Craig Petty

If you’ve ever been told to perfect five tricks and repeat them forever, prepare to toss that rule out. Craig Petty joins us to make a fearless case for evolving your set, testing ideas in the wild, and embracing marketing as part of the craft. He opens up about the morning mantra that fuels his output, how to handle criticism without shrinking, and why passion beats cynicism every time.

We move from mindset to mechanics with a desert-island kit that actually works: a Rubik’s Cube routine anchored by a tattoo prediction built for photo moments, the heavyweight surprise of an eight ball production, and Jon Allen’s Destination Box for clean, spectator-handled impossibilities. Craig digs into workhorse tools, rope and rubber bands, that scale from kids’ shows to banquets, with modular phases that survive interruptions and noisy rooms. Then he spotlights the Extractor E2 as a rare “method equals miracle” device, delivering signed-card power with zero heat.

Card nerds will love the marked Mnemonica segment where a memorised deck turns pick‑a‑card into name‑a‑card, unlocks jazzing, and frames Darwin Ortiz’s “Test Your Luck” as a perfect opener. And for stage lovers, Split Press earns its keep as a 360‑friendly, roll‑in illusion that lets you control angles and pace a full show. Craig’s forced choice on his own work lands on Chop, and he explains exactly why that utility tool still defines his career.

The heart of the hour is a banishment with teeth: cut toxicity and self‑doubt so more magicians create, publish, and perform with courage. We close with a nod to career-making reading, John Bannon’s Impossibilia and a deceptively simple non‑magic item, the humble paperclip, fuelling Jay Sankey’s Paperclipped. Hit play for hard-won insights, practical repertoire, and a reminder to back yourself.

Craig’s Desert Island Tricks: 

1. Rubiks Cube - Tattoo Reveal 
2. Trick Shot Prediction 
3. Destination Box 
4. Fibre Optics
5. Strange Exchange 
6. E2
7. Marked Deck in Mnemonica
8. Split Press 

Craig Petty Release. Chop 

Banishment. Self Doubt 

Book. Impossibilia

Item. Paperclip

Find out more about the creators of this Podcast at www.alakazam.co.uk

Chapters

• 0:00 Language Advisory & Cold Open
• 0:19 Self‑Belief Over Self‑Doubt
• 2:20 Introducing Craig Petty’s Career
• 5:35 Creativity, Iteration, And Real-World Testing
• 9:05 Why Five Tricks Forever Is Bad Advice
• 14:20 Marketing, Hype, And Passion For Magic
• 21:48 Desert Island Rules Explained
• 22:28 Pick 1: Rubik’s Cube And Tattoo Reveal
• 27:18 Pick 2: The Utility Of The Eight Ball
• 31:12 Pick 3: John Allen’s Destination Box
• 36:09 Pick 4: Rope As A Workhorse
• 42:03 Pick 5: Rubber Bands Beyond CMH
• 49:21 Pick 6: Extractor E2 And A-Killer Routine
• 55:01 Pick 7: Marked Mnemonica And Jazzing
• 1:01:40 Pick 8: Split Press And Life Onstage
• 1:08:20 Forced Choice: Craig’s Own Best Release
• 1:12:08 Banishment: Toxicity And Self‑Doubt
• 1:20:35 Book Choice: John Bannon’s Impossibilia
• 1:23:10 Non‑Magic Item: Paperclip And Paperclipped
• 1:26:25 Plugs, Conventions, And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Before we get into this week's episode, just to let you know, there is strong language throughout this podcast. So if you are one of our younger listeners, this may not be appropriate for you. So please go check out one of the many amazing podcasts that we have on offer. But that is your formal warning. Let's get into today's episode with the incredible Craig Petty.

SPEAKER_02: 0:23

Because people ask me the same question over and over again, which is I want to perform, but I I don't think I'm ever going to be able to perform to people. I wanna, I wanna, I want to enter this competition, but I'm too scared to enter this competition. I want to be a creator, but I'm too scared to have my name put out there and and you know, I'm I'm too scared that I'll have a rejection from the production company I go to. I I would remove and banish self-doubt, and I would try to make it so that more people have belief in themselves. Because if you don't believe in yourself, then you've got nothing. You have to believe, you have to believe, you have to believe every single day. Look, I've been criticized on the internet by saying openly, I think I'm the world's greatest magician. Now, in reality, do I think I'm the world's greatest magician? No. However, I say to myself every single morning, Craig Betty, you are the world's greatest magician. Because here's the thing if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have done everything that I've done. And I think if more people started to believe in themselves, I think we'd be in a better situation. And if I could take that person who says, I want to go and be a magician, but I'm too scared to perform to my friends, and I could snap my fingers and remove that self-doubt and make them go and perform, because when they do, they will realize how amazing the reactions are that they get from that performance, it will change their life.

SPEAKER_01: 2:20

Now, you could be once again watching this on YouTube because this is one of our video podcasts. That's because, of course, we have a special guest here today. Now, of course, all of our guests are special, but I think lots of people are gonna want to hear what today's guest has to say in particular, mainly because he's basically a one-man mafia of magic at the moment. Let's be entirely honest. He is absolutely everywhere, at all time, in all places, doing all things. I normally give you like a little list of accolades of people. If I told you the list of tricks that this person has put out, we'll be here for the length of the podcast plus some. So we're not gonna do that. It's gonna be very difficult to tell anyone who isn't into magic who this person is because he is just so prolific at this point. He is, of course, Craig Petty. Now, truth be told, we've actually been trying to get Craig on this podcast since the very beginning. However, he is so busy, he's constantly flying all over the place, he's constantly at different events, at different uh magic shops and magic companies producing stuff. Quite honestly, I don't know how he has any time free um even to do this. So I'm really excited to hear what he has to say. I know, I mean, I remember watching him when I was younger. He actually reviewed one of my first tricks on the Wizard product review back in the day. And watching his journey ever since I remember buying Chop really young and going out and performing Chop. I remember Key Master having Key Master when I was younger as well. Um, so watching his career, watching where he is now is an absolute joy, and seeing the amount of material and the things that he's doing for the community is amazing. So I know that this is gonna be a really interesting list. And those playing Craig Petty Bingo, I don't know how well you're gonna be doing on this because I don't think any of us can predict where this list is going. So, of course, today's guest is the wonderful Craig Petty. Hello, Craig. Hello, Jamie. How are you? Uh, good now that you're here. Uh finally.

