towers. Several years later I would be working there as an entertainer.
Learning how to unicycle. Lesson one: Find a wall!
I did it! A the age of 18, less than a year after moving to London I had achieved my dream of being a newspaper cartoonist. I'd spent hours every week at London's Cartoon Museum (yes, there was such a place) studying the styles and techniques. I'd hung around Fleet Street where the national newspapers all had their offices. I'd found where the cartoonists hung out, a pub called the Cartoonist (obviously) where the walls were filled with the original artwork of Britain's finest cartoonists. And now I was one of them too. As a freelance cartoonist my humourous looks at life were being published every day in one of the national tabloids The Sun, The Mirror, The Star and The News of the World. (Once again my mother was proud!)
I sent my work around other publishers and was also taken on to cartoon for comics, magazines and book illustrations. This was great! Who else can achieve their lifetime dream at 17?
Yet something was nagging me. I was using my skills and talents well and I was in the national newspapers every day making people laugh. Yet the reality of being a working cartoonist meant I was shut away in my studio for long hours day and night, pretty much glued to my drawing board, chugging out cartoons like a production line. I was now 22. I should be out there (wherever "there" was) experiencing the world and living life!
My first cartoon published in a tabloid newspaper. This one was in The Sun.
This one was published in The Sunday Sport. Hey, this stuff was considered funny back in the 1980s you know!
This was in the juggling magazine The Catch. I was a hobbyist juggler. Who could have known what effect that would have on my life yet to come?
For the last three years I'd been taking myself for long Summer holidays with my backpack touring the Youth Hostels of Europe. I'd gatecrashed the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin. I'd tried (unsuccessfully because I was too young) to get into the casino at Monte Carlo. I'd spent three glorious weeks filling my sketchbook with drawings of the canals of Venice. I decided now I'd go further afield.
As a cartoonist my work was sent in through the mail. I didn't need to be in London anymore. So I looked around for somewhere else to go, somewhere stimulating and exciting. My favourite part of London had always been ChinaTown, where the raucous culture clash of East and West created something unique that fascinated me. So I packed my suitcase and moved to Hong Kong!
Hong Kong was amazing. It was dirty, crowded and loud. As a 22 year old from Cornwall it was as alien as anything I'd ever encountered. I spent a few hours a day drawing cartoons to post back to the newspapers in London and spent the ret of my time exploring, visiting the other islands, mainland China and Macau. A few months later I jumped on a plane again and headed to Japan.
Wheras Hong Kong had been dirty and loud, Japan was clean and the people polite, plus I already had some knowledge of the language. I toured the country soaking up the culture. I made my home in Tochigi near the town of Utsunomia. I had stopped cartooning by now, it was just getting lost in all the travelling, so somehow I found myself a job as a labouror on a chicken farm!
As much as I was loving the simple life of being a Japanese chicken shed cleaner it wasn't a career I wanted to last too long. No one in the village had ever seen a Westerner before. In Japan in the 1990's outside of Tokyo there really weren't many of us and everyone kept comparing me to an American guy on Japanese TV. He was on every TV panel show in Japan, making a succesfull showbiz career out of being the token Westerner. "That could be me!" I thought. The idea of entering showbiz had always loomed large, but I'd had a succesfull career as a cartoonist instead. But now the time seemed right to explore life as an actor or entertainer instead. So should I do that here in Japan or return to Britain? In Japan I had an advantage that I was already an oddity. But in Britain I knew how things worked better. I'd have to return to London!
Lounging in the gateway to Macau, the old Portugese port in mainland China.
A young cartoonist living in Hong Kong. This was Victoria Peak from where you could see the whole of Hong Kong Central.
Aged 23 and living in Japan. This was taken outside the Imperial Palace in Kyoto.
I arrived back in London filled with enthusiasm and ideas. I applied for several jobs in television, but I had no training or proof of any skill. I applied to be a Blue Peter presenter. They sent me a very nice rejection letter. Right, so that didn't work! I needed to start from the street upwards! I'd always loved watching the street entertainers at Covent Garden and I'd tought myself how to juggle. So I decided that would be the place to start. I created a comedy juggling street show and busked in Covent Garden surrounded by lots of other street performers who were all way better than me.
I'd had a successfull career as a newspaper cartoonist and now I was juggling on the streets of London. Once again my mother was annoyed! But I made a living and earnt enough to enroll in Circus School.
