Desert Island Tricks
Each week we invite one of the biggest guests in the world of magic to maroon themselves on a desert island. They are allowed to take with them 8 tricks, 1 book, 1 banishment and 1 non magic item that they use for magic! We discuss their 'can't live without' lists and why those items were chosen.
Episodes are uploaded every Friday and are available via all Podcast service providers!
To find out more about the team behind Desert Island Tricks, please visit: www.alakazam.co.uk
Desert Island Tricks
Looch
What does it take to become a master mentalist? According to Looch, it's not about shortcuts, it’s about experience, dedication, and truly understanding your craft.
On this episode of Desert Island Tricks, mentalism expert Looch unpacks the eight effects that have defined his remarkable career. From his ingenious use of marked cards that created magical wedding moments to his groundbreaking Frameworks Q&A system, Looch demonstrates why simplicity often trumps complexity when creating powerful mentalism.
The conversation goes far beyond methods as Looch shares the philosophy that has guided his development as a performer. "Mentalism is not about what's in your pockets," he explains, "it's about what's inside your head." Through personal stories—like using Phill Smith's optical marking system to reveal a bride and groom had spontaneously selected the King and Queen of Hearts, Looch illustrates how the most meaningful moments in mentalism come from experience and understanding human psychology, not from the latest gadget.
Most compelling is Looch's passionate plea against the obsession with shortcuts that plagues many aspiring mentalists. Drawing parallels to Malcolm Gladwell's concept of expert intuition from "Blink," he emphasises that true mastery comes through failures, reflections, and countless hours of practice, not from product descriptions on magic websites.
Whether you're an established performer or just beginning your journey in mentalism, this episode offers invaluable insights into creating effects that resonate emotionally with audiences. Discover why some of mentalism's most powerful tools, like Bruce Bernstein's "The Ritual" and Barry Richardson's “Quartet”, remain underutilised despite their incredible impact, and how Looch has adapted these classics to create uniquely personal performances.
Ready to elevate your mentalism beyond tricks to create genuine moments of astonishment? Give this episode a listen, and don't forget to subscribe for more insights from the world's greatest magicians and mentalists.
Looch's Desert Island Tricks:
- Marked Deck
- Real Die
- 4th Dimensional Telepathy (School Days)
- The Ritual Bruce Bernstein
- Quartet Barrie Richardson
- The Line Up
- PK Touches
- Q&A Frameworks
Banishment. Obsession with Shortcuts
Book. Professional Mentalists Series of Manuals
Item. Case
Find out more about the creators of this Podcast at www.alakazam.co.uk
When you look at people like Malcolm Gladwell he wrote that book Blink years ago and he talks about how there are people out there experts in the field that because they've got such a wide range of experience and skills that they are in that position, sometimes they just know. They can't explain why, but just in a snap judgment, with all that years of experience working in a specific field, they know whether something's this or that. And malcolm gives examples of forgeries within the art world and he talks about, um, these two guys that were experts in sculpture of marble sculpture from like the renaissance period, and and they had this group that had spent thousands of pounds trying to take samples of this marble to work out whether it was a forgery. And this one guy walked in and within 10 seconds he said yes, it's a fake. And he said, well, how the hell do you know that? And he couldn't put it into words at the time and he said I just know that it's a fake. And then it turns out it was and they tried to analyze how he knew that it was.
Speaker 1:And I think that's kind of like with magic the longer you spend in it, you are instinctively going to know what's going to work for an audience, work for you, and you can't shortcut those kinds of things. It's things that you have to invest yourself in and time, money and sort of experience to get it. So it's really vital that we're not trying to shortcut your way to the top, because you're gonna get found out at some point.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to another episode of Desert Island Tricks. Another guest is waiting. He's actually on Zoom. Truth be told, I have known about today's guest since I was pretty young. Today's guest since I was pretty young, in fact, I would say his DVD series through Alakazam strangely really introduced me to his ideas. And then I followed his career over the years and I would say at one point he was sort of the biggest corporate magician that I'd ever seen. So he was always posting these really amazing videos. His routines were clever.
Speaker 2:If you have the chance to check out Lucha's DVD set, the routines on there are absolutely phenomenal. They stand the test of time. You can do all of them still and they will absolutely fry people. He is an absolute legend in the world of mentalism and someone that I've really wanted to get on here from day one, so I'm so thrilled to finally have him on here. I know this is going to be full of insight and full of really interesting choices, so I think that's enough of a build up for the one and only Looch. Hello Looch.
Speaker 1:I think you've got the wrong person, mate. I was getting excited for this intro too, is it?
Speaker 2:But it's true, all of the things that you've brought out over the years. You've done your book test, which was absolutely phenomenal, so well thought out, and then you, of course, had your book series, which everyone went mad for. So you've literally just continued and done your own thing. And now, of course, you've got my Mind Rocks, which is a brilliant platform where you have so many incredible guests on there and a lot of your tricks, like I always distinctly remember, nod to Pocket Watch, which is one that I remember on those early DVDs. I know that that's something that you still teach and you still perform.
Speaker 1:I know that that's something that you still teach and you still perform. Nod to Pocket Watch. Yeah, it was one of the very first purely mentalism pieces that I sort of scripted and created, not obviously the original idea, not mine. It's called Nod to Pocket Watch for a reason because Bob Cassidy, you know the late great mentor. I miss that guy so much, but he had the pocket watch premonition in one of his books and it was a nod to pocket watch. It was like a tribute to him. Uh, because I didn't use a pocket watch, um, I wanted to use a different type of receptacle and update the handling slightly to um. It's gone over various guises over the year and currently how I do it, it uses business cards. But back then, in reference to the, the performance that I first released, which I think is the one that you're talking about, which would have been on the DVD and the book used post-it notes.
Speaker 1:At the time I got into using post-it notes for mentalism, there was a. There was a time where they became quite popular. I don't know if you can remember a bev bevy, bev down the magic cafe. That uh is julian bev more and he now created, you know, his own cold reading system and he has a load of books himself, but he wrote something, a mentalism, what was just on post-it notes. It was really popular mid-20002000s and that's probably where that idea of utilizing the post-it notes into the routine came from, I think. But as time goes on and I became more of a corporate worker, I wanted to be able to use that particular routine but use my business cards and then leave them as a sort of networking thing and make sure they've got my contact details afterwards. So yeah, great routine, I do still do it.
Speaker 1:We covered it on my Mind Rocks, which was fun because I think it had been about two years since I performed it and we captured the very first performance back and it was so rusty, but we kept it in and then did a few more subsequently to sort of show the different kinds of ways you can present it. Because, as you know but our audience might not you're essentially predicting a choice, a freely chosen word or product or whatever it is, and you at the end show that you've got a folded billet, what's produced from somewhere that shows that you've predicted that particular word. So yeah, great routine, I'm glad to be using it again. In a way, I kind of let it slip a little bit. I don't know if that ever happens to you, whether you've done something that many times over the years and you just think you've got it locked in, but then you revisit it after a few months and you think actually I need to work on this again. It's no longer in that sort of toolkit, ready to go at a moment's notice.
Speaker 2:Well, I think what's interesting about you, and those early years as well, is I have always associated you with a parlor and stage performer. There wasn't really a time when I was thinking back. Much like Mark Spellman, I always think of your creations and the information that you put out there as being a corporate stand-up performer. So is your list, or will your list, reflect more of the stand-up parameters, or have you gone for some close-up ideas?
Speaker 1:That's really interesting as well to hear that, because for me I feel like I'm still making that transition over to stand-up Sad mentalism. When that came out through Alakazam, that was almost 20 years ago, I think 2006 that book came out. It was all close-up because that reflected the types of gigs that I was doing at the time, which would have been mix and mingle bookings for a couple of hours at a corporate party, a private party, sometimes maybe a handful a year. But the biggest market for me was weddings. Back then I think I was averaging 45, 50 weddings a year, plus some of the corporate work in sort of 2010 onwards. That's that sort of time. The list would I would say it'd be an a well-balanced list, a well-rounded list that covers elements of close up, elements of that sort of spontaneous go into something if someone ever requests to see something, as well as the more scripted, bigger pieces that you would probably do on a parlor or stage well, I think that's as much of a tease as we can give.
Speaker 2:So if this is your first time listening to the podcast, the idea is that we're about to maroon luch on his very own magical island. When he's there, he's allowed to take eight tricks banish one item, take one book and one non-magic item that he uses for magic. The particulars like who's there, how big the island is. All of that good stuff, we do not mind, because this island exists in Looch's own imagination. With that being said, let's head over to Looch's island and find out what he put in position number one.
Speaker 1:Well, in position. Number one is a potentially controversial one for mentalists and it's a marked deck of playing cards. And I say controversial because I am bored to death of hearing people wax lyrical about whether we should use playing cards in mentalism. I think it comes down to a couple of really basic things. Do people associate a deck of cards with a magic trick? You're going to get 50 of the audience that say yes, 50 that don't, and it's going to be very difficult to shake either camp down. Um, but for me a marked deck of cards is just a natural, easy tool and people are familiar with them. They don't feel that what's this strange-looking item that you've pulled out of your pocket that makes me think you're a bit of a weirdo. It's just a deck of cards. If some people think, oh, he's going to do a card trick, well, I'm hired there to entertain, so it doesn't offend me as a mentalist. So when I say a marked deck of cards, I can be a lot more specific, because I have used decks that have been marked over the years, every different type I could imagine.
Speaker 1:Growing up I tried, and for a long time I was a huge fan of boris wilde's marked deck. I thought it was a wonderful, and it still is a wonderful deck. However, around 2010, I'm guessing it might be a little bit later I was handed a deck of cards called the Great Whites. It was by a gentleman that you'll all be aware of, because now he designs and builds some of the most amazing packs of cards in the world. It's Philil smith, and he gave me this, this deck, and he asked for some feedback, knowing that I did a lot of weddings, so I would go out, and I'm one of these people. Jamie, I don't know if you are, but if if you have your set, your act, that you're a material that you always perform. I don't like to deviate away, and introducing a new prop or a new gimmick or a new idea, even sometimes just introducing a new line, can be really difficult to try and get in there. And when he handed me the deck, I thought my honest opinion was well, I'm never going to use these, but I went out um to a wedding and I used this, and it was the first iteration of his optical marking system I think that's what he calls it and since then, you'll have all heard of these marked decks, because they've they've probably been one of the best selling ones over the past 10 years. It was the dmc elites, which has now transitioned uh into the elysian hewitt's deck that that's his latest iteration of it, which I think is nailed it, perfect. At this point I don't think it. Well, who knows, maybe you will make improvements to it, but at this point I'm looking, I'm thinking what else can you do with it? It's, it's as perfect as it's going to be.