SPEAKER_02: 4:25

I am a box of fluffy ducks. You know, I've been wanting to be on this podcast for ages, but we've not been able to make it happen. I've been really busy. I know you guys at Halakazam are just running around like headless chickens as well. It's nice that we've been able to get this, you know, meshed up and I'm excited. This is gonna be awesome. And purposefully, I've not even considered thinking about this. Like we're we're filming this at one o'clock. I I found out I was doing this about a week ago, and I haven't thought or given any headspace to it. So you're getting kind of raw, unfiltered thought process, which means that this could go anywhere. This might be your most controversial podcast yet.

SPEAKER_01: 5:04

We're all excited for the banishment. No, no one knows where this is going for the banishment.

SPEAKER_02: 5:08

Just to clarify, with the banishment, can we can we can we include people in that?

SPEAKER_01: 5:12

Uh we we've purposefully said no, people. Um we'll go we'll go from there. But it's gonna be an interesting list either way. Now, like I said at the beginning, I remember you in the early days. I remember was a product reviewer, I remember when you started putting out those early products and being such a fan of your work, um, even from back back in those days. So I know that your wealth of knowledge of pro I mean you you are a product person.

SPEAKER_02: 5:38

You know magic products, you know I mean I've been I've been around the industry. I mean, I've been I've been performing for th I'm I'm 50 this year, Jamie. I'm 50 this year. And I started when I was 18. So we're talking 32 years that I've been in magic. Probably about 28 of those years I've been performing. But for most of that time, I've been involved in the industry. And unless you are involved in the industry, as much as you speculate and you think you know what goes on, a lot of the time you don't. There's so much happening behind the scenes, and there's so many, it's crazier than you could possibly imagine. And because I've been a product reviewer, and because I've been a creator, and because I'm friends and work closely with pretty much every single major production company, I I I I see a lot of that goes on, and you know, I I I I I'm I'm fairly well read. I know a lot of material and a lot of magic, and and it's kind of interesting to see you know how just magic evolves over the years, you know, and it's yeah. Basically what I'm saying is I'm very old.

SPEAKER_01: 6:39

So you don't look a day over 80. It's all good. Um, I think that uh the amount of wealth of knowledge that you have in terms of products and you know, even the things that you used to review, uh the things that you've produced. I mean, the amount of material you've put out is ridiculous, uh, quite frankly. I would argue you've got to be in terms of the history of magic at this point, you have to be one of the people at the very top of producing the most solo magic tricks ever in our industry.

SPEAKER_02: 7:12

I don't know. I've still got a way to go to beat Jason Kim. I mean, let's be honest. He can wake up, have his cornflakes, and bring out 15 routines. I I gotta I gotta I gotta I mean we're both bold, we both wear glasses, he's you know, uh better looking than me. But other than that, you know, I mean, he's he's he's way ahead of me. I could I could create 15 tricks a day for the rest of my life and I'm not gonna touch him. Um, but you know, I'll I'll keep trying. I'll try my best. But no, I yeah, yeah, the thing, the thing with creating magic is I don't try. I it's not like I sit here and go, right, okay, I'm gonna create a trick today. But I think the creative process is all about, at least for me, inspiration and being open to inspiration when it hits. So, you know, just this morning, for example, I was walking, um, I was walking into the office and I saw something and I was like, oh, that'd be really good if you could recreate that. All I do is most people, when they see those things, they'll just dismiss it and they'll carry on with their day. I'll make a note of it. I'm like, oh, that'd be a really cool idea. So anytime I get an idea, I write it down, and then um I have notes constantly around me. If you saw where I am now in my office, there's notes everywhere. And all I do is I look through my list and I'm like, right, okay, how can I make that happen? How can I make that happen? And I just like I I like to keep busy. So even when I've got nothing to do, I like to tinker and play and create and and you know, nine 90% of the stuff that I do, you're never gonna see. It's just for me. But sometimes it makes it to a wider audience.

SPEAKER_01: 8:35

Well, that's why I think it's gonna be a really interesting list. You've got such a large pool of things to choose from, and I'm guessing maybe your list changes a lot. Like we we have a like a follow-up called SOS now, and two years later we invite people back on. I can imagine your list will probably be quite different in two years' time.

