Billy and me are really enjoying the Sorcerer’s Apprentice on BBC1. The premise is that 14 apprentices are taught the art of magic by magician Max Somerset, whittling them down to a single apprentice by the end of the series. Sanders the Great has a good set of reviews of the series for you to enjoy.

Check out this great new magic website SandersTheGreat. It has only just gone live, but already has some interesting magic news and some pretty cool vintage magic adverts.

I’ve had one of John Scarne’s books on my shelf for years; covering the rules of most card games as well as covering some of the basic cheats. This video shows the man himself showing some classic sleights. Don’t be fooled, these are difficult card sleights demonstrated by a master, and it’s just great seeing them performed by John himself.

This site has been paying close attention to Paul Daniels ebay transactions. It appears that he enjoys buying 1970’s slasher movies and makes a few quid selling film cameras. If you’re interested this is his ebay user page.

According to Magic News David Copperfield is “going to impregnate a woman on stage with magic”. When Penn Jillette heard this his fantastically bitchy response was “Isn’t it sad that’s the only way he can think of?”. Read the full Penn and Teller interview here

Last night I watched a taped copy of Sundays C4 episode of ‘Faking It’. It was brilliant. Nerdy Physicist Kevin McMahon transformed from geeky science student to table hopping magician. Highlights included him being thrown in at the deep-end and having to perform some tricks in front of Penn and Teller (he completely cocked it up, leaving Penn looking somewhat bored and unimpressed), doing a 5 minute standup slot at a gay comedy club and the realisation on his face that saying he was a magician was a real girl-puller. This meant he no longer had to resort to using his ‘lucky’ jumper that from what we gathered gave him a little success with a girl, sort of, once. In the end he completely fooled the expert panel (including Paul Daniels no less), and he loved it so much that he immediately quit his physics phd to become a full time magician. Afterwards I was all ready to give up being a geeky IT consultant and becoming a full time table-hopping magician too until Paula pointed out how many tables I would have to ‘hop’ to pay the mortgage. Maybe I should practice more.

Richard Stokes has created maskelynemagic.com a website “that attempts to unravel the truth behind the wartime career of Jasper Maskelyne.” He is not a fan of David Fisher’s “The War Magician” refering to it as an “error-ridden fanciful concoction”. I couldn’t really comment on that, but the site does offer a wealth of info including some really good photo’s of the dummy tanks that Jasper created and a large quantity of articles written by Richard.AD37

Fortean Times has published a good detail article about the role of magic in war. There is a detailed account of Robert-Houdin’s involvement in stopping a revolt in French Algeria, as well as brief details regarding Jasper Maskelyne in WWII.AD45

Blimey. I’ve just found out that Peter McCahon died last Wednesday of a massive heart attack. As you probably know, he was ‘Papa’ in Monkey magic. Now I didn’t really like the series very much, but he was my favourite magician of the bunch. He seemed to be the one who actually had some form of charisma. He was only 39.

Next Saturday at 8:10 on BBC2 there is the start of a new six part series tracing the history of magic; here’s what they say:

“The definitive guide to the history of Performance Magic from Ancient Egypt to 21st century Las Vegas, and why it has played such an important role in our social and cultural history.”

The first episode looks interesting:

“Prepare to be amazed by mind reading illusions which seem to defy rational explanation. From the oracle of Delphi, through the age of Spiritualism, to today’s psychological trickster, Derren Brown, it also features a modern version of a mind trick which mystified millions of British radio listeners in the 1950’s.”

I can’t wait.