Speaker 1:But going back to this, this wedding and it was the first time I was using the great whites I um, I'd been using a routine called body language from the Black Project book, but it was also on a Penguin lecture. But it's as simple as it can be. And I remember reading the reviews on Penguin afterwards with people saying I've paid for this lecture and all he's done is revealed a card on a marked deck, and I thought those people completely missed the point. It was, the presentation was designed to look as authentic and genuine as it could for reading poker tells. That's what it, that's what it's designed to do reading body language. And I'd been using this deck throughout the wedding to do this.
Speaker 1:And it was getting towards the end of the wedding and the groom came over to me and he said to me oh, do you mind doing something for just just me and my partner, because they'd been off doing the photos and being pulled here, there and everywhere. And they just found themselves in this room with me for a few minutes and they just wanted five minutes. And they said my friends have been telling me about that. You can read their poker tells. Can you do something like that, cause I'm really into poker? And I said, yeah, of course. Uh, I offered the cards out and I usually offer them in like a sort of a dribble Uh, and they just say stop, and they, they, they take the card he taken in that moment and I read, read the, and it was the Queen of Hearts, and his bride was next to him and she said can I do it as well? So I thought, yeah, we'll do two for one. So I sort of turned and I did the exact same selection choice for her and the marking that I saw that she took was the King of Hearts. So he's got the Queen of Hearts, she's got the King.
Speaker 1:And I thought to myself in that moment there's no point me going into this body language presentation at all. I thought I'm just going to do something on the fly and I'm so glad that I did um. I said, make sure that they don't. You know, each of you don't see the other cards. And I said, turn and face each other. And I said earlier on you exchanged vows, you exchange rings and you exchange promises, um, to be life partners. I said now we're going to exchange cards because it would make more sense for him to be the king of hearts and she to be the queen of hearts on the wedding day.
Speaker 1:So they exchanged cards. It was a natural thing because they exchanged vows. It made sense to me in my head at the moment change vows. It made sense to me in my head at the moment. And I turned to um. I turned to the, the groom, and I said you know, today, of all days where you know you're coming together, a celebration of your love, and she's picked out a card for you and in a way it's kind of a gift of how she sees you, how it sort of represents in your life. Come, can you have a look at what card? And then we'll look at, maybe analyzing the card and explaining what it means a little bit.
Speaker 1:And he turns around, he sees the king of hearts, and I remember his face just sort of lit up and her face lit up as well because she'd not seen the card neither.
Speaker 1:They just exchanged it, uh. And then I turned to her and they could almost not wait and you could see that excitement, and I said it'd be interesting to see how he sees you on this day and turns it over. It's the queen of hearts and I remember the reaction was just they just hugged. You know what I mean? Um, but she turned to me and she had tears and he kind of was all red faced and they just gave me a big hug and I thought it was one of the nicest, most genuine reactions I could have got in that moment. And since then I was just sold on that particular marking system because I could see them from so far away, at an arm's length, or you know, even if a card was taken at a table and I was stood six to eight feet away, I'm pretty confident that I could see the markings from there as well.
Speaker 2:So yes, my first item would be the um, the elizabeth's marked playing cards well, I think in that one story you've summed up why, uh, marked deck of cards is acceptable, because we tend to think of it as a tool for the trick and like either revealing a card or something like that. But it's the fact that you were clued up on what the card was that allowed that to happen. So the marking in terms of the presentation never came into it. But had you not have had that mark deck there, you would never have known that those were selected and that moment wouldn't have surfaced the way that it did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely and I think, even if I'm saying that that's going to be the first item that I'm going to take, I would do I still have to specify to you an effect that I would use.
Speaker 1:I mean with that mark day you did mention your poker mind reading thing yeah, um, I don't think it would be the the go-to though these days as I've developed back then. Yes it was. It was a really good contextual trick that would set the scene, as what I was as a mentalist of being able to read tells it was that kind of early, early on thing, but over the years, uh, that my go-to routine now with any kind of early, early on thing, but over the years, my go-to routine now with any kind of deck like this and it doesn't even need to be an actual deck of cards. You can do this really with any packet of something, whether that's game show cards or postcards or photographs, anything that's marked. You can do the same routine with it.
Speaker 1:And it's probably the most performed piece with a deck of cards. I do, and it's a routine called the dealer. So the dealer is a routine where I don't touch the cards. So if me and you were doing this, jamie, you would be shuffling the cards, you'd be handling them and mixing them up and I would ask you to name a playing card as you were mixing them up and at some point you would name the card. You'd table the cards face down and I would ask you do you know where that card is in the deck and everyone says naturally no and I hit them with this line.
Speaker 1:I always say actually you do. You do know where it is in the deck. You know exactly where it is. You're just not really aware of how you know. And let me, let me sort of explain this.
Speaker 1:And I pick up the deck, keeping it face down, and I start to deal the cards it's called the Dealer because I'm dealing cards face down and I just say have you ever walked down the street before you get a sense that someone's maybe following you or looking at you from a distance, and it's that kind of uneasy feeling that you can't describe or put it into words. 99% of people at this point will say yes, and I'll say it's usually our instinct, our intuition. But if I say this to a man, and I say the word intuition, their eyes tend to roll. So I change the word. And if I say do you trust your gut, do you trust your instincts In business, you get a bad feeling. You can't explain it, but you know to be cautious and most men at that point can kind of relate to that. But we're talking about the same thing. We're talking about intuition, of gut feeling and instinctive thought and I say you just know, just trust your instincts. So as I'm going through the deck now, I just, whenever you feel I'm getting close to the card, just say stop. And they say stop, the remainder of the deck's dismissed. We scoop up that pile and I said you see, you said stop around here, so I'm going to deal them face down again and you tell me when you feel that that feeling is just starting to fade a little bit. And they say stop, and I dismiss the remaining cards in my hand. So the most instinctive portion of that deck where they felt that there was something is remains on the table and at this point there's usually about 10 cards or so um, and again I'll deal them out. They say stop, we eliminate it. We're down to about five cards and it's an elimination process that they're 100 in control of, but we get down to maybe two cards. You know they then have to eliminate one and focus on one of those cards. At the end of the routine we've eliminated 51 from um from a full deck down to just one card, all being done based off their instincts, and all the cards are being faced down. It's from a shuffled deck and it was a freely named card, yet the only card left on the table is the one that they named and they've not seen it. You know, not been keeping track of it throughout.
Speaker 1:And when I started to do this, I actually first did it at an event called Mind Summit in Cologne in Germany, and this would have been about 2016.
Speaker 1:I was sat in the the foyer to the hotel and we were surrounded by other mentalists from various countries in Europe, and somebody had handed me a mark deck and it was a DMC deck and they said do something with this Looch, do you mind?
Speaker 1:And I'm usually not the kind of person that people gather around and I do things at conventions, but I did, and I did the dealer. Everyone in that room knew it was a marked deck, yet it still fooled them, because what I was essentially doing is that they didn't realize I'd spent so long with that marked deck over the years that I could read them in an instant from about 10 feet away. And because I could do that, I got really, really good at dealing cards down, looking for the card and then using certain let's say, mentalists techniques to control outcomes, to to ensure that that card's the last one down and it never, ever fails to absolutely blow people away. It's one of those routines I'm very proud of and it absolutely would be the first choice when I'm using a mark deck of cards well, that sounds like a great choice, and your mark deck is going along with you, and it does lead us to number two.
Speaker 2:So what did you put in your second spot?
Speaker 1:the second spot is a. It's more of a tool for me, and that is Craig Filosetti. When he came out with his company ProMystic years ago, one of his first kind of pro-line products was a product called RealDye. People now know of real die because of things like inverte die and the more I don't want to say mainstream, but the more commercially available dice that are used by magicians and mentalists to, uh, to know what numbers are on a dice without, let's say, seeing it.
Speaker 1:I think I can get away with with saying that, um, and the real die for me is a prop that I use. I always have it in my pocket if I'm either a networking event or a close-up gig, and I would say that that one prop has generated me more bookings than any other physical prop that I've had ever. And because it's so small, so convenient and it's literally ready to go in a moment's notice. That would be my second choice and I think between those two first choices that would make up a good 50% of my kind of close-up repertoire, if that makes sense, because it's just two tools that I can use in a multitude of different ways, I think. I think that's an important point to say. With mentalism. It's more about the tools than the props. I think that kind of makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yep, I think that's a great choice, and it's one that we've spoken about before on the podcast. I myself use the MD Mini from ProMystic. I myself use the MD Mini from ProMystic very much the same sort of idea or concept, just with a different prop. My question to you, then, is if we could cement only one routine with your real die, would it A be a close-up routine, a parlor routine, and B? What would that routine be?
Speaker 1:It's a great, great question and about a year ago one of the things that I did is I taught my routine on my Mind Rocks and it generated a discussion by the members at the time as to how many possible ideas can we use from this single prop. And we ended up doing a deep dive kind of investigation on it where we brought members on to provide as many different brainstorming ideas as to what type of routines you can use. And really for this kind of prop it's infinite. But to answer your question, I am very boring when it comes to um changing things up, so I would use my opener, my dice opener that I've used in every single close-up set that I've done in the past 20 years. Well, there can't be 20. When did it come out? At least 15, I remember. Mine is still going and it's an absolute workhorse. It has never let me down. It's why I would always recommend the pro mystic one. Uh, not to sort of shoot down any others, but my experience with the pro mystic one is it's never let me down. So I've never had to use any of the others. It's not to say that I don't own them. I have tried others out, but the um, the real die is the one I always come back to.
Speaker 1:So the routine would be my opening gambit, which is literally um, choose a number, give me a number between one and six. And when I say that, I found that the vast majority of reasons for no, this is no exposure of a method, but the vast majority of people. When I say that they choose the number four, and I don't know why, it's just what I've kind of learned over the experience of asking that question so often, I will have the dice on the table with the number four uppermost, um, but not make any reference to it. I might just ask them the question as I place it down, uh, but keeping eye contact as we do, and they, they'll say four. And I'll say look down, see, the mind reading has already begun. And at that point it's a really great segue into that routine, because people go what. So at that point I'll say we'll do this a few times, but the idea is that you try and keep that number from me, and my goal in this is to sort of read you and try to work out what number you've gone, but then also try to predict what you'll go with next. And we'll do this three times in a row, um, and then, depending on what number they go with, I have a different way of revealing it each time and essentially because there are one in six numbers, there's six potential outcomes that I'm dealing with in terms of my script.