I threw myself enthusiastically into my classes at The Circus Space, the UK's top circus school. I applied myself to learning stage-craft, physical performance, object manipulation, character acting and numerous accidental ways to fall off a trapeze! No pain, no gain, right? At weekends I busked as a street juggler in Covent Garden where I learnt how to capture and captivate an audience. To begin with I was rubbish but I worked hard and got better. I was invited to take part in the International Street Entertainer of the Year Awards making it to the finals held in the Channel Islands. I came 4th. I was taken on as a street entertainer by the theme park Chessington World of Adventures where I worked for two years. I'd found my training at circus school invaluable, but felt there was so much more to learn about stagecraft and character acting. So with the money I'd earnt at the theme park I went to Drama School.
An early publicity photo. Yes, that's a rubber chicken on a dog's lead. Don't knock it, it worked!
23 years old and I'm touring the country as a street entertainer.
I teamed with two other street performers Ian Kendall and David Wolfe to form the street entertainer troupe Four Fat Ladies.
Drama School seemed difficult to get into. It felt that if you didn't have tons of money, a scholarship or famous parents the big drama schools in London didn't want to take you. But I found one that did. I enrolled in The Method Studio. As I already had quite an extensive performance experience and highly developed skills in improvisation, comedy and showmanship I stood out amongst my fellow students and was voted 'Most likely to succeed'. One of my teachers, Marianna Hill who had a wonderful career featuring in Star Trek and Elvis Pressley movies, wrote me a letter when I left encouraging me to go on and do great things with my "immeasurable talent". That letter is to this day one of my most valued possessions.
So I now had a strong training and well developed mix of talents as a circus performer, a knockabout comedy entertainer and also as a serious method actor. Not many people did both circus school and drama school. I was hungry to get out there and do something!
The young actor straight out of drama school. Wide eyed and innocent!
An early acting job dressed as a bear for a TV commercial. "Am I famous yet?" I asked as I was covered with a giant heavy bears head!
I spent the Christmas season in a touring panto playing the villain Pirate Captain in Dick Whittington.
On leaving Drama School I picked up a five month contract as a comedy juggler touring Scotland. So I packed my juggling knives and unicycle and moved to Edinburgh. I got a job in a Juggling shop by day and performed in the pubs and clubs of Scotland by night. I soaked up new skills and knowledge in the arts of magic and conjuring from my new Scottish friends the magicians R Paul Wilson (who would go on to write and star in the BBC's The Real Hustle) and Ian Kendall. I was now set on a path as a stage magician that I would never leave.
So now I was working across the country. I was a magician and a juggler and an actor, but it was my comedy juggling street show that was really working the best for me. These were crazy days. Everything was new and my skillset so varied that I took on whatever performance or acting based work I could find. I kept myself busy with street performing, corporate event entertainment and also found work as a television studio audience warm-up act for both the BBC and Channel 4.
I created a robot character which I called Dweebie The Robot, and found myself performing the caharacter in a lot of events and promotions, including a few TV appearances including "Blue Peter" and "Spannish Archer". I wrote a show which I took to the Edinburgh Festival where The Independent newspaper included me in their feature "The best of the Edinburgh Festival". I toured Spain as a novelty juggler act at the Marberissa Comedy Festival. I also performed in Germany, Russia, Soviet Georgia and the USA. Life was a whirlwind of performing different costumes and characters in different places. No two days were ever the same and I absolutely loved it!
Entertaining at a seafront event as a pirate.
Yes that's me in there. Being trained in mime meant a lot of time being hidden under masks!
I rode this little scooter around shopping centre events for years!
As an actor I was now picking up the occasional small television role. I toured with pantos. I performed in a UK arena tour of the opera Aida, including a three week residency at the Royal Albert Hall. I played the role of the young Charles Dickens (my older self was played by Derek Jacobi) in the feature film The Riddle. I played Cripple Wa in the film version of Terry Pratchett's "The Colour Of Magic" with Sir David Jason.
However I soon realised there was a special niche in the film and TV world that I could fill. There was an insatiable demand for my circus, magic and mime skills to be used in TV dramas and films, either playing an entertainer in the background of a scene or using my hands to double for a lead actor when the script demanded they make a balloon animal, do a card trick or some other skill that was a bit beyond them. So I signed up with several Film Extra agencies and soon found myself working almost fulltime in TV, films and commercials. I was a clown on Eastenders, a juggler on Hustle, a street performer on Doctor Who and somewhere in the mix of what seemed like every TV show filmed in London. I spent 9 years on and off playing an anaethetist on Holby City and even found myself working as a stand-in for multiple actors on the Harry Potter movies. I was in the Batman movie The Dark Knight playing a Gotham City Detective while Christian Bale as Batman beat up Heath Ledger as The Joker. It was thrilling to be around so many film and TV studios all the time, spending my days in fascinating places, wearing crazy costumes and working with some of the most famous faces in the world.