SPEAKER_02: 8:54

Yeah, so here's the thing, right? You know, there's this thing in magic where you go, uh, right, okay, if you're going to be a professional magician, all you need to do is have five tricks, and you perform those five tricks for the rest of your life, and you just go out and you do those five tricks, and you just go to each table and you do those five tricks, and that's all you need. A working, a professional will do the same five tricks over and over again to a million spectators, while an amateur will do a million tricks to the same five spectators. And I call bullshit on that, to be perfectly honest, because I've seen the magicians that go out and do the same five tricks over and over again. I've seen the professional magicians that go out and they go, Right, I just do these five tricks. They're the same professional magicians that I've gone and done gigs with, and they beg me to go over and do a table because they turn around to me and they go, Oh, can you do that table? Because I've performed for them in close in mix and mingle. And I can't go over and do that table now because they've already seen my stuff. They're the same people who look like they're going through the motions. They look like they see they're the same people that have mentally checked out. The thing with magic is magic for me is more than just a career. Yes, I'm a professional performer. I go out and perform. But more than that, it's a hobby. I love magic. And if you really love this industry, if you really love magic, why would you want to limit yourself to five tricks and no more? Are you really telling me that those five tricks that you do are the best five tricks that you could ever do and nothing is ever going to top them? Are you telling because I can guarantee that the magicians that go out and do those same five tricks, they're losing gigs. I guarantee you they are. And I believe that we should constantly be looking at our material and we should constantly be trying to evolve. And, you know, if you're looking at your repertoire from five years ago and it's exactly the same as now, are you telling me that in the last five years, with all of the releases that come out, there's not one thing that would suit you and your character, and there was not one thing that you could have added that would have improved your net worth to your client even by 1%? Because that's just bullshit. So my material that I bring out, I've got, I've openly talked about this. I've got I've got, well, now 10. I've got 10 close-up cases, and each one is jammed full of completely different stuff. And I randomly pick a case. And when I get to the gig, I open it up and I go, right, what should we do today? And it means that sometimes I'm doing stuff I haven't done for a few months, but that keeps me sharp. And the other thing is a lot of the time, if yeah, I've got a gig tonight. When I go out and do that gig tonight, I'm probably going to be working on stuff that you're not going to see for a year and a half. Because if I release something, I'm going to be working it in for a long time. Anytime you've ever said, so we've just had we're filming this at the brand about the same time as that we just produced Cobra coin. I've been working on Cobra Coin for years. The reason I believe in it is because I've been doing it for years. Um, so the stuff that I'm doing now is stuff that you're probably going to see in two or three years' time. And by the time that comes around, am I doing Cobra coin right now? No, no, I'm not. Because I'm working on the next coin set for Alakazam. That's my coin thing that I'm doing. Because I want to make sure that that is worked in. Because if I don't work it in, and again, this is something that I don't understand that creators do. They'll they'll they'll they'll create a trick and they'll go, right, okay, this is good enough, let's produce it. How do you know it's good enough? You've never done it to real people. There's not a single trick that I've ever created, there's not a single trick that I've ever released, there's not a single trick that I have ever done that hasn't been improved by performing it to real people in a real life audience situation. Oh, but I'm a creator, I'm not a performer. Great, well done, good for you. Doesn't mean you can't get other people to perform those tricks for you. Lloyd Barnes is not a performer, but he gets other people to go out and do those tricks for him because then then he gets those feedback and that's how he improves stuff. It's just lazy if you're going out and you're releasing stuff without actually working it in. And I've already started with the rant, I'm really sorry. But basically, to answer the question, yes, I have an eclectic range of magic in my repertoire and I'm constantly changing it around, Jamie. Next question.

SPEAKER_01: 12:34

Well, just to bat back at that, the you know, the closest form of I guess commercial entertainment that's similar to ours is comedy. And you wouldn't necessarily go and see your favourite comedian just to hear the same jokes. Of course, maybe they have their standards, you know, the the the classics that people like to hear them do it, but you wouldn't go back and and see a comedian do the same set of jokes again.

SPEAKER_02: 12:58

Can you can you imagine that Jimmy Carr going to Netflix and going, yeah, that uh I want a new Netflix special? Oh, brilliant. What have you got? Well, it's exactly the same Netrix special as last time, but I'm gonna do it in a different building. Whatever.

SPEAKER_01: 13:08

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I'm I'm on the same page as you. Uh, I also think it just makes it more entertaining for the performer. I I love learning new magic.

SPEAKER_02: 13:17

Yeah, exactly. And like I said, it's a hobby. If I wasn't performing professionally, I'd still be learning loads of magic. If I wasn't a creator or a performer, or I had no financial interest in this industry at all, I would still be buying every trick that came out because I freaking love it. And I think sometimes magicians lose their passion. You know, I I see magicians that go, Oh, I don't like it when magic shops hype up tricks. You what? Sorry? You don't like magic shops that hype. I had this conversation with a professional magician the other day. He's like, Oh, do you know what your problem is, Craig? No, please enlighten me. What's my problem? Your problem is that you hype up your tricks too much. If they're good enough, they should just rely on their own artistic merit. I'm like, oh, is that right? Well, you're a professional magician. Do you advertise yourself? Do you have a website? Do you go and tell clients that they should book you? Or do you have just a page on the internet that says, nothing? I'm I'm crap, but you know, book me. No, I tell people how amazing I am. Yes, of course you do, because that's called advertising. Any business relies on advertising, it relies on marketing. You know, if you're a professional magician, the best professional magicians aren't necessarily the most technical. The best professional magicians are the ones that are the best at marketing. They're the ones that are going to get the gigs. Just as Paul Martin and his gang of uh, you know, pro magic academy people, right? Marketing is really important. It's the same with uh with with the industry. Do I hype up my tricks? Yes. But there's two reasons why I do that. One, it's a business. And and you know, Alakazam, let's take Alakazam as an example because we're on the Alakazam podcast. Um, when Alakazam brings out something like Cobra coin, there's Pink Nardi has invested a lot of money in that trick. It's gonna cost him a fortune to buy the coins, to have Roy Cooper's design them, to pay for the packaging, to pay for the uh, you know, the trailer and the tutorial and everything like that. That's a big financial investment that he needs to make back. Do you think he's just gonna bring a trick out and just go, well, I'm not gonna tell anyone about it because if it's good enough, it'll sell itself. No, that's stupid thoughts. Stupid thoughts said by stupid people. You know, you you you wanna you want to hype stuff out because then everyone knows about it. But also, I get excited about new tricks. When I see an email come through from Alec Alm and it's like, this is the best thing you've ever seen ever, I'm like, yeah, amazing, bring it on. I want to see the best thing ever. Why would you not? Again, the problem with people in this industry is when you first come into magic, everything's all excited. It's like that first scene in the first Harry Potter film where Harry Potter goes up to that brick wall and Hagrid takes out his umbrella and he goes, watch this, and he realizes the wall opens, that there's this entire world that he didn't know about. And it's like, holy crap, look at all of this. How did I not know about that? It's the same when you're a magician. So when you first learn magic, and you you maybe you've learned a card trick off the internet or off YouTube or something, and you start to go deeper and deeper and deeper, you very quickly have that Diagonale experience where you look, you begin to realize that this is this entire world, there's this entire community that nobody was aware of. Nobody knew this this world existed, and and now you're a part of it, and and uh it's that incredible moment. But what happens is magicians sometimes become jaded. They they stay in this, they they forget that moment of wonder when they realize, oh my god, you can do this and this, and there's this table that floats, and there's this thing that does this, and there's this that does this, and oh my god, I can make lights appear at my fingertips, bloody hell! And then it remember back when you first got into magic and how exciting it is. And then we get to a point where we're just like, oh, I just want to do the same shit that I've been doing in books. Books, that's all you need, but you don't need a new magic trick. When I was younger, we didn't need new magic tricks. Oh, books, that's all blah blah blah blah blah. That's it. That's what you get, right? And and then I feel sorry for those people because I'm as excited about a new trick now as I was 32 years ago. Because I proper love magic. I'm excited when a new creator brings out a new trick or an old creator or anybody. So I'm like, yeah, even if I don't do it, I'm gonna really have fun learning it. I sometimes think that magicians lose the passion a little bit and they end up just being all grumpy. Hold on, grumpy. Let's let's that's there you go, grumpy magicians. Let's sack them off.

