neighbourhood with big gangsters driving Porches and Ferraris.
to other gangsters, so I had to come up with new stuff every week. That’s really what got me in to magic – guys with guns under the tables to do the trick right. You just have to learn. Up until about fourteen or fif-teen I thought that magic was real.
I thought the trick stuff you bought was just like an introduction, almost like an apprenticeship and then one day you’d meet a real magician and he would take you in to the fold.
P – What? You mean nobody has taken you in to the fold yet?
M – No – I’m still in the apprentice-ship stage. No, actually it DID hap-pen to me. I read a book called Mag-ic and Meaning by Eugene Burger and Bob Neale. I remember reading it and thinking this guy Eugene is in-credible and I had to meet him. This happened when the Internet had just started really. I’d never used it before and my brother had called me about this thing called the Inter-net. I went on and searched for
Eu-gene Burger and I wanted to make it my lifetime ambition to find out who this guy is. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive, I knew absolutely nothing about him. After being on the Internet for the first time, after about two hours I got a reply back from Eugene saying come and see me in Las Vegas with Jeff McBride, so I sold my car and went to Las Vegas. They flew to Amsterdam, so I flew to Amsterdam and we got to hang out. To hang there with him was quite an experience. After that I went home, packed in my job and went busking around Majorca and Spain then went to live in Chicago and took lessons with Eugene. He was a massive influence, and then Jeff took over from Eugene.
P – Then you really did meet the master in magic because you can’t get any better than Eugene.
M – Well Eugene got me started and Jeff took over. I would say that Jeff is my mentor now and Eugene is my
inspiration. Jeff can spend two hours going through something and then Eugene can just say one sentence and it changes the world. It really is incredible.
P – I’m curious what jobs you had before magic and you gave that all up to follow your dream?
M – I was a press photographer for five years working for the newspapers, worked at bars for a while, hung around with gangsters, for a little bit.
P – At what point did you know you could go full time?
M – After about an hour of being in Vegas. I didn’t know if I could do it but I knew I was going to do it. I had not idea if it was possible but wanted to give it a go. Eugene said something to me, and I don’t think it’s his line, but he said, “Matthew you will never be a millionaire, but you will always live like one.”
P - Let’s talk about the act. I saw the FISM act and a lay
person show. You did an hour and a half show. Is that your main show?
M – I don’t have a main show to be honest. There is the FISM show, which you saw ‘FISM Lite’, but I’m always chopping and changing my act and always putting new things in. The FISM act you saw was my carry around FISM act.
P – The show I saw you do was so well structured – it was very theatrical and had a great flow. I would have imagined you would have performed that show a thou-sand times to get everything so perfect.
M – Everything is very modular. I can’t remember what I did there. The ring in walnut I think, cups and balls.
I’m not sure what else I did. The bar sets we do here are incredible. You do 20 minutes twice a night and you’re constantly changing things. Everything I do on the stage I run through the bar. Twelve shows a week you can change your act every two weeks. I would say I don’t have a set act, but I probably only do about 15
MATTHEW’S repertoire compared to other guys but it’s really well honed because of the amount of shows.
P – Let’s talk about character be-cause that is something that struck me when I saw you work. Do you have any theatrical training?
M – Not acting wise. I did a degree in puppetry. I’ve got a magic puppet act with a mini Eugene Burger. My degree was puppetry and theatre practice.
P – I found your performance very character driven, which really ap-pealed to me. You knew exactly who you were, almost method like acting I would say.
M – Thank you – it’s very important to me. All the young guys we get through here come for the experi-ence. A lot of them are bedroom magicians or Youtube magicians, and the first thing I have to get in to them is for them to know who they are. Now this can be difficult for a young guy to know who you are. You need to take a good look at yourself. All that character comes from Eugene’s teachings and Jeff’s teachings. That’s one of things Eugene talks about all the time is the importance of character and presentation, and that’s what struck
a chord with me when I read that first book.
P – I was watching your perfor-mance thinking wow you’d make a great Doctor Who.
M – Really. Well that’s good to know.
The autistic Doctor Who.
P – How would you describe your character when you perform?
M – Well he’s changed again this year. He was a little more aggressive last year I think. I think he’s become a littler more vulnerable this year.
What I’m doing a lot of now, and the main thing in my show is that I’m a game show host. It’s still the same quirky character and still the same costume, but it’s only devel-oped since I’ve been at the House of Illusion, the character. When I first came over here I came over as a close-up magician and if you see my Magic Circle act on Youtube you’ll see a very different character, and that was in 2008. It was almost like bizarre magic. Quite a serious magi-cian, a little like Eugene. It wasn’t until I came to The House of Illusion in Spain where the year before I got here they had a comedy magi-cian who had left and the owner we need a comedy magician, and you’re on stage tonight. So that was it.
A lot of my character comes from Matt Edwards who I worked with for twelve months. He was incredible.
P – You mention you still need to be yourself when you are in character, and when I play Chaplin I feel very comfortable because I’m very Chap-lineque in my own life offstage.
M – Yes there is a crossover in to your real life. A lot of my stuff is catchphrase or tag lines and I find myself using them more and more in day to day life. There’s a lot of stuff from my show that comes out in my day to day conversations. I’m very comfortable with who I am on stage but I do think you need to expand on who you are. You almost have to