Derren Litten

Tomorrow I am going to a magic convention. Now I realise that people think a magic convention will be full of nerdy twat-like loners shuffling around wearing top hats and trying to stay out of direct sunlight. Well you're wrong; not all of them wear top hats. The fact is I do love magic and I have a lot of friends who are magicians so regard these occasions (I go to 2 or 3 of them a year) as social events and if there is some good magic to watch, that's a bonus. Everybody thought magic could never be 'cool' after the Paul Daniel's era of ruffled shirts and velvet bow ties and telling volunteers to "stand on the trap door", then came David Blaine. David Blaine was perceived to be the epitome of 'cool', all in black, moodily slinking around the streets of New York performing impossible feats of sleight of hand (allegedly) and mind reading without the visible support of a personality. Unfortunately the general public seemed to lose patience with Mr Blaine when he started standing on top of large poles for long periods of time, sitting in Perspex boxes and swimming around in big goldfish bowls for no apparent reason. It seemed the only way the popularity of magic could survive the 21st century was for someone to perform conjuring tricks but not call them that. We needed people to think what they were watching was something more refined, more sophisticated, more cerebral and less akin to fat, sweating kiddy fiddlers dressed as clowns pulling rabbits out of "empty" boxes. And as if by magic, poof!, Derren Brown appeared. Now people can marvel at the wonder and excitement of magic without feeling patronised by the magician (or embarrassed by his dress sense). As a magician I hope Mr Brown's popularity continues to soar and for the sake of the image of magic he doesn't feel the urge to start balancing on long poles (there's a joke there somewhere….).