Starring as John Wedgewood in "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" for the BBC, my first lead role in TV.
In the most famous square in Britain, as a clown on the set of Eastenders.
I did quite a lot in the Harry Potter films. Here I am playing a journalist in The Order of the Phoenix.
While my career was a blistering but dissorganised mix of street entertainment, theatres, corporate work and TV shows, my personal life was about to take a lovely turn. Without telling either friends or family my girlfriend Pamela and I ran off to Gretna Green on the Scottish border and were secretly married. I still mantain that this was the best thing I've ever done in my life.
On starting our married life together we pooled our talents and became Kempthorne Entertainments creating acts and characters for walkabout and stage entertainment at shopping centres, tourist attractions and big events around the country. Then we went one further and decided to set up a film company Wibbell Productions and together we wrote a screenplay for a comedy vampire film "The Vampires of Bloody Island". We sunk our life savings into making the feature film - which in hindsight wasn't the wisest thing we've ever done! Naturally we gave ourselves the leading parts with Pamela playng the vampire queen and me playing a hapless salesman of Garlic-Cola. We had a mixed bag of reviews on our small cinema run with reasonable DVD sales around the world.
Are we proud of the film? Heck yes! Will we make another? Er, no. It nearly bankrupted us! (By the way, if anyone wants to buy them I still have a couple of hundred USA release DVDs of the film knocking around I can't seem to get rid of!)
Our secret wedding at Gretna Green. Obviously I chose my suit to keep a low profile!!
Pamela Kempthorne as Morticia de'Ath, the Vampire Queen in The Vampires of Bloody Island.
In shock that The Vampires of Bloody Island actually got a global DVD release!
Life is full of chance meetings. One such meeting got me a new agent based in Paris who dealt with international conventions and events. They took me on as an event presenter and I suddenly found myself thrust into the world of corporate presentation. In a busy half decade I wrote and performed comedy gameshows for live corporate events and conferences that took me zig-zagging across the world. I had many visits to Dubai, Qatar, South Africa, Denmark, Norway, Greece, Turkey, Holland, Germany, France, Switzerland, the United States... I would be doing a juggling show in a tourist farm in Devon one day, fly out to Dubai to do a presentation for Microsoft, then come back to Britain to do shopping centre entertainment in rainy Birmingham with a bizarrly fresh suntan!
At the sametime I also started getting work on ships. I got regular contracts as the children's entertainer on the Brittany Ferries ping-ponging my way across the English Channel and the Irish Sea between England, France, Ireland and Spain doing children's shows and balloon modelling for shipfulls of children either going out or returning from their holidays. Living and working on the ship was great, I was always part of a large entertainments team of singers, dancers, magicians and entertainment hosts. I met many great people and made fantastic friends while spending the days and nights floating around the sea in a giant luxury eight deck cruise ferry and dissembarking for a few hours shoreleave at a bar in Spain or to go shopping in Ireland!
With the entertainments team on board the Pont Aven. Would you trust this lot on a ship for two weeks?
My home and office every summer. There's worse ways to live!
Having a wander around Dubai before a gig. See how empty the streets are. Only an idiot foreigner would go out in this heat!
I was making a decent living as an entertainer but I could feel myself beginning to get stuck into a rut. So I decided to add yet another string to my bow and also do stand up comedy! I had to do it under a different name though as I was already well known to entertainment agents who were hiring me as a comedy juggler - and you never want to confuse your agents! So I created the character of a Cornish Goth comedian and called myself Eddie Twist. I spent a very enjoyable couple of years touring and working the comedy club circuit while filming a Youtube series as Eddie Twist called "Twisted Britain". It was great fun travelling around 'being' Eddie. At one point I even signed a first refusal DVD deal with the BBC as part of their New Comedian of the Year Competition. But the further I got into the world of stand up comedy the more it became obvious to me that unless you're at the very top of that industry the money just isn't there compared to what I could earn with my other skills. So after a while I decided to side-step into a world I'd been on the fringes of for quite some time. The world of magic!
My YouTube series, Twisted Britain.
Eddie Twist at Hampstead Comedy Club.
Eddie Twist and Russell Kane, two comedians in the kitchen.