Speaker 1:So Joshua Quinn did a really interesting book years ago and I want to call it Duplicity I can't remember if that's the exact name or not Duplicity and it was an exploration into drawing duplications, but scripting to look like you've influenced the choice of drawing, like what they've drawn. If you then examine the script that was used in the build-up to that, people can pick out a few references where you've created the impression that you've influenced their choice of drawing. Let's say and that was where my head was with this routine I wanted to be able to create outs. Let's say, that would look to the audience that he's made him pick that number. And there was a couple that I used to use on a regular basis and they were really, really fun and they would hit. And they would hit more often than not and when they did hit, you always knew that you were going to get a great reaction. And one of them was just, I'd say, think of knew that you were going to get a great reaction. And one of them was just, I'd say, think of another number. You're going to change the dice a few times if you want to, but settle on one number. Cover it up, so I can't see it. I'll turn away. Just let me know when you've got one.
Speaker 1:And I would say that when I knew that they'd chosen the number one and that's sort of obvious that overt, overtly stating just let me know when you've got one should have gone under the radar and made you chose the number one without you being aware of it. What number did you go for? They lift it up, it's a one. Everybody would react. And it was a really nice moment, um, and it made me start thinking well, what else can I look at? And that's where I would get, because I've exposed to the audience what I've just said. You know what was the last thing that I said as I turned away. And just let me know when you've got one. Obviously, that's gone under the radar. It's made you choose the number one, correct, yes, reaction. But now they know that.
Speaker 1:And so I will use that as an additional tool. I'll say but now you'll be listening. You know you'll be listening to every word that I say to try and decipher. Am I trying to suggest a certain number to you this time? So bear in mind, this time it is a free choice, not a three choice, but it is a free choice. And then that would get another laugh because I'm being playful with what I'm sort of presenting at this point. And then it also gave me an additional attempt afterwards where I could say, look, this time I'm not going to say anything at all, I'll say nothing, just change the dice to whatever number you want and let me know when you've got that number, because they're listening for me to say one again, and things like that. So I had so much fun developing little bits of script for that. That is one of my absolute favorite go-to routines and it'd be probably the only thing I would do with it really.
Speaker 2:And that would translate just as easily to close up and stage as well, which I think is great, you know what I tried to do.
Speaker 1:I have used it in stage and parlor and I do continue to use it, and I worried for far too long that the prop was that tiny no one can see it. Do you need to verify? Maybe you know? And there's times in my stage where I've used cameras and a big screen so people can see it. I have a little dice cup on a little green base table. It looks very nice but it's not really needed because they go off the audience. They go off the participants reaction and they know whether it's right or wrong.
Speaker 1:But having said that, I did overthink this for a long time and talking to my friend, la hookway um, if you don't know, la, he's an absolute genius. I call him the fixer because I often come to him with a routine and he'll just fix it. He's got an uncanny ability to turn anything into gold. He's a really creative thinker and me and la were trying to come up with a way that we could introduce the die to our stand-up shows and we were talking about the big foam dice. There's like a 20 inch foam dice you can get from amazon for about 10 pounds and I bought one of these and I thought right, how am I gonna get this and insert it in? Because I wanted to hide it in there.
Speaker 1:So I cored out the number one and when I sort of pulled it out, it was a long tube which then I cut to the same size. I cut a piece of that tube off that was the same size as the the dice, which would leave a chamber inside this foam dice. Now, that would perfectly match the dice that's going in there. So I'd pull that out, I'd put the dice in, making sure the orientations are correct, so it's the same as the one, and I would push this back in and you've got a giant foam dice that does the exact same thing. Uh, it works great, but you have to travel with it. So it wasn't good for when I had a lot of stuff in london where I would typically take the train down. I didn't want to be walking with this giant 20 inch or 25 inch foam dice, so I ended up going to the bike burner. But I can recommend doing that if you want to introduce that type of routine into your stage act for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a great second choice, and I love the idea of the routine as well. It sounds like it's a very well thought through and considered routine, when most people would ordinarily just hand this out, say, think of a number, and then reveal it. So yeah, that sounds absolutely phenomenal and it leads us to number three. So what did you put in your third spot?
Speaker 1:My third one was I moved away from the idea of taking tools with me because I know mentalism for me is essentially a metaphorical toolbox that you have of skills. But this is a routine that I think has its origins with Annaman and then Bob Cassidy, who I will mention, probably quite a lot on this podcast. He was somewhat of a mentor to me and I do look up to him in his work. He spent the best part of his career developing this routine and now it's fair to say that it is a classic of mentalism and it's the fourth dimensional telepathy, or sometimes known as the three envelope test, depending on where you, where you learned about it. But essentially and I'm sure it's been covered before, but that was a little bit in two minds whether to include it or not. But to be truthful, it's a routine that I think is a perfect mini show in one. You know it's got a start, a middle, middle and end. It gets progressively more and more impossible and there's just no explanation for it from a lay audience if it's well structured, the way that bob created it, uh.
Speaker 1:So yeah, fourth dimensional telepathy, I would probably and I can it's kind of plugging my own stuff, but I I released a um, a version of that through. Read my mind when I called it proper lopes, and I think for a desert island where I'm going to be performing this, the proper lopes might be the better choice because they're made from plastic. They're essentially polypropylene pockets that mimic the job of what the envelopes did in Bob's routine, and then I could get it wet and it wouldn't matter, because I could just reuse them again and again, and I don't have an infinite supply of the number three coin envelopes that mentalists love to use all over the world. So I would probably take my version, which is the Propolopes version, just because I can reuse them over and over again and they're going to be a durable solution when I'm sat on the beach, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's great. Now, which version of fourth dimensional telepathy? Because I know that you mentioned yours there, but I know Mark Poole has quite a lot of work on this. Obviously you've got. Bob Cassidy had several versions of it, I believe, during his career, so which version would you go for?
Speaker 1:I would go for the version that I call school days. Obviously, a lot of people who know my work know that I used to be a teacher and the routine that I've used for a good 20 years has been based around that aspect of my life, has been based around that aspect of my life. So it is a fusion of Bob's ideas in terms of the structure, in terms of the I'm sure I can say this the numbering of the envelopes, if that makes sense. So it retains that structure, even though we don't number the envelopes. They just sit on a little stand and it's a stand that's numbered. But I would use that version because of the setup doesn't rely on sort of folded billets, it uses flat cards, so it goes into another card that I'm able to get the information. I'm just being a little bit cautious how I do that.
Speaker 1:At a later time, when that envelope is dismissed it's in my case and when I go back to grab my marker pen, that's when I would use that opportunity to be able to continue being in that position where I am, where I can reveal the information. So I would use the school days, one which I think I taught on my second Penguin lecture Lecture yeah, I think it's the one from 2015. I did a lecture there and that's where it went in. If not, it's the live act. I can't remember it's showing my age now but I go into it in deep detail and how to construct the envelopes and the structure of everything.
Speaker 1:I've kind of there was problems and areas from fourth dimensional telepathy as they were written down previously through bob's work that bob overcome with experience and practice and his impeccable timing of being able to get away with it through humor. I couldn't, so I wanted to eliminate the folded billet. The reason why is I wanted to? As everyone knows, my that first book that I released was sad, simple and direct mentalism. I like to make sure everything's as simple as can be, so there's very little to go wrong and it's very easy to understand from an audience's point of view. So that would be the specific version that I would present.
Speaker 2:I think yes okay, so you're going to take school days with you. So far we've gone from a mark deck, real die and fourth dimensional telepathy.
Speaker 1:Just those three tricks alone are really heavy hitters in terms of a set you know, in all fairness, I'd probably be happy just taking those three, do you know? I mean, uh, it really would, because I don't think you need to collect as many methods and tricks as you need really to have a successful act. I think that's the difference between a lot of people that, uh, have it as a hobby. You know, you're buying, you're looking for adding new content and new tricks all the time, as opposed to learning techniques and seeing what you can do with them, that sort of creation aspect of it. And I think in mentalism you could limit yourself to just sort of five effects really, and you'd be able to build a successful career out of those, with the iterations and variations that you would at some point come up with by spending time and experience with them. It's, you know, it's a natural progression.
Speaker 1:We talked about the dealer earlier on with the mark deck. I'm still coming up with different lines and different variations of that now after all these years and it's still being fine-tuned and I think it constantly will be until the day that I leave this earth, and that's part of being a mentalist. I think we're forever students of the art as opposed to masters. I think if you're open to change and you're open to improvement. You have to just make those fine incremental enhancements when you can.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that leads us nicely into number four. So what did you put in your fourth spot?
Speaker 1:right.
Speaker 1:So this one is uh, it's a strange one because it's not mine. It's something that I've looked up to for years. I think it's an absolute fantastic idea and structure and it's the one thing that I think is so different to traditional mentalism in that Think of something. I'll tell you what it is, and the routine is called the Ritual, by Bruce Bernstein. Now, bruce put this book I think he originally released it as a manuscript and then it was included in his Unreal book, which, if you don't have and I'm not talking to you, jamie, because I'm 99.9% certain you've got it, if the people listening have never got this book Unreal by Bruce Bernstein I would absolutely recommend that you get it because it's a goldmine of incredible thinking.
Speaker 1:And Bruce included this routine. It was called the Ritual, and it's a really underexplored area of mentalism where he actually asks his participant to think of something that is holding them back in life. You know it could be stress, it could be anxiety, could be anxiety, worry about something, financial issues, whatever. It is something that's holding them back. It might even be confidence, um, and they are to to focus on that word, to to write it down, and it becomes a billy routine. And the interesting thing about it is it's not just a race to reveal what it is, because what would be the point of that, you know? Bring someone up, focus on something that they feel holds them back and then tell them what it is. And then go back to your seat, you know, it would just be so bad. So he uses it as a metaphor to illustrate how a thought can manifest itself into a physical action. And he has them, or the participant, hold out their arm and he says just resist, I'm just going to apply a little bit of pressure onto the back of your wrist and I just want you to try and resist it. And he does this and the participant is able to resist it, but the billet, what's just been written down with the thing that is holding them back, is off on the table. It might be in a wine glass, you know, six feet away. And he then picks up the billet and he brings it closer to the person. And as he brings it closer, he tests their ability to restrain is pushed down again, and as it becomes closer, it literally their weakness. They become weak and they can't hold their hand up anymore and resist the pressure. It moves it away again and they become stronger again and whenever it gets closer they get weaker. It's a really eerie but visually incredible thing to watch from an audience's point of view, because we hear that mentalism is not it's not a visual thing.