SPEAKER_01: 17:28

Well, we're not at the banishment yet. We'll get there. Right. So let's start this. If this is your first time listening to the podcast, the idea is that we're about to maroon Craig on his very own magical island. When he's there, he's allowed to take eight tricks, banish one another.

SPEAKER_02: 17:39

By the way, I will point out this is this is some of the people in the magic community, me being isolated on desert island away from everyone. This is their wet dream. Just ask Michael Weber if you'd like me to be strangled on desert island. I'll tell you exactly what he'd say. Oh, yes, please, bring it on. I'll supply the ship.

SPEAKER_01: 17:58

Uh, one banishment, uh, one uh non-magic item and one book. Uh so let's go to your island now and find out what you put in position number one.

SPEAKER_02: 18:08

So, one thing I've got to take with me that I couldn't do without, that I would love, I would, I would dearly not want to not have with me if I was performing magic on a completely isolated desert island to an audience of nobody. Um a Rubik's Cube. And the simple reason is because I can do so much with a Rubik's Cube. First of all, even though it's become popular, more popular than in recent years than it was back in the day, it's still not performed by a great deal of magicians. I can go to a gig and I can bring out a cube, and I'm gonna have people go, I've never seen somebody do magic with a cube before, but it's a recognizable item. If you're younger, you know what a cube is because you probably had one, but it's way back in the 80s when it was first invented. So any adult will know what it is as well. People automatically know it's a difficult thing to solve, and therefore you don't have to explain the premise behind a cube to them. It's it's it's big enough and visual enough that you can do it on a stage, you can do it in a parlor environment, you can fit it in a pocket very, very easily and take it out and do it close up. You can do matching effects with it, you can do solves with it, you can do a lot of magic that happens in the spectator's hands, you can do two or three types of different routines with it, and um, it looks very impressive as well, and it's very different to what anyone else is doing. I even use the Rubik's Cube as a motivational speaker, so I get booked a lot to go to business events and speak to business owners about how to become more successful. And one thing I use as an analogy is I use the Rubik's Cube, and I talk about how I use the Rubik's Cube as a way of um kind of as a way of an example of how uh it's okay to take risks and a bunch of stuff like that. But uh uh it's such a versatile prop. And I I I I I love, you know, I've done it as a front of cloth piece in an illusion show. I've done it cabaret shows, I've done it in comedy club environments like Smoke and Mirrors, I've done it in kids shows, I've done it walk around, I've done there's very few tricks that I can think of that can be done and performed in every single type of environment. This can, and not only can it be done in every single type of environment, but it's something that everybody knows about. And as I say, that's the key thing. Everyone knows what a Ruby's Cube is, and everyone knows when you mix them up, they're hard to solve and you can't solve them easily. So the premise doesn't need to be explained. The premise is understood right from the get-go, which allows you to go straight into the magic. And again, I know magicians out there going, oh, Ruby's Cube magic is rubbish. No, it's not. No, it's not. Go ask anybody I've ever performed for. Go and ask anyone Stephen Brundwich has performed for, Ryland has performed for, Tom Crosby, um, Kev G, the list goes on and on. There's some go Nemid Phoenix does a great Ruby's Cube routine. There's some um, yeah, there's some great Rubik's Cube magic out there. And I if I was in a situation where I only had eight props for the rest of my life and I didn't know what environment I was gonna perform in front of, like am I gonna be doing a stage show for the sh for the fish and you know on the beach one day, and then maybe the next day I'm doing walk around for some coconuts. I don't know. I I don't know where I'm gonna be or what I'm gonna be doing. A cube is gonna go with me because it'll work in every environment.

SPEAKER_01: 21:14

Okay, well, I think there's a couple of things to talk about here. Number one, absolutely agree. I remember the first Rubik's Cube thing that I think I saw was Rubik Remembered, which was by Mark Elsden. And I remember learning the Rubik's Cube when I was a teenager. Yeah, it was crazy. And uh now there's an absolute plethora of Rubik's Cube magic. Um I was at my residency last Sunday. Uh I showed a young lad a Rubik's Cube trick before Christmas. He came back last Sunday and had learnt the Rubik's Cube because of seeing the performance. So it really has a big impact on people when they see it. But the devil's advocate does have to come out, I'm afraid. Uh so the other point I'm Gonna make before Devil's Advocate kicks in is you could have actually put this in your non-magic item and given yourself another trick. So we we we could have screwed you, Jamie Dawes. We could have messed the system up there. Um, but the second thing is if you were just to perform one thing with your Rubik's Cube or one routine or one effect, because there's some phenomenal tricks out there now, what is the one effect you would perform with a Rubik Scube?