We'd been living near Southend-on-Sea just outside London, but the nature of the job meant I was working in a different town (or country) every day so I didn't really need to be near London anymore. Pamela had set up a mail order business Cosmic Unicorn selling New Age, Wiccan and Gothic goodies so she too had the freedom to move. We decided on a change of scenery and headed for the clean air, forests and mountains of South Wales.
I now set about creating a couple of new acts as a magician under the names Gizmo and Alan Thorn. The easy one was Gizmo. I'd been doing children's entertainment on ships, at theme parks and tourist attractions for ages and was a regular children's entertainer at Harrods. I had always had people saying to me "Oh you should do children's parties!" which I'd laughed off because I was generally doing much bigger events. But I had done children's parties for the Houses of Parliament, the American Ambassador and a few other big and powerful names and I knew I had something to offer that was top level stuff and way beyond what most children's party entertainers were doing. So I set up Gizmo Parties which very quickly grew into my biggest line of work doing magic shows at multiple birthday parties every weekend around Wales and the adjoining parts of England, while also continuing with entertaining at all the tourist attractions and corporate events.
I also created an act for the grown ups calling myself Alan Thorn (because no one could ever cope with my name Allin Kempthorne) and started promoting it for holiday parks.
Children's entertainer Gizmo.
The Magic and Madness of Alan Thorn.
Performing at a Harry Potter premiere with Pamela.
I wanted to take my magic shows to a higher level so I sought out the best magic teachers in the world. I was taken on as a student by Las Vegas headline magician Jeff McBride and the legendary Chicago based magician Eugene Burger. These two world class performers taught me how to rise beyond what other magicians were doing and inspired me to do something unique.
I created another character. This was to be my best yet. I wanted this to be world class! I created Professor Strange, a quirky and colourfully exciting Victorian showman, with all the essences I loved of Steampunk, time travel, mad scientist, Victorian sideshows and vaudeville.
I wanted to showcase Professor Strange to the widest possible audience, so I went to the biggest television show I could find, "Britain's Got Talent". The Britain's Got Talent judge Amanda Holden had recently hired me for her daughters birthday party so that was my way in. Filming the show itself was bedlam. In addition to all the other acts and performers squeezed into the backstage areas at the London Palladium there was also of course the whole TV production with their crew, equipment, lights and cameras, then also a live audience of several thousand members of the public squeezed into the seats. The place was full of children's dance groups, singers, comedians and a dancing dog and very little space for any of us. As I was getting ready gluing on Professor Strange's twirly mustache unknown to me a children's dance group desperate for somewhere to sit had plonked themselves down on my props and boxes waiting at the side of the stage. My things were covered in glitter. I shooed the children off as the stage hands took my props straight onto the stage ready for my performance. I was about to find out several things were broken. But as yet I didn't know that.
I walked onto stage and had my bit of chat with the judges then launched into my brief four minute spot. My first prop, an appearing broom, damaged by the children's dance troup fell apart in my hands. There's only one chance on Britain's Got Talent. You can't ask for a re-shoot, so I had to roll with it and make a joke. My next prop was a remote controlled umbrella holder I had built to come running onto the stage when I whistled for it. It's wheel had been damaged and halfway along the stage it took a nose dive and fell over. Again I just had to roll with and laugh it off. I finished the act, it had not gone well. I was gutted.
However despite those misshaps (or maybe because of them) the next day the newspapers were full of me. The Sun, the Express, the Mirror, the Guardian, the Mail, they all ran stories on me. I had exposure!! Maybe not quite the exposure I'd anticipated, but exposure is exposure and the phone started ringing. People wanted to see more of Professor Strange!
Me with my magic teacher Jeff McBride. The knowledge and skills this great man somehow drummed into me are invaluable.
In my new guise as the time travelling magician Professor Strange.
Professor Strange performing on Britain's Got Talent watched from the sidelines by Ant and Dec.
My Gizmo and Alan Thorn shows were keeping me happy and busy and Professor Strange loomed high with possibities. Everything was rosy and exciti..... BOOM!! The Covid-19 pandemic hit like a ton of bricks landing on everybody's heads.
The world closed down. Shops and businesses locked their doors and sent their staff home. Trains stopped running, the roads fell empty and silent, every government in every country of the world gave their people the same message. DON'T GO OUT!!! I had over 100 parties, shows and events lined up in my diary. In the space of two gut-wrenching weeks every single one of them cancelled. I opened my email every morning in tears seeing everything I had worked for disappear. I was left with nothing.