Speaker 1:So this particular routine creates interest for people peripherally who might be looking and think what on earth's going on there. And then the routine has a few more phases in it, but essentially he then discards or destroys this piece of paper that is supposed to hold this person back. In doing so he learns the thing and then uses it to sort of feedback, give us a slight reading, and kind of boosts their confidence, if that makes sense. And at that point the final thing after he does the reveal is to test their arm and they're now strong again. So it's become kind of full circle, that in a way it's kind of eliminated and got rid of that stress, that fear, that anxiety in the person and that the participant comes away feeling positive and kind of mentally refreshed. So that will be the routine, even though I don't have a lot of experience with it and I have enough fascination and respect for it that I would. If I was going to be sat on a desert island.
Speaker 2:I could commit a lot of mental thought to it and do something what's more me, um, but that would be definitely a routine that I would like to take and explore further well, I like the idea of a visual piece of mentalism, because in these lists we haven't certainly in terms of the mentalism heavy lists no one to my knowledge or to my recollection has focused on a visual piece of mentalism, something that can be presented for the audience at large as well as that individual.
Speaker 1:So is this something that you wish that you could sort of develop and make your own version of it, or is it just a case of creating a different subtext for it, that is more, you yeah, it's an interesting one because, yeah, I might have ideas of where I want it to go, but then I've been around long enough to know that those ideas are organic and will are fluid and will change with with time and experience. So I think I would be looking to tune it, fine tune it and personalize it as a structure as it is, because who am I to question bruce's structure? This is something that he's invested a lot of time and experience in. So I would use that as a structure as it is, because who am I to question Bruce's structure? This is something that he's invested a lot of time and experience in. So I would use that as a loose structure to base it around and then see what else comes with experimentation. I seem to remember Timon Krause also did something with this idea much more recently, I think within the last few years idea much more recently, I think within the last few years, and I had the pleasure of being in a class, a workshop in Hamburg, with Jan Becker a good few years ago and he asked for a volunteer.
Speaker 1:I didn't know what he was going to do at the time, but it turned out that I was the participant in his version of the ritual, which had a really nice moment in it, which I don't want to spoil because it's Jan's. But there are people out there that are using this. It's just not one of those. It's not the popular item of the moment. It's not this, oh, this month, this is what everyone's working on. It's just been one of those that sat in the background for years. Certain people have found it and done things with it, but it's largely overlooked or missed, I think, in people's research.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's one that everyone's going to be researching now. So that's good, because it means that hopefully we'll get a big plethora of those sorts of routines which I'm a big fan of. But it does lead us to number five. So what did you put in your fifth spot, which?
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan of, but it does lead us to number five. So what did you put in your fifth spot? The fifth one is another routine by another mentalist this one unfortunately sadly no longer with us An incredibly beautiful man by the name of Barry Richardson. I don't know if you've ever had the chance to meet Barry. One of my most fondest memories in mentalism really is is meeting barry at the university of huddersfield years ago. We there was a society called the british society of mystery entertainers, the bsme, and they used to have annual events and master classes or workshop days on mentalism with various guests, and I had been brought in with a few other people to do a lecture that day, and in the audience was Barry Richardson. Completely blew my mind, did not expect him to be in there.
Speaker 1:One is, he's an American guy, he was in his 70s at the time, I think and he was such a gentle and warm and just lovable person, radiated positivity and just encouragement, and I remember he took me to one side during the the lecture that I gave. I actually referenced one of his, a move that he talked about in one of his theater of the minds book, but instead of it being used as a switch, I'd used it as a peak. And when he heard that, I remember just hearing this one person clapping. And I remember looking up and it was in the university hall and it had raked seating and all I could see was Barry Richardson stood there on his own giving me a standing ovation and no one else was like what's he doing, what's Barry doing? And he just said to me he said it was just a really really nice, uh idea developed from this that he'd never heard about in all the years. Um, and he gave me so much encouragement and he was just such a great, great guy and he was encouraged to to perform something. So he ended up doing somewhat of a mini lecture there and in it he did a routine called quartet.
Speaker 1:I think for references he released it separately. In fact he did, because I'm sure I bought it from Alakazam back in the day. It was just um, almost like five pages of A4 printed out, folded over, stapled, and it came with a little thing and a deck of cards and it was just this little package. But it's also in his Theatre of the Mind book. It's called Quartet and it's Barry Richardson's memorised deck routine which sounds. I haven't done it justice. But watching him do it it was incredible and it got faster and stronger and more and more.
Speaker 1:Impossible where I'm sat there completely scratching my head having no idea how he's doing it. You know, the cards were utterly and thoroughly mixed up by everyone. They were handed out in such a seemingly random way but he just knew every single card. He knew where they all were. So it wasn't really a memorized deck routine that he was doing. He could kind of identify who had what cards, but in a way that felt like he was dancing. He was just in a complete flow in this routine.
Speaker 1:It was perfect, one of the best mentalism routines I've seen with my own eyes, like being in the same room, and at that point I knew that it was something that I wanted to learn. So I spent some time with it. I spent a lot of time with it really, and I used it at weddings. When I did after I don't want to say after dinner shows, but after the speeches and the wedding breakfast sometimes I would stand and present, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes to the whole group group and it would be a great, great routine to use. That would build speed, build that impossible moment where the audience were just scratching their heads and laughing because he got to the point where there's no way that he knows this this quick, so they just tend to burst out laughing really, because it's that absurd. And it did give the scope in the routine which which is really really nice to do this with other things as well, and I spent a good amount of time trying to create a different thematic presentation that used the exact same method.
Speaker 1:So all I was doing is, instead of using playing cards, I'd use alphabet cards and I was revealing letters and at the end, there was a group of letters that hadn't been revealed and I brought them in and I would reveal them one at a time and they would go on a stand and the person helping me place these letter cards on the stand was the best man, typically the groom's brother or his best friend, and I found that the best man never got any real credit at the wedding. It was never. You know, it was the unsung hero. Real credit at the wedding it was never. You know, it was the unsung hero.
Speaker 1:So this was my opportunity to put the shine and the spotlight on the best man, because those last letters that I was struggling with. Basically, when I revealed them on this stand and they turned it around, it spelt the name best man or the word best man. So there was an element of customization that you could do with a routine as well, which just gives it complete brownie points from me for any type of routine that you don't have to stick 100% to and you can go off and customize and create your own versions of. So yes. Quartet by Barry Richardson.
Speaker 2:Now, you mentioned that you use this in weddings, but is this something you also used to do in your stand-up performances in your shows? Because I feel like that would, and we've spoken about memorized x sort of routines in the past and how it's normally used as a way to credify your abilities. However, this is sort of a, like you mentioned, they start laughing because they realise that it's absurd that you could possibly be able to do this. So it sort of doesn't fit into that same category. So did you use it stand up, and where in your set would you tend to use it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's only ever really been used stand up. So when I talk about the weddings, it would be like a stand-up performance at the wedding in front of the whole room, typically after the wedding breakfast or it would be after the speeches. I would be the last person introduced before. Essentially, they would turn the room around for the evening. So I would have 30, 45 minutes, something like that, and it would come probably about halfway because I use it as a transitional routine where I could talk about.
Speaker 1:It was not heavy mind reading, it was more to do with memory, and I talked about learning, having a memory-based skills, learning, mnemonics, and I talked, I asked. One of the questions I ask is put your hand up if you've ever been to Vegas, and you would typically get half the room put their hands up and I'd say have any of you heard of a guy called Massey Gambit? And sometimes you have a few hands raised, which is great, because Massey Gambit doesn't exist. He's just a character I've created over the years. But Massey Gambit was a croupier at Vegas in the 80s and he worked at Barry's casino and one of the things that he could do is take a deck of cards. He could actually do it with four decks of cards. But he would take a deck of cards, hand it out to be to be shuffled and he'd look through all those four decks that have been shuffled together and go through once and learn the entire sequence of those four decks. And I'd say now these days it's almost impossible because they use computerized shuffling with six decks in a shoe. But back then, um massey was really good at sort of doing this croupier kind of demonstration of being able to recall all these cards completely made up.
Speaker 1:But it sounded. It sounded like I knew what I was talking about and sometimes people put their hand up. They say, oh yeah, I think I've heard of that name. Um, but yeah, completely hand up and say, oh yeah, I think I've heard of that name, but yeah, completely made up.
Speaker 1:And it would be my way in to talk about mnemonics and memory and as part of being a mentalist, some of it relies on these kinds of techniques and I would love to share this with you and give you a demonstration and get people on board that way. So it was kind of like a break in that idea of what mentalism is. It was start off. We talk about reading people, reading thoughts from reading body language. But then I wanted to introduce a different facet, a different angle of what mentalism could be for some people and talked about that developing of the mind and the memory, techniques and things like that. So that's where it would fit in the program and it would be very much a segue routine into something later on be very much a segue routine into something later on.
Speaker 3:Hey guys, harry here from Alakazam Magic, I hope you're enjoying the podcast. I'm just here to interrupt and tell you a little bit about the Alakazam Magic Convention. It has taken us 35 years to get to this date. However, may the 9th 2026 will be the very first Alakazam Magic Convention. Now I know you guys are super excited, maybe just as excited as we are. First of all, the venue is a 37-minute direct train from central London. The venue is then literally a 10-minute walk from the train station. There's hotels within a stone's throw, there's restaurants nearby and there's incredible food and drink on site. That's all without even getting into the magic side of things. We are going to have four incredible lecturers performing throughout the day, including one person who's going to be flying over to the very first UK lecture. We are buzzing to announce who those four are. Not only that, there'll be dealers on site and a place for you guys to jam and session and meet new friends.