SPEAKER_02: 22:25

Dude, I literally have a tattoo of a Rubik's Cube on my arm, specifically to do a so my routine when I'm doing mix and mingle is I bring out a cube and I start to mix it up and I mix it up and I say, look, just say stop anytime you want to. When they say stop, I say, hey, the 47 quintillion combinations with a Rubik's cube. You put that into context, you take 47 quintillion cubes, you lay them next to each other, they can spam the circumference of the earth twice. Is there any way I could have known 10 years ago exactly what that cube would look like? That's impossible, right? But I did. Because 10 years ago, I made a prediction, a permanent prediction, that's been staring you in the face from the very beginning. It's called a tattoo. And I just hold the cube next to it and I show it that it's matched exactly. And then I finish off by solving it. And that's all I do, mix and mingle. I just show the uh tattoo and then I solve it with one hand and I do a quick shake solve. Um, that routine gets me more pictures from photographers. I will turn to uh most events I go to in close-up, there's photographers, there's uh and um um uh corporates and and weddings and so on and so forth. And I remember uh reading a Chris Dugdale book years ago, and Chris said uh, in the if you don't know who Chris Dugdale is, he's an amazing magician, uh, an incredible marketer of magic as well. He literally wrote the book on close-up success. And when I say wrote the book, he wrote a book called Close Up Success many years ago, which helped me in my journey of being a close-up magician. I digress. He talks about the photo moment, and he talks about when you're performing, anybody could take a picture at any point. So when you're performing, you need to make sure that everything you do looks interesting. Because if you're just there looking down like this, it looks terrible if someone takes a picture of you and the client sees it. So that always goes through my head when I'm performing. I think, right, how would this look? What I'm doing right now, and that will structure, that will help me think about choreography, that will help me think about body language, that will help me think about absolutely everything. But one thing I try to do is I try to connect with the um, I try to connect with the uh with the photographers and I'll say, look, I'm gonna do a trick in a bit, and I'm gonna be holding this cube up against my arm and it's gonna match. You're gonna love this picture. I'm gonna put my arm around somebody, they're gonna be freaking out. I'm gonna hold the picture, the, the cube here, and you can get a picture of it. And the amount of times that they see that, they come over, they take the picture, the person next to me is going, Oh my god, it's amazing. And I've got this picture, and the amount of times clients have come to me and gone, oh my god, we've got so many pictures of you. How do you do that with the with the tattoo? That's amazing. It's something that's unique to me that nobody else does because who's stupid enough to get a tattoo of a reveal on their arm, very few people, but it it it just kills, you know, absolutely kills. It's one of the strongest things I can do. Because the other thing is it's a permanent prediction. It's not like I've got a multiple outs and I've got a Rubitz Cube tattoo on my ass if they but stopped one place less, you know. It's it's a permanent prediction. And because I perform with my sleeves rolled up, they've been staring at that tattoo and they don't notice. And it's almost like that whole sixth sense thing. It's like, oh, spoiler by the way, in sixth sense, the guy's dead. Sorry if you haven't seen it. But it's like that sixth sense thing where like they've been performed to for like five minutes or something, and then they get this piece of information where everything changes, and it's like, oh my god, how did I not see that? That's insane. So that's the routine. Amazing. Well, and that's dedication to have that tattooed on you just shows how much it's a fine line between dedication and stupidity. Uh the total, so I got I got this in 2017. Uh 2018, 17, 17. So I I got my first tattoo in 2017 or 18, January 2017 or 18. So I've only had tattoos. A lot of people think I've had them for years, but I've only had tattoos for like eight years. And um the first tattoo I got was of this. It was the Rubik's Cube. That was the only, and there's a picture of me. I went and did it at a gig the next day, and it's me doing that moment right there with the tattoo. Bare arms with just this one tattoo, and just like boom, and the entire table freaking out. And my business partner at the time, Russell Leeds, I don't know if you remember Russell Leeds, he told me I was stupid. He's like, Why are you getting a tattoo for a veal? That's stupid. You're marking your skin. I was like, no, dude, this is gonna be incredible. And then two weeks later, me and Russell split up and and went our separate ways. I'm pretty sure it's because he hated the tattoo so much.

SPEAKER_01: 26:50

So I'm not sure whether that's uh an advert for getting that tattoo or not, um, if I'm entirely honest.

SPEAKER_02: 26:57

Well, there's a guy, uh well, you you know Gillian Baja from Malta. I think he's working with Alec Azam at the moment. He's got a tattoo of a uh of a of a Rubik's Cube as well to do a reveal. His is in a light bulb. So uh I know of at least two cool people that have tattoos of Rubik's Cubes for reveals, so it's catching on.

SPEAKER_01: 27:14

Well, I think that's a great one in at number one. Let's go to number two then. What would you put in your second position?