Every entertainer across the world suffered the same fate. Suddenly having an audience was an illegal activity. The weeks rolled into months. A year passed. Slowly some businesses were allowed to open in a limited capacity, but entertainment, the frivolous getting together of crowds, was still very much forbidden.
The only legal audience was online. So that's where I went. I started offering children's birthday parties on Zoom. Mothers grabbed at the chance for their children, stuck at home, to see their friends and celebrate a proper birthday. The pandemic was a global event so I went big. I searched online to find entertainment agents anywhere in any English speaking country who had made the emergency transition to Zoom and emailed them a sample video. The result was I spent the two years of the Covid lockdowns doing online birthday parties for audiences in the UK, Canada, India, Russia and across the world. My days were long because of working the different time zones. On a busy day I'd get up in the morning, set up my Zoom studio at home and do a morning party for Singapore, knock out another two for the UK throughout the day, then in the evening do a show for the USA or Canada. As Christmas approached I set up a website called Santa's Hotline so that children could have a video chat with Santa Claus from the comfort of their own homes.
Pamela's mail order business Cosmic Unicorn was doing well under lockdown conditions. With no one able to go shopping it was a boomtime for internet shops. So I suddenly found myself working for her. I learnt how to make candles and completely updated her website, ran her social media and despite the dark times really enjoyed spending a lot more time with her than I'd been able to when running around the country gig to gig.
Very slowly the world edged back to near normal. The bookings started to fill the diary again. OK, break time's over. Back to being a travelling entertainer again!
Presenting the annual Leicester Saint George's Festival from my own Zoom studio at home.
As well as Gizmo I took many guises for my shows on Zoom.
Making video calls as Santa on my new website www.santashotline.co.uk
I knew I had something special with Professor Strange so I decided to enter another high profile competition, The UK Family Entertner of the Year Award held at the world's largest and most prestigious magic convention every year in Blackpool. Nearly every magician in the UK plus large numbers from other countries all head there to see what's new and big in the world of magic. To perform at the Blackpool Magic Convention is a very big deal and to get to the finals you have to win a regional heat. As we were coming out of the pandemic my region of Wales was combined with Scotland. I won. I was through to the finals having already beaten two countries!
So now I was heading to Blackpool to perform on the giant stage of the Blackpool Opera House infront of the biggest gathering of magicians in the world. This was exciting! I didn't care if I won or not, my goal was just to perform at that event amongst the greatest magicians of our age.
It's a very big stage to fill and one man standing in the middle doing magic tricks just didn't seem enough. So I needed to go big. I decided I would ride onto the stage on some sort of vehicle and then make something enormous appear. The enormous thing I decided would be a giant 10 foot flag. But what could I ride in on? It had to be something that suited the steampunk showman style of Professor Strange. Aha, I had it! How about a giant tricycle like the sort ice-cream venders used to have? My whole show could fit on the back and I'd have a whole portable show I could perform at festivals. So I built one.
The show went brilliantly. I was very happy with my performance, the crowds responded well and it was great to be there. I wasn't the winner (there can be only one) but I'd achieved my goal. Professor Strange was recognised as a high level and unique magic act. The emails and phonecalls came in and Professor Strange was getting enquiries and bookings for festivals, holiday parks and events all over the place. Job done!
I used my performance at the Blackpool Magic Convention as my audition to apply to join the Magic Circle. They accepted me, so now I found myself a member of the most prestigious group of magicians in the world. Wow!
I was now also invited to perform in another very high prfile competition, the Magic Circle Children's Entertainer of the Year Award. The standard at this competetion was again ridiculously high and it was a real honour to have been a finalist and receive specific praise for my performance from the President of the Magic Circle Marvin Berglas.
On stage in the finals of the UK Family Entertainer of the Year at the Blackpool Magic Convention.
Receiving my membership of The Magic Circle from the president Marvin Berglas.
On stage at the Magic Circle Children's Entertainer of the Year Awards.
So that brings our story right up to the present. I'm living in South Wales with my wonderful wife Pamela and I'm creatively fulfilled with Professor Strange, Alan Thorn and Gizmo all keeping me very busy with shows at holiday parks, festivals, children's parties and tourist attractions.
Life has taught me that things constantly evolve and change and that's exactly the way I like it. I don't know what the future holds, but I know that where I am now, and the path I've taken to be here, has been an interesting and fulfilling ride. I'm a happy man. And yes, my mother is proud of me again!
Performing my Gizmo children's magic show
The Alan Thorn Magic Show
On my current mode of transport as Professor Strange.