Speaker 3:Where are the lectures going to be held? This is my personal favorite bit about the Alakazam Convention. They're going to be happening in one of the cinema screens. That means fully tiered seating, comfy seats, a drinks holder and there will be a close-up camera on the jumbo cinema screen that will be giving you close-ups of all the little nuances that you're going to need to see when the lecturers are performing. There will, of course, be a full gala show to end the evening off. You guys are not going to want to miss it. The great thing is as well. On the sunday, the day after, alakazam magic shop, which is a two minute drive, will be open. So if you're heading down to the convention, why not stay overnight and come and visit our magic shop? Remember May the 9th 2026. Tickets on sale now at alakazamcouk. See you guys soon.
Speaker 2:And another car trick. Controversially, there you go, controversially, but it leads us to number six. So where do we go with the six spot?
Speaker 1:The six is one of mine. Routines is a hybrid really, and it is probably the first. It's the first stand up routine that I ever worked on and over the years the method has changed dramatically, in that I used to use a gimmicked prop that I would that bought, and it relied on electronics, and over the years it failed in various ways at the most unfortunate of times, and it got to the point where I wanted a manual, mechanical version of this. And it's a routine that is a hybrid of two different classics. One of them is sneak thief by larry becker or desire max maven. It's, you know, it's kind of those two that that created that as a classic. And it's also a fusion of like a chair test in a way, even though sometimes I perform it where I have them stood in a row, hence the name lineup as opposed to and being sat in a row. But the beauty of it is that you can do it standing or seated, it's up to them. So the routine is called and, to describe it, four people come up on stage.
Speaker 1:They take a pen I've got some different colored marker pens. They take a pen in secret and put it in their pockets, so no one knows what color they've got. They take an envelope and then I ask them a couple of questions. And I'm doing this while I'm not looking at them. So they're doing all this behind me and the audience is kind of like confirming that this is what's going on. Have they got a pen? Great, is it hidden? You don't know what color they've got, great. Okay, so just answer instinctively, don't think too much about it.
Speaker 1:And then I would ask them a 50-50. So it would the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, and they'd give me their answer Burt's or Ernie, you know, do you prefer Chinese food or Indian food? Would you prefer to jump into the swimming pool or to go for a swim in the ocean? Those kind of 50-50 questions. I would ask them a few of them and their response would seemingly give me an indication of what colour I think they've selected, what envelope they've got. And then I would have them stand in a position and I've got these numbered discs on the floor one, two, three, four and I say you sound like you're going to be a number two person. Can you go and stand behind number two? And you can get some inappropriate jokes off, little things like that, and I would repeat this four times. So I'd have four people come up. They've all got an envelope, they've all got a different colored marker pen and they're now all stood in a position that I've positioned them in based on their responses to the questions.
Speaker 1:Obviously, the truth is, the questions don't really give you any indication at all, but it helps create the idea that they do and I think that's very important for an audience to sort of latch on to that. It's those answers that have given him the insight that he needs and I think that's really important At this point. I've got this flexibility in the routine where, if I want, I can have all four people to provide, like, do a drawing on the back of the envelope with the pen that they've taken, make it nice and big and visual, and you can do a sneak thief type routine at that point where you have the envelopes mixed up afterwards with the drawings on and then you look at the drawings one at a time and you can discern who's done which drawing. But instead of doing drawings, sometimes, for example, if you do a drawing duplication in your act and you want to sort of break that kind of pattern up of doing the same things I've had a lot of success with things like write down a word that you find funny. I thought it was just one of those things I use one day and it completely changed the dynamic of the routine. The audience seemed really engaged with these words because often it'll be a word that might be, you know, when you walk in and say oh, it's a private joke kind of thing.
Speaker 1:With companies they have their own kind of in words and in jokes and in stories and things like that and that would tend to get you know, it appear or crop up in some of the performances and you'd hear people laughing their heads off in the audience when we've looked at the word Cupid, for example, and I'm thinking, why is that so funny? But to them it is because it makes sense and then you would get them to explain it and obviously it just increases the rapport and the connection. It just makes things gel and go a little bit better. So by having that flexibility to change what you want that is put on those envelopes either a drawing, a word or a number, or it could be a memory or anything you want it gives you a really nice amount of opportunities to create something that's more for you really as a performer, you get to choose what it is, it's not dictated to you.
Speaker 1:So you would invariably reveal and work out who's written what funny word or who's done what drawing, and in their end, in the end, they're stood holding these envelopes that have a drawing or a word on them and they're in a certain order. And then we look at the order from a color point of view. So the order might be red, green, uh sorry, red black, green, blue. That might be the final sequence of it, and it usually is for mine red, black, green, blue. Um, and then I see but why? And the audience never can provide an answer and say why this exact order? And I'll tell you why, because this was the order that I decided before I came here today, that you would stand in at the end, but typically no one, no one believes me.
Speaker 1:So, um, if you open up the envelope, you'll see that there's a piece of colored card in there and we're looking, just take it out, and we're looking for red, black, green, blue, and naturally they they've got this envelope with their drawing on in that color. They pull out the card color and it matches the color of the drawing, which becomes a you know an applause cue and they think that the routine's over. But then you've got a. It's kind of my idea when you look at david berglas and he creates these incredibly elaborate stage pieces. What have more and more reveals and we've seen deron use those fantastically over the years with, you know, like the ending to enigma and things like this where he just builds it and builds it and and you think, god, how many more applause cues can you get out of this one routine? You've sort of really you've squozed blood out of a stone and it's great as a technical exercise to look at how many you can do and the lineup kind of sort of borrowed from that thinking really.
Speaker 1:So then you've got other additional things that you can do.
Speaker 1:For example, if they pick up the number discs, on the back of those are colors and they match the colors that they've got.
Speaker 1:So it was inevitable that they were going to be in that order.
Speaker 1:But my favorite part about it is that there was also a folded sheet of paper in those envelopes and you can put whatever you want in there, and this is why it's my favorite in in terms, if you're doing a corporate or a wedding or a birthday, you can customize what's inside those envelopes.
Speaker 1:So when they take, when the participants take out the contents and open it up, it will reveal a 100 customizable message for the client. Or if it's the birthday girl or a wedding, it might say congratulations, steve and Sue, and it'll be in the exact same colors to match the color order that they're in as well. So it's an additional thing and that routine as I must have performed it hundreds and hundreds of times over the years and it's just that staple routine I know I'm going to get some really strong reactions from it. It's 100% customizable to the client and it's again, it's a nice visual thing with four people stood on stage with a hybrid of two different classics in mentalism. So you know, what else do you need? Really this absolute routine that I would definitely use on my desert island.
Speaker 2:The lineup yeah, I think this is a phenomenal trick and I I'm not sure if it was something that you sort of developed, but I distinctly remember seeing the pen selection portion of that routine on an early I want to say it's probably Penguin Live because I actually have a set that I made after watching it because I thought it was so ingenious.
Speaker 2:And then I saw that you'd brought out the lineup, which felt like a more considered, well, more sort of put together version of that, and I remember seeing it and thinking well, number one, the props look absolutely phenomenal, like the production quality on it. Like I mentioned at the head of the podcast, your stuff is, I mean, I've got frameworks as well. At the head of the podcast, your stuff is, I mean, I've got frameworks as well phenomenal like the quality of the. The product is just amazing, um. So not only does it look super, super professional, fill an entire stage, it's essentially a stand-up chair test, so you don't have to worry about getting the chairs, um, but, like you just said, this can pack into a bag and go with you anywhere, to any situation cruise ships, corporates, weddings, literally anywhere that you want to go. So I think it's an absolutely phenomenal trick and it really is one that people should check out.
Speaker 1:Do you know? It's funny, you should say this because those pens you said that you bought a pack of those pens. I was for ages searching for some kind of pen box that achieved what that did and finding those, those Städler I don't even know if that's how you pronounce it Städler, städler, the German brand of pens that you know. The Germans always over engineer everything and they over engineered that box to be and then just a fantastic um box that does all the work for you. And, yeah, I mean the idea um behind that actually came from um. Oh, what was he called? Or what is he called? I'm trying to the names. I want to say Stephen, maybe Stephen, no, stephen Tucker. That was it, stephen Tucker, visa Cabaret, the original when he had his own wallet. That's where that idea come from. I probably really down to Pete and Mark's popularization of that with the Stealth Assassin wallet. They had a version of that and I think that kind of cued everybody into that, because I'd not heard of the Tucker method before that, which would then sort of force me to go in down the rabbit hole, so to speak. So yeah, the Stephen Tucker idea inspired that, but the electric version was using like color match for years, but I would have invariably a problem. I'd have problems with that particular product, whether it be range or inconsistency, but I knew I had to change it and make it more hands-on. So the the offset is that you know you lose the aspect of it being really clean and that you're nowhere near the selection of the pens to now it being more of a uh, an important part of. You know, when the people say, if you put emphasis, emphasis on a prop, it becomes obvious. Well, sometimes if you put emphasis on a procedure or an element of a routine, it becomes more important than it actually really is. So when people remember it, they think well, it was about the questioning and I always asked those 50, 50 questions, but really it was to cover up the fact that I was holding the pens as they got talk. So, yeah, the stedler uh pack of pens. You can still get them to this day. They're about a fiver from amazon wh smiths um, I can't remember was it. Was it one of the penguin things that we talked about, where you learned that the Line Up Pro Kit, which is the thing that you referenced afterwards, is my?
Speaker 1:I used to get frustrated that the thickness of the line on those pens were not visible. From sort of 10, 15 feet away they were visible that you could see the drawings or the writing that's been done on the envelope. But where it came up, a problem is that in certain environments you couldn't differentiate the green from the blue ink or the black ink. The red was the one that you could always see. So I wanted to have really thick pens, marker pens, and that sent me down a rabbit hole. That, christy, I still get angry about it to this day, because the company who provide these pens were just diabolical in their dealings with me. But they didn't want to sell these pens to me and I was trying to order about a thousand packs of them and the pens.
Speaker 1:It was by a Japanese company called Artline and they have what they use on their advertising blurb as the thickest marker pens in the world or something along those lines. And I thought to myself well, that's good, I'm going to be able to see those from 20 feet or 30 feet away from the back of the audience. We'll be able to tell the colors and we'll be able to see the images that they've drawn or the words that they've written really, really clearly. So I got a pack in, I realized they worked really, really well and I wanted to buy them wholesale and get a big box of them for the pro kit. And then the actual box for that was created by it's, actually designed by myself and phil phil did the development net for it, uh, in a computer file which then went over to hong kong, and alan wong was the guy who sourced the manufacturer of those pen boxes for us. So a big shout out to Alan, because without that it would never have existed as a pro kit wow.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's a great choice and leads us to the tail end of your eight with number seven. So what did you put in your seventh spot?