SPEAKER_02: 27:20

I would put an eight ball because the eight ball is one of the single most amazing utility devices that I've ever seen. And again, I'm a big believer in when I'm going out and doing stuff. I try to do stuff that other people aren't doing. And I don't think many people do stuff with eight balls. And I have an eight ball uh in half of my close-up cases, an eight ball. Yeah, it's easy to get an eight ball, you just steal them from pubs. Um, sorry, did I say that out loud? Uh, but I I have the eight ball in my back pocket, and um uh and and and I can steal it with my right hand very, very easily. I've got a ton of routines that involve eight balls. In fact, true story, one of my very first tricks that I ever bought out through World Magic Shop back in the day when I was on the Wizard Pro Review with David Penn, I bought out a thing called um pool ball miracles, which was a collection of pool balls, and there were 25 routines. Now, admittedly, 15 of those routines are total shit. However, 10 of them are great. Um, some of them are absolutely amazing. And I love so my favorite pool ball trick, just of course I know you're gonna ask, is John Ballon's trick shop production from Smoker Mirrors. And if you don't know what it is, it's the greatest eight ball routine of all time. You take out a uh you take out a um the cards, you have the card shuffled, you put the card box on the spectator's hand, you have them pick a card, they're gonna pick a black eight, an eight of clubs or an eight of spades, and uh and you say, Hey, that card box has been there the whole time. You hold it here and you say, Look, if I told you that I had a prediction in here from the very beginning, would you believe me? And they go, nope. And you go, Did you feel it? Did it feel a bit heavy? And nope. Okay, hold your hand out, and you shake a real eight ball out of the out of the case, and it drops into their hand and it's a real eight ball, and you go, Oh, was your card a black eight? It kills. It's like bowler armor, Kevin James's bowler armor. It's like bowler armor, but close up. I believe that as magicians, when we're doing close-up magic, we should be doing stuff that they've never seen before. Moments of strange is what Paul Harris would describe it as. A moment of strange. And that is a moment of strange. It really is. Just boom, this eight ball appearing out of nowhere. I've got routines where somebody picks a card, they pick a two of spades, and I say, Look, I'm gonna try and find your card, and I'm holding up a card to me, and I'm like, I show the card and go, is your card the ten of spades? No. Was it a spade? Yeah. What was it? A two. Oh, it's eight off. Watch. And now an eight ball drops out the card, and when I turn it over, it's the two of spades. Stuff like this is really, really powerful. And for just having something in my back pocket that I can grab and use in so many different ways, uh, for me, it's a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_01: 29:57

Well, I'd like to say it's the second thing that could have gone into your non-magic item that you use for magic. So there are two chances there to have an extra trick. Damn it. Um but you did actually say trick shot prediction, so that does mean that we don't have to bring out uh devil's advocate. But I agree, I think it's such an interesting prop. Um, and I remember I think it was Steve Rowe who had a trick out a few years ago uh that was the the picture on the box, um, and then you kind of thrust it forward, and then the picture turns into a real eight ball. Um, and then of course you've got Wayne Box's obliterate uh Wayne Fox's obliterate as well, where you that moment of just taking it and squishing it down looks incredible.

SPEAKER_02: 30:37

There's so much you can do with it, and I think the key thing with the Rubik's Cube and with uh and with a eight ball is versatility. You have those two props on you, and you you've got so many different um things that are open to you, to be perfectly honest. So many different ways that you can go, so many different you know, ideas and concepts and so on and so forth. So yeah, uh an eight ball, I think, would be would be the next one.

SPEAKER_01: 30:58

Well, I think it's a great choice in at number two, and we've had no Craig Petty tricks yet.

SPEAKER_02: 31:02

So I'm hoping, just so you know, I'm purposefully not going to mention any of Craig Petty tricks. I and and I know, because every time I make this statement, because I've said it before, people are gonna say Craig's got a massive ego, and maybe I have. I think that you have to have an ego to be a magician. I don't I've never met a magician that hasn't got an ego at some degree. Um, but here's the thing I believe that every trick I've bought out is the best trick in the world and better than anybody else's tricks. And the reason I believe that is because of two reasons. One, self-belief. If I don't believe in myself, how can I expect anyone else to believe in me? If I don't think my tricks are good, how can I expect other people to think they're good? And a friend of mine, Brad Burton, who's a motivational speaker, says, if you've got a plan B, don't ever have a plan B. Because if you have a plan B, it means that you don't believe in your plan A. If you don't believe in your plan A, then how can you expect anybody else to? I can't release a trick if I don't think it's amazing. If I don't think that's the best trick in the world, it's not going to get released. So look, I'm a realist. I know that some of my stuff isn't the best trick of the in the world. But if I was making a list of eight items, um, it would definitely be eight of my tricks. I would also banish one of mine, but that's a story for another matter. Um uh but but I'd definitely make a list, but but that'd be a kind of a boring podcast if I was just like, and now at number three, you've got the savant deck by me and Lloyd Barnes. At number two, I'd like to put across uh the Mirage Coinstead by me and Alakazam Magic. It'd be just like, okay, Craig's just using this as a personal advert to hype his own shit, which I don't want to do. I want to tell you stuff that I like that's not mine. It may not be as good as my stuff, but it comes a close second.

SPEAKER_01: 32:38

Well, I am gonna be really mean. Alright. Never done this before on this podcast. Never done this before. I am gonna force you to pick one extra thing in your list. So I'm gonna lay you the eight, and we won't do this until you've done your eight, alright? So we we'll do your eight tricks first, so you've got time to think it through. You're only allowed to take one Craig Petty trick with you. I'm gonna I'm gonna force you to do it. Jesus Christ. I know. So we're gonna find out the trick of Craig Petties that Craig Petty thinks is the best, alright, and it is going to be Ireland. So I'll give you to the end of your eight to work it out. But we've wanted to get you on here for so long, I'm gonna be mean. Uh I'm gonna I'm gonna make you do it.

SPEAKER_02: 33:21

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01: 33:22

Alright, let's let's continue with your normal list. Okay, so let's go to number three. What's in your third spot?