Speaker 1:so this was the one that I wasn't 100% sure I wanted to include, because I know that you're going to ask me about the type of routine and really what I have ended up doing with. It is like a mashup of a lot of ideas that have been published, so I can kind of reference them and talk about that a little bit without being too open. But it's the concept of PK Touchers. I think it's a fantastic concept. I do think that it's been overdone over the years, especially from the point of view of stage performers using chairs. Let's say there's a lot of very similar things where people jump up from chairs, you know the old sort of shocked chair kind of gag and the methods that I've looked into. I've tried to obviously banachek's original psychological touches, um, or psychokinetic touches. Let's say I never liked the idea of of demonstrating aura cleansing. You know it didn't fit me, and that's not to say that doesn't fit anyone else, but for me it didn't. I knew myself enough to know that I couldn't connect with that idea. Lior Manor, widely credited for invisible touches as well, and then since then it's quite kind of muddied. So a few years ago there was a product out called D'Angelo's Touch. I loved it, but I also knew that it wasn't 100% original Because of my involvement with the British Society of Mystery Entertainers.
Speaker 1:The years before which I talked about with the Secrets or Psychics events, steve Drury actually introduced me to a routine called Shamanic Touches and it was by and I don't want to butcher his name, I think it was an Italian mentalist by the name of Wolf Waldbauer I want to say Waldbauer or Bayer, I think it was W-A-L-D-B-A-U-E-R. Wolf Waldbauer, and there was a video of him performing from years ago and it looks to me, in terms of timing, probably about the same time that Charles Gauci was doing Eye to Eye those kind of performances. And he goes around and does this. He's got this parlor show and everyone's seated at a banquet, but there's only probably about 30 or 40 people there, so he's not mic'd up and he's giving this incredible demonstration where you can clearly see that some of the movements in there are very similar to the D'Angelo touch thing, but this predates it by a good 10 years. I would like to think at least so.
Speaker 1:Um, I would recommend people that are into that to look at Wolfe's routine. Uh, shamanic touches. But then you've got more, let's say, more updated ideas. Uh, peter Turner. He has his Midas touch routine, which I think there's a book out, isn't it called the pk book, the pocket book? Um, definitely recommend that if you want to get a broad overview of of that sort of area of mentalism. But in terms of an actual physical gimmick thing, let's say, pk touches tends to not really have a gimmick, but some companies have developed gimmicks for it and one of the very best that I've seen and used is a is a product called intuito, by, I want to say master miracles. It's a german creator, a guy called jurgen, and it's a blindfold that achieves the same thing and it looks great. I've used that on stage with various things and the routine that I've developed is a mishmash, a jive bunny remix of all those ideas and sprinkled with some of my others as well, and I say the word sprinkled because of something that I introduced to it and I've not really spoken about outside of my mind rocks with it, but I would love to sort of share it with some of the readers here because it sounds so crazy, but it's great.
Speaker 1:My partner, nicola, she's amazing at baking. She's always baking. I'm her chief tester. That's why I always I'm either ballooning my way or I'm looking, I'm at the gym looking better, but it's one of those things I'm always trying cupcakes, cakes, whatever it is that she's baking at the time. And one day I found this little pack and I've got to be careful because I know you told me about methods, but I'm just going to say a pack of cupcake toppings, sprinkles.
Speaker 1:I mentioned about some little sprinkles of my idea.
Speaker 1:You can get sprinkles that are black and they are very dull and they don't shine or react to any kind of lighting and you can have them in your pocket and there are millimeter round balls and you can literally take them out. You can throw them at people, you can flick them, you can drop them on the hands and no one sees them. And at the start, when I was playing around with this, I didn't have the black ones. I was just getting them from Sainsbury's. So you get a pink one, a blue one, a yellow one and a white one and they would often react to the light. They reflect a little flash of light and you would see this. But with the black ones they're completely hidden and I find that just playing around with those for a little bit of time, you'll get a load of ideas how to do a real-time pk touch that's invisible to anyone trying to watch. So I think that's all I'm going to say on that, but I hope it's given you enough of an idea as to what I'll be doing.
Speaker 2:Well, this is the one. Anyone who knows me knows that I could speak for hours on PK touches because I'm just a huge fan of it. But where would you normally perform PK touches then? Is this something that you've done weddings and walk around as well as stage or do you primarily just perform it for stage?
Speaker 1:I've had a little bit of success performing it close up at the weddings. Uh, the problem is with that kind of environment where you are strolling is that people can come up from any angle and all of a sudden you can be surrounded. You're going to be really acutely aware of any kind of angles. So if I'm going to do the full kind of routine and the routine that I use, it requires it uses the doll. I had a knitted doll made that just happens to look like the participant who's up on stage with me, because there's always a lady with dark hair in a black dress at a corporate event. So I just make sure that that's the person who comes up and the little doll then looks really creepy. That I've got a doll of her in my case, which makes sense when she starts to feel things that the doll's feeling.
Speaker 1:I think it came from that really ironic and comedy line about show me on the doll where you got touched. I think that's probably where the idea came from. So I think I've had better success with it on stage and in parlour where I'm a little bit more in control of the angles and who's there behind me and who can see from that aspect. So I'm probably just gonna stick with parlor on that one. You can actually buy it today from lulucom by typing in shamanic touches by wolf voldbauer w-a-l-d-b-a-u-e-r. It's just a small paperback book, but it will give you the historic background of that and maybe put to bed any sort of thoughts and the timeline as to where that appeared, because I think it's important that we know who came first and things like that for stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, Well, that's one that I'll be picking up, so thank you for that, but it does lead us to number 8, your final choice. What did you put in your last spot?
Speaker 1:You mentioned it earlier. You said you owned it. It is a Q&A and it's my Q&A project that I did called Frameworks, and I've chosen to include that because I think the older I've got, the more and wiser I've become, the more I realize that really Q&A is the absolute, purest form of a mentalist act that you can get, really in terms of that connecting with the audience, making them care about it and performing something that is just, you know, otherworldly. It's difficult to dismiss it as a trick once you start answering questions. I don't always even though I call it a q a and I talk about this in frameworks it's. I often perform it with more, with more of an audience reading, so I sometimes I won't even get questions written down. I might have, you know, a fun fact, an interesting memory about you, that sort of thing, and I use that to to connect with the audience, but not just me, with the audience member, but all of us. So we're learning about each other through whatever you've chosen to share, which is good for me, because every show is different and every show is unique, because you've chosen to share this with me and the audience yesterday chose to share that with me and what have you. So it creates a nice unique kind of vibe during the show. And also, I would say I would use the framework system is because, for those people that don't know, framework started off as a project called emergency q a and it was something that I would keep in my bag, um for an event where I needed to use it in that emergency situation. So I planned to do different types of q and a's over the years. One of them would have been um the whole card. I learned a really nice sort of. It was called the uh, the supper club act and was it berlin halls volta club super club act or something, and it was chicardi. Um, dr charles scott and also john riggs did a really good dvd on that.
Speaker 1:That was one of the Q&As that I spent a bit of time with learning, but I found that with that you know, you have this big box that you have to bring in and it's not always possible that I can take that box with me. So then I learned some of the Q&As that Bob Cassidy talks about, and I love his bowl Q&A that he does in his Q&A act, where people just chuck slips of questions and he collects them and in order for him to perform, that he would then have to have a break in that performance where he could go backstage, let's say. And the last thing that I wanted to do is have to be able to perform this and rely on, you know, being able to meet the audience beforehand to give out things and to click them up and then have time to prepare it all in that moment. So the emergency Q&A was a project that I'd set myself to If everything goes wrong and you just had to walk out on stage with some question cards and some pencils, that you could go into doing this without any kind of pre-show or preparation, and that's that's where that idea was born. Out. Of.
Speaker 1:It then very and I did not so very quickly, but when I started to look at this as a release that I wanted to put out, it then very quickly started to gather momentum and it really started to take shape when I spent some time with Mark Paul and I shared my Q&A with him and he loved it and he actually said to me he says this is not just an emergency Q&A, this is actually a great method to go and and use, but I think we should spend a bit of time with it and that's when he started throwing ideas at me and I remember it was during lockdown. We were having two and three hour conversations about things and I'd go away and he'd go away, and then we'd catch up again a few weeks later and this kind of organically started to sculpt into something much bigger than just a Q&A program. And it started to build into something much bigger than just a Q&A program and it started to build into a show and it was a structure that people say that with jazz mentalism and and Q&As it's very difficult to sort of structure that because you don't know what you're going to say, you don't know what questions you're going to get, and that's going to vary each time. So it's not like you can script a reveal for this. Well, I suppose you can, you can, but you know, over the years you'll get certain questions that are attributed to you know one aspect of life, whether it be you know marriage or money or something like that, and you can have kind of stock things that you can use and bring in. But what Mark did was sort of identify some really interesting points and that's where these transitional points kind of came in. And for people who don't own brain works and don't know what it's about. It's actually a structure that you learn, and once you understand this basic structure you then can go in and learn expanded structures and then advanced structures, and then you start creating your own. And once you understand how that kind of works, and all of a sudden you've kind of created your own mentalism, show what's peppered and littered with q, a, but you've got these natural transition points where you go off into other bigger aspects, like a, you know a demonstration, what might be a chair test or something like that, but it kind of all flows within this same structure and frameworks. Then it started to take a different shape.
Speaker 1:When that came out, we had 300 of them made and I always have a very small run of products made because I don't want to have well one. I don't want a garage full of thousands of boxes. But at the same time I think to myself I'm using these products, I've developed them for myself, and here's like 200, 300 of them additionally what I'm using these products, I've developed them for myself and here's like 200, 300 of them additionally what I'm just going to sell to people that are interested in my work. So that's how I've always kind of thought about me releasing my products not as a big commercial project to sell to Murphy's and then to have it filtered down into all the shops and everybody stock it. I just want to have it more of a little boutique thing where, if you're a fan of my work, you know what I'm about and you want to come and get something a little bit different, you can come and buy this.
Speaker 1:And that's what Frameworks was, and it's been probably one of the most successful releases I've had to date, not just in terms of sales and selling the numbers, but in terms of the amount of engagement from the people that have bought it. And I terms of the amount of engagement from the people that have bought it. And I always judge my the success of a release for me not on whether it's sold out or not, whether people are emailing me in six months time and saying I've lost it and can I buy another one or it's got damaged in, you know, in on the sand or something like that. I've had all sorts of questions over the years where people have wanted to get um replacements of things because they use them, and I think often you can, you can release something or people say if you want to have something what people don't look at or even remember, put it in a book. And that's really true, because some of my favorite things I've ever created were in the Black Project that no one ever talks about, and, whereas frameworks, everybody who bought it would talk, was talking about it and they were excited to share. And I know you did this, jamie. You shared some really invaluable great tips on frameworks on the owners group, which then inspired others to go and play around with it and then come back and share those tips.
Speaker 1:And for me, that's when I knew it was a successful product, when it created that sort of network of people that were working together with this common goal of using frameworks.
Speaker 1:And since then you know, I learned that Jan Becker, one of Germany's biggest mentalists he's currently got a show every night that he performs in Berlin and he just does frameworks his own version of it. He shared that with us at my Mind Rocks. It was just mind-blowing to see I almost got a little bit emotional really to actually see someone taking that what's had so much blood, sweat and tears go into and use it to connect with his audiences and to share his message and and talk about what he, he does and what and whatnot. So, yeah, frameworks for me would be the final thing that I would take, and it's not really taking a physical prop. You're taking a bunch of cards and some pencils, but it's the ideas behind it and inside that release that enable you to create a really nice, strong, powerful moment that will connect your audience together and enable you to perform a mentalism show. So that's my last one.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a great choice. I would have been shocked if it wasn't in there, to be honest, because enable you to perform a mentalism show. So that's my last thought Well, it's a great choice. I would have been shocked if it wasn't in there, to be honest, because, like you say, I purchased this when you first put it out and I remember seeing the group and everyone was so invested in it from the off.
Speaker 2:And the reason I think that yours stands up from the off and the reason I think that yours stands up and again, we've spoken about q a on the podcast before. We've had it selected, uh, not a load of times, but a decent amount of times and I think the problem is with q a is that there are a lot of methods for it but there is no structure to those methods generally. So it's jazz mentalism by and large, which is absolutely fine. But if you don't have the structure and the idea, well, I've got series of frameworks and structures, but there's some really clever methods and integrations of methods that you will already know and you've combined all of that into this set of structures which are easy to follow, easy to master. So much fun to practice, I might just add. Normally you would never say Q&A is a fun thing to practice, but it's great, it's very difficult to practice, it isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah?
Speaker 1:You've got a tangible structure to work on, which is great fun, like you say, but at the same time, you'll find that everything that you do in it, you already know how to do, the basic moves, but put together in a sequence that, if you follow that sequence, oh my god, you're suddenly three ahead, or you've got access to a load of pieces of information that no one knows about, and now you've got all the time in the world to go back to, and really it was a, it was an experiment in seeing how far you can get ahead, um, in terms of being prepared for the reveals and now having all this information available to you. And I think one of the reasons why it's been so successful is because of the community, and I think, going forward, I'm going to compile all those ideas, yours included, try and get as much of it and make sense of it and put it into an actual physical book that can be sold, because I think that'll be really beneficial to people just getting into it and others that might have missed out on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that'd be great. I'd be a consumer of that straight away. I'd love to have that to reference back to, because there's so much information that was there to begin with and now, with everyone's input, it's just massive.
Speaker 1:It really is. I mean the way I do do it. Now I start off, and I think you did that. I can say this no, it'll mean nothing to anyone else, but it'll mean something to jamie.
Speaker 1:But, um, you, you did something with question zero. You know, reveal zero, and that inspired me to go off and look at how many ways I can do the same thing, eliminate that idea of using that, and I came up with something, something that I've used since, and it is so bold, and every time I do it I laugh inside my head that I've just got away with that and no one's seen it and they don't know that. I'm going to come back to it in a minute. So one thank you for that, because you've inadvertently influenced it. Inadvertently influenced it, um, but as a result, when I look back at the, the basic framework from the booklet, like the way I do it now, is completely unrecognizable from that.
Speaker 1:So it's important that that the people went on the journey, though, so they could understand where they where it was at the start. All right, I understand what you're trying to do there, and now it's come this, and now you're doing this. What am I going to do with it? And I I think it's almost like that rite of passage We've all got our drawers full of dusty mentalism and magic props that we bought. We've not wasted the money on it. We might not use it, but we've learned something from it. We've learned it's not for us, but we've learned why that's not for us, because we prefer a method that's more this You're always going to learn from those kind of failures, whether whether people see it or not, and I think we learned the most from our failures and frameworks was essentially a giant steamroller of things that had failed and I wanted to put something together that was just a little bit. I could rely on it no matter what, and that's yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm very, very, uh, very, very proud of that well, I say to people this all the time, but do go check it out, if you have always wanted to do Q&A, if you've always wanted to look into it. I think it's one of the most approachable versions of the Q&A that you'll ever come across and it really is a set of structures and systems which will help you ease into it and expand, which I think is just as important the idea that you can start with a seed, be comfortable with that and then just allow it to manifest and grow over time. But, looch, you did just mention your dusty drawer. Now, on our island, we don't have a dusty drawer, but we do have a big sand pit that you get to chuck something inside for your banishment. So what did you banish in your island?
Speaker 1:I thought about this for a while and I was really. I had to sort of bounce back and forth on it, uh, but I decided to go, for it might be a little bit controversial, um, but maybe not, I don know. So if I could banish one thing from the magic community, it would be the obsession with shortcuts, and no, I don't mean iOS shortcuts. I know there's plenty of performers that have a phone that can turn it into a Pete device and make them some toast. I'm talking about the mindset of shortcutting your way through magic and mentalism. You know the belief that you can skip the foundations, buy your way into being a great performer, and you see a lot of this in mentalism, especially, kind of stockpiling gimmicks, secret tech, buying everything, everything that's new, hoping that the next purchase is going to finally make them. It's like chasing that holy grail this next purchase is going to make me a big star or it's going to create that thing that I want and a lot of people. Just, you know it doesn't work like that. So mentalism really, for me, is not about what's in your pockets, it's about what's inside your head. The real tools of the trade are invisible, uh, psychological techniques, language, timing, the ability to read a room and adapt in real time and unfortunately those things aren't for sale. So he developed them through experience, reflection, practice and not really from the product description on a magic site. So, um, I think 95 of what strong mentalist learn and use actually just lives upstairs. The remaining five percent is just there to help translate what's already been built through the skill and experience. Really, I think if you reverse that and you're carrying 95 of what, what you've learned, in your pockets, you're not really a performer, you're just a consumer of magic really.
Speaker 1:So that idea of trying to shortcut everything, I suppose there's a little bit of entitlement, sense of entitlement with generations coming through, which is where I knew I was going to be touching on something that might be controversial and I'm not trying to be that gatekeeper role. I'm trying to make sure the gate survives and it's still stood up there in 10 years time, because there's that sense of entitlement from people like you know, my mentors, people that I looked up to and spent time with growing up, learning mentalism. They just didn't give it me on a plate. You know, I'd have to go and earn my chops and get experience and fail, and that's really I mentioned about learning more from failures. You know that's where you really sort of learn what works for you and who you are as a mentalist that way, by taking your time.
Speaker 1:So I would like to slow down. I'd like everyone to slow down a little bit. We have got more methods and more tricks right now than we'll ever need in a million lifetimes. Slow down, look up and find yourself and find what works for you and take your time doing it. It's a lifelong process. It's not a race to the top, because if you invariably cut through people and get to that top, you'll have to remember them on the way down. I think that's as sort of placid as I can say it. I hope that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does. I think it's a really interesting thing to think about, isn't it? Because nowadays we have these tropes in our industry like pack small, plays big, everyday carry, whereas you know, when I and I mean Andy Nyman touched on this when we spoke about props and how magicians should still be magical and we should have these magical things, but in a modern age we're so scared and concerned about people calling them out and saying what is that?
Speaker 2:Really we shouldn't be concerned about that. But what I think is so interesting is one place that I find really inspirational is the Magic Circle in London, and on the walls is just hundreds of years of history. And those people who were, you know, the people who paved the way for us. They were not concerned about it being an everyday carry. They had elephants and cages and all of these grand things, you know. They had these beautiful props. They were never concerned about making it easy. It's so interesting how, over the years, we've changed into this as quick and easy as we can do it without really putting the time and the effort in. But I wonder if that comes down to fear. I wonder if a lot of performers are scared to take the leap to do a show, to hire a theatre, to approach a restaurant, to do some work. I wonder if it just comes from a place of worry and not really understanding how to get into things.
Speaker 1:It's difficult, isn't it really? Because everyone's got their own sort of goals and what they want to, sort of expectations and what they want to achieve. It's more prevalent now than what it was 10 years ago and I did an event last year. I was hosting an event for um. It was a council, um, a conference event, talking about um, the sort of economic. It was like an economic thing, but they'd hired a specific speaker to come in and talk about certain things and he chose he was from the university of liverpool and he chose to talk about attention span and he said you know, in this day and age, the attention span is lower than ever. And I think his relationship with the university well, that it was that he was in charge of the relationship between the students and the academic board, so that's the whole thing, the way that they got on. That was his thing.
Speaker 1:And he talks about how the average attention span now is like literally three to four seconds because of, you know, youtube, tiktok, instagram, all these short range content, what's like under a minute. And when people look at this scroll and you know, I find myself doing it, I'm scrolling through things and I'm literally not even giving it a second to register? No, not interested. I'm making that snap judgment which, when you look at people like Malcolm Gladwell he wrote that book Blink years ago and he talks about how there are people out there experts in the field that because they've got such a wide range of experience and skills that they are in that position, sometimes they just know they can't explain why're just in a snap judgment. With all that years of experience working in a specific field, they know whether something's this or that.
Speaker 1:And Malcolm gives examples of forgeries within the art world and he talks about these two guys that were experts in sculpture of marble, sculpture from like the renaissance period and roman period and things like that. And they had this group that had spent thousands of pounds trying to take samples of this marble to work out whether it was a forgery. And this one guy walked in and within 10 seconds he said yeah, it's a fake. And he said how the hell do you know that? And he couldn't put it into words at the time and he said I just know that it's a fake. And then it turns out it was and they tried to analyze how he knew that it was.