SPEAKER_02: 33:27

Anyone who knows me will not be surprised at this. I'm gonna put in at number three, destination box by John Allen. Um because it's a little bit like a Rubik's Cube for me in that it is in every single performance that I do. So I have a routine called Destination Mistake, which uses the destination box, which I put on my platform, the Netrix. And I know so many people that do that. I have closed every single show that I do as a solo performer for the last 10 years using that trick. Uh, whenever you see me perform I on on a gala show at a convention or whatever, I'm gonna do that trick. Uh when I do an illusion show and I'm there with somebody else, that's gonna be a front of cloth piece that I do. I'm always going to have destination box in my act. But even and I don't use destination mistakes, I don't use the destination box um close up, I use it on stage. It's in my cabaret case. However, for years I used it on stage, and I think it's an amazing stage uh sorry, I think it's an amazing close-up piece. I think if you're a close-up performer, one of the things it's got over almost any other type of so if you don't know what destination box is, by the way, it's a object to impossible location. So you would have a card, for example, picked and signed, it's lost in the deck, and the box is on the table from the beginning. And then you unlock the box, it's a wooden box, inside there's a little silver pill box, and inside there is the item, in this case, the folded up card. And when I do it on stage, I use it as a folded up card. Two things that I think makes destination box the perfect close-up uh sort of impossible location. Number one, it doesn't have to be a playing card, it could be anything. You could borrow a ring, you could borrow a coin, you could borrow a bill, you could do anything that you want to. Anything that you want that you can fit into that silver billbox inside that wooden box will go in there. Um, so and normally, if you normally a mystery box type thing, it's just for a card. Or if it does something else, like a note or a billet or a bill or something, you have to change it around and use it for that thing and then change it back. With this, you can make a decision on the fly. You can go to one table, you can make a ring go in there, you can go to another table, you can make a card go in there. You could do uh a prediction in there and say you've got a prediction inside that box. You can hand the box out to the uh audience at the beginning of the trick. So when I do my stage show, I come out and I give the box out to the audience right at the very beginning. I give the key to somebody else right at the very beginning, and at the end, it's all bought full circle. You can't do that with a lot of objective impossible locations because if they open it, they'll see the method. With this, they don't. They can hold on to it the entire time, whether it's a close-up or a stage performance. And the the beautiful thing is there's no load. Well, there is a load, but it's not in traditional sense. You're not loading the thing into the box. The moment that everything happens is completely on and offbeat, as Guy Hollingworth would say. For me, it's the perfect methodology to an impossible location because there's a massive disconnect between the actual moment of magic and the perceived moment of magic. The actual moment of magic, sorry, the perceived moment of magic is when you're opening the box to show that the card is in there or whatever. The actual moment of magic is when you've done the move. There's such a massive disconnect. Nobody ever sees the move. I've performed this to magicians at conventions on stage, and they've never heard of the mystery box, the destination box before, and they're like, that's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Uh, I freaking love the destination box. It's just it's so good. So good.

SPEAKER_01: 37:02

Well, we had Mr. John Allen on uh a couple of episodes ago, and we spoke about this and sort of the pros and cons, and you know, the idea that it's an interesting prop, so it creates intrigue straight away. Uh, but we didn't talk about the uh what you just mentioned about giving the different props to different audience members and you know trying to get as because destination box inherently is a one-on-one effect, right? One person picks a card and then that card appears in that. But what I love about the way that you structured that is you've managed to get the maximum reach of audience members from something that should be just a one-on-one routine.

SPEAKER_02: 37:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and it it uh means one of the key things, whether you're performing on stage or you're performing close-up, is getting everybody involved. Well, another pet hate of mine. Can we banish this? I've thought about 15 things I want to banish, by the way. Can we do a separate podcast just on shit I want to get rid of in the magic community? Uh, but one of my pet hates is people that go and perform to banquet style tables and they perform to two or three people, and three-quarters of the table aren't even paying attention. It's like, hello, I'm the magician. Let me show you something with my little paddles down here, shall we? No, screw that. Uh, when you walk over to a table, it's almost like a mini cabaret show. You've got to get the attention of every single person on the table. And one way to do that is by right, you hold onto this box, you hold on to this key, you shuffle this deck of cards, you hold on to this pen, you're gonna pick a card, you're gonna sign it, you're gonna put it in the pack. It uh and it allows you to get everybody involved. It's great. I love it.

SPEAKER_01: 38:32

Well, I think it's a great one in at number three, and that leads us to number four. So, what's in your fourth spot, Craig?

SPEAKER_02: 38:40

I would take some rope. Um, purely because I love rope magic. Uh, it's another thing that you don't see many people do, or if they do, they just do uh one routine with it. Uh, but there's so much you can do, there's so much you can do with rope. Like I do fibre optics in almost every single show or a variation of fibre optics. I do rap Darrell's ring and string, ring and rope routine, I do uh Dave Williamson's ring and rope routine, I do cut and restored rope on stage. I have this thing called Craig's signature cut and restored rope, which is amazing. It's like a 12-phase routine where I'm cutting the rope and it keeps coming back together. And you look at people like Michael Finney and his rope rope routine. You look at people like um Richard Sanders doing their rope routine, and and it's just it's one of those tricks that's a little bit we we talked about this with the uh with the Rubik's Cube. I'll talk about it again now. It works in every environment, it works in a in a stage. I've performed it on stage multiple times. It works in close-up, it works in mix and mingle, it works in um uh it works in sort of banquet style situations, it works in a restaurant if you're doing table hopping. It's something that will play big, but can also be very intimate. You can get lots of people involved depending on the routine you do. You can get a lot of audience participation, you can get a spectator on stage if you're doing it on stage, you can have it happen in the hands of the spectators. It's very easy to understand. I'm gonna cut this rope, it's gonna go back together. It works for kids shows and you can present it in a very different way for kids as you would do for adults. Um, and a lot of people aren't doing it. A lot of people aren't doing rope routines these days, and you can literally just have some rope in your pocket and you can perform uh so many routines that just you know, yeah, rope. It's really cool. And if I get Heckla, I can knock them out and then tie them up on your desert island where there is no one there. I the the fish are pissing me off.

SPEAKER_01: 40:33

I think that's a great one. Now, everyone knows what's about to happen who listens to the podcast. Hopefully, they were saying it at the beginning. I don't know how far ahead people are with these podcasts now. I think they know what's gonna happen before it happens at this point. Okay. Uh so they know what's coming. Devil's Advocate is back. So we have a generic prop here. Now you mentioned uh some incredible routines just then, by the way. Um, if I was to hold you to just a one routine or one effect with your rope, what is that one routine?

SPEAKER_02: 41:06

I would say it would have to be my head's going back and forth between three or four different things, but I'm gonna settle on um I'm I'm gonna settle on fiber optics purely because um with fiber optics. Oh look, Alakazam have just messaged me. I've got an app notification. Craig Petty is filming the podcast. Amazing, good job. No, um uh with fiber optics, it's it's one of those routines, you know. I think that when you're performing professionally, sometimes, uh, especially when you're doing banquet tables. I do a lot of banquets and big garlic dinners and stuff. And when you do that, you never know when you're gonna have people come and bring food. And and the problem is, if you are a mentalist, for example, first of all, I'm really sorry for you, but if you're a mentalist, um can we put mentalists in in in the the whole get rid of them forever thing? Add that to my list.