Speaker 1:And I think that's kind of like with magic, the longer you spend in it, you are instinctively going to know what's going to work for an audience, work for you, and you can't shortcut those kind of things. It's things that you have to invest yourself in and time, money and sort of experience to get it. So it's really vital that we're not trying to shortcut your way to the top, because you're gonna get found out at some point and then that's when it's all gonna come crashing down, unfortunately. So yeah, that's what I'd like to banish shortcuts in terms of the mindset of magicians and mentalists well, apple shortcuts are still safe, but all other shortcuts are buried on your island.
Speaker 2:And that brings us to your book. So what did you put in your book position?
Speaker 1:Right. So this is the one that I took a little liberty with, the reason being it's actually a series of books, but they are that small. They are essentially little pamphlety manuals that come together they form a really nice book and it's again, it's not something that I've heard many people talk about and for me, I've got so much practical advice. There's no tricks in the book. It is the Professional Mentalists series of manuals released by Richard Osterlund, and he has so far created four of them, and it is the Professional Mentalist Field Manual, the Professional Mentalist Officers Manual, the Professional Mentalist Intelligence Manual and finally the Professional Mentalist Survival Manual. Together they will be about the size of you know, these kind of modern classics in magic.
Speaker 1:So something like a tar bell, an individual issue would one. One sort of book would be the equivalent of these four manuals. They have got so much practical advice from richard, who has had you a 30, 40 year career being a professional mentalist all over the world. He talks about anything from you know connecting with an audience or the stage layout, why you should do it this way or not that way, what you should wear, why you should never drink dark colored liquids and always stick to clear liquids, just little tiny things, nuggets of information that you wish someone had pulled you to one side when you were getting started and just whispered in your ear. So, um, when I read through those books, I hear richard telling, like speaking it to me in his voice, in that kentucky voice, and I find that really relaxing. So, yes, my, my book would be the professional mentalist manuals by rich Richard Osterlund.
Speaker 2:So people know that Devil's Advocate comes out when there's a series of books. However, I discovered quite a few podcasts ago that that's quite mean, so we go at it from a different angle now. So if you were to recommend one of these for our listeners to start with the first one for them to go to, which one would you recommend them to go to?
Speaker 1:the green one, but in terms of the covers, they're all like camouflage and there's one of them that's green, uh, then it's gray, then red and then finally like an orange color. So it'd be the field manual will be the first one, and I think you can usually tell by the order of them by looking at the front cover. There is a four digit number and that's a date, and it's the date that they were published, I think. So if you look at those dates, you know um the sequence that they were released. The first one because it was the start of the project. It's all those things that have been rattling around in his head for years that he wanted to get out, and then I think, as we've got further into the series, it's more about let me sit and think about what else I can put in what I've not already mentioned. So definitely, the first one would be the one that I would tell you to pick up and read.
Speaker 2:Okay, there you go. So we've not restricted Looch to just taking one, but he has a recommended one, so all of those can go with you. And it does lead us to the item. So what did you put in your item position?
Speaker 1:So this is the item that I can say. That's not magic related, but I do use it for some kind of performance. Is it really cliche for me just to say my phone?
Speaker 2:If that's what you want, then that's fine, but do let us know why specifically your phone I'm always on it.
Speaker 1:I'm always on it, I'm addicted to it and I run the business. You know, like the businesses that I do, I run that through it, so I'm always on my phone. In terms of performances, I think the older I've got, the less less I've become reliant on that, and we only have to look at things like what's happening in the Magic community at the moment, with apps that have been up and running for years and all of a sudden they're now not running and it's causing problems with the community and people are sort of name-calling and things like that. I try to stay out of it, but I look at it and I think to myself yeah, when you become too reliant on technology and too reliant on certain things, what happens when they get pulled away from you? How are you going to sort of react to that and develop and change and pivot from? So maybe not my phone. You know we're saying it's an item that I want to take that I can still use for performances. So, realistically, then, I'm probably going to be looking at things like my case.
Speaker 1:I spent a long time choosing the case that I take to my stage shows. I wanted a case that would fit in on brand with me and sort of match, without walking and looking like I'm carrying an antique doctor's case from the 1800s looking like I'm carrying an antique doctor's case from the 1800s. So it's a modern case by a company called Zarges Z-A-R-G-E-S. It cost a fortune, it cost about 400 quid, but it's the perfect size to fit everything in for my show. And not only that the case itself, the depth of the case and things built into that case enable me to achieve things that I can't do without it usually. So it's my hidden assistant, it's my hidden helper that I rely on whenever I'm doing a private sorry, a parlor show or a stage show. So I'm going to say my Zarji's aluminium composite briefcase to be very specific and a little bit weird as well well, you are the first guest that we've had who has talked themselves out of one of the selections.
Speaker 2:That was a real challenge. We started with the iphone. Then you realize maybe something might go wrong.
Speaker 1:And then we're on the case yeah, the truth is, as I was reading through and preparing for it, I got to the books, I got to what I wanted to banish and I thought I've got everything and I completely forgotten about that last item. But naturally, my thoughts went to the phone, because I, you know, I sometimes use it, but then just with a few minutes of changing, yeah, and you've got to be like this in magic. You've got to be open to change. I think you can't always think you know everything is right. Um, listen to the people around you, adapt based on what they think and what they genuinely care for you anyway. So I wanted to talk to myself. Well, I did talk myself out of it because I knew that that case means a lot to me. When I'm on stage, I it's like a safe place. It sounds crazy, but there are things I can do with that. Well, I'm not going to go into uh, that enable me to do things and make things much easier for me if it's there as opposed to when it's not there.
Speaker 2:So, yes, I'm happy with my choice and I wonder how many people are now googling what that looks like just to see what it looks like they won't.
Speaker 1:They'll look at it and they'll go oh, it's just a briefcase, yeah it is, but it's, you know, I've changed a few things inside it with the layout and what have you. And, um, you know, that's just part of my journey as being a mentalist. It's, you know, it's not everything as a mentalist. If you're a creator, not everything will come out to everyone else. Do you know what I mean? It's just one of my little private deep dives, I suppose, my little rabbit holes that I've gone into.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a great list. We started with Mark Deck, a real die. Fourth dimensional telepathy with school days routine. We've got the ritual quartet, the lineup PK touches Q&A frameworks. Your banishment was the obsession with shortcuts. Your book was the professional mentalist series of manuals by Richard Ossolin and your item is the bag which I cannot remember the name that you called it, but the really fancy briefcase.
Speaker 1:That's it. I'm happy with that selection.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, that's a great, great selection. There's some really lovely routines there. We've got some really nice close-up pieces, some big statement pieces like q a there as well. So, yeah, I think that's a really amazing mentalist list there. I think there's a an entire life's lifetimes work of exploration right there. I would say I think so.
Speaker 1:I think you're right.
Speaker 2:It's certainly my lifet Well if anyone wants to find out more about you, looch, where they can find out about Frameworks and the lineup, et cetera. Where can they go to? So I have two websites.
Speaker 1:One of them is readmymindcouk. That is essentially my online store where I sell my products, and I release probably about two products per year, so it's drip-fed products that I use in my own shows, my own performances that I've had made, that I want to share with the community, as opposed to it being designed to sell. But then there is also another website which I definitely recommend you check out and that is wwwmymindrocks, and that is a professional mentalism community. That doesn't mean that you have to be professional, it's just that everyone you don't have to be a professional, but everyone is professional on there and treats everyone with respect. Our motto is no haters, just creators, and it's a monthly subscription and each month we have special guests from all over the world. I teach tricks for my content, so I'm either out at a show, I'm on stage, I'm doing something that I'll do a deep dive, explaining it how it works. We have a forum. You get 20% off all my products at Read my Mind and it's just a really nice little place to be. We've got a few hundred members now from around the world and we get together each week, do live sessions, live jams, but one of the biggest draws these days is our special guests. So, for example, in the last three months we've had Scott Creasy do a lecture for us. We had Luke Jermay come on and do a Q&A we had to reschedule that as well, because we're going to do another session with Luke as a result of that and we've had Colin Cloud over in Vegas talking about how to write a mentalism show, which was two and a half hours of him talking us through the exact steps that he goes through when he writes a new mentalism show. It was packed full of golden nuggets. It was great.
Speaker 1:So, um, one of the questions that I guess is asked is that if I joined, are you able to watch all the content? I think there was a misconception that people just if you don't turn up for the lives, you don't get a chance to see it. Everything's recorded. So right now we've got about 300 unique pieces of content on there. Yeah, and you get to see the replay.
Speaker 1:So the Colin, the Luke, all the others and we've had pretty much every name you can think of in mentalism be a guest. Or, if you haven't seen them yet, you will see them by the end of the year. It's great. It's probably the best thing I've ever done in mentalism. It was a pivot that I decided to take up during covid when I couldn't perform because my background in teaching. I'm so glad that I did and trusted myself, or my instincts, let's say, because it's turned out into something that is was missing in mentalism, I think, which is a sense of community and people wanting others to do well. So, yeah, my mind dot rocks. Um, yeah, and that's it yeah, it's a great platform.
Speaker 2:It's one of the ones as well when you hear people talking about streaming platforms, mymindrocks is always on that list of the one that people really enjoy. There's some really amazing content. So, yeah, please do go check it out, because it's a phenomenal resource, and thank you so much, looch, for giving up your time.
Speaker 1:No, thank you for yours, mate. I'm really appreciative of people giving up their time, so you've given up your same amount of time as well. So thank you very much. I've really enjoyed it and I hope all the listeners enjoy it too.
Speaker 2:And thank you all for listening, of course. Now, if you would like to be a part of one of these, we do have something called stranded with a stranger, where you can send in your list to us to send it to sales alakazamcouk, include a little bio about you and, of course, your eight tricks one banishment, one book and one non-magic item and, of course, tell us why you like those tricks as well. Otherwise, it's just a very, very short podcast and then send those in and we can get one of these recorded for you. Thank you very much. Do go check out luch's, my mind rocks and his socials as well. He's always posting some great stuff and, of course, I'm going to be going through his list and grabbing out some of those items now, before this goes to air and everyone buys it and it all goes out of stock, which is what happens. So, thank you all, have a great week and we'll see you next week with another episode of Desert Island Tricks. Goodbye.
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