SPEAKER_01: 41:59

Well, I think the host of the podcast would also be in that that hole. So maybe we'll skip that one.

SPEAKER_02: 42:07

No, I I like mentalism. Uh, but if you're a mentalist and you're doing you're doing like, I don't know, what mentalists are good at, waffly bollocks. You know, you're spending like 15 minutes talking about something that's built up to that one moment, it's amazing in the right environment. But when you're doing a busy table and there's lots of people and you know the food's gonna come down, if you're halfway through your presentation and you haven't got through to your climax, you you know, nobody wants to be stopped before the climax happens. But it means that you're walking away and and and they don't really feel fulfilled. I can relate, or my wife can. But if you're doing something like rope magic, right? If you're doing like fiber optics, if you think about it, there's like 15 different phases. So, and and to an audience member, it doesn't feel like they're seeing 15, one routine. It feels like they're seeing 15 individual tricks. First of all, you've got three pieces of rope, they go into the same size. Then you put one piece of rope, now the two ropes have become one. Now you've cut the ropes magically into two, now they've become one again, now they've cut into two again, now they've become one. Now the ends have jumped from over here to here, now they've visually jumped down here, now the ends have come off, now they've gone back on, now they're in the pocket, now they're back on the rope, now you've got a loop, now you've got the. It feels like so. If you have to stop halfway through, they've still seen a lot of magic. And I think if you're a professional performer, this is something that you have to consider that you know, if you're depending on the environment you're performing in, sometimes you might have to perform a trick like this or an ambitious card, because it means that if you stop halfway through, you've they've still seen a lot of magic. It also means it's adaptable. So uh if if I go up to a group and I can tell that, you know, I need to be a bit quicker, I can do a shorter version. Whilst if I go up to a table, I can do a longer version, I can do it on stage and I can structure it however I want to. My friend Jay Blunt is one of the resident magicians at Mark Bennett Smoke and Mirrors, and he performs this every single night he's on stage there. It's a great stage routine, it absolutely kills on stage. If I'm going over to uh being performed You know, I can I can structure the routine so it's it's more of a a kid-style routine that with the hooks of look no see and that sort of thing. So it's so adaptable as a routine, you can do almost anything with it. Obviously, the host of this podcast, who works for Alakazam, would like you to know that if you are going to perform any version of Professor's Nightmare or Fiber Optics, then don't use rope. Instead, use Nerdmare Recharged, available from Alakazam.com.uk. It's in the warehouse in America and in the UK and available for immediate shipping. Take your rope routine to the next level by using charging cables instead. Hosted and lectured by Craig Petty. Back to your scheduled programme.

SPEAKER_01: 44:42

We don't need to put our normal advert halfway through it now. We've just got that. Great. So that's number four. Let's move on to number five. What's in your fifth spot, Craig?

SPEAKER_02: 44:51

This is going to bring up another pet hate, but you know. And it's also, ironically, another trick that I probably could put in the uh non-magical item, but whatever. Um, rubber bands. Now let me tell you my pet hate. And then I'll tell you what I love about rubber bands. My pet hate, Jamie, is simply when I speak to magicians and I say, Do you do rubber band magic? And they go, Yes, I do. I go, Oh great, wicked. What rubber band magic do you do? Well, I do crazy man's handcuffs. Yeah, what else do you do? I do crazy man's handcuffs. What else do you do? Crazy Man's Handcuffs. Almost every single magician I've ever met, all they do is Crazy Man's Handcuffs. I don't know how Crazy Man's Handcuffs became the thing that every single person does. I do. It's Michael Lamar, he's the one that like made it prominent, I think. Um, but but everybody, they it's like they they look they buy some rubber bands to do crazy man's handcuffs and then they stop right there, which is such a shame because there's so many incredible rubber band magicians. You know, you look at uh my old business partner, Russell Leeds, you look at um um you look at Dan Haaland, you know, with the Banshark DVD, uh the Ban Shark DVDs back in the day. I believe that like in his new book set, which is apparently coming out in 2079, um, he's got a bunch of really good rubber band stuff, which is great. You look at Joe Reinfleisch, you look at uh you look at all of these people that bring out so much amazing rubber band magic. And to stop and just do Crazy Man's Handcuffs, drive to up the wall. Um, I can literally have six or seven rubber bands on my wrist, and they're just there, and I will. There's rubber bands in every single case. I can have rubber bands on my wrist, and I could literally do half an hour with just rubber bands. And it's not what spectators, uh what magicians think. A lot of magicians go, well, it's just penetrations. No, it's not. No, it's not. No, it's not, no, it's not, no, it's not. There's so many different things you can do with rubber bands, uh, linking and unlinking rubber bands, torn and restored rubber bands. You can I've got a routine where rubber bands uh go into their closed fists like a sponge ball routine, but with rubber bands. My friend Russell Leeds came up with three fly called band fly with rubber bands, bands through table, turning bands into coins. And that's not even taking into consideration what you can do with a band if you if you combine it with a deck of cards. When you get to that point, dear lord, the the stuff you can do is insane. You could literally just go to do a close-up job and just have a few rubber bands on your wrist, and you could do a very successful mix and mingle um uh uh performance for a couple of hours just with rubber bands, and everybody would see something different, but nobody does it. Everybody stops at Crazy Man's Handcuffs and it drives me up the wall. It's like um it's like buying a deck of cards and learning ambitious card and then stopping. It's like buying a stealth assassin wallet and just doing a name reveal and that's it. It's like doing buying a coin set, it's like buying a Mirage coin set and just making a coin jump from one place to another. It's like great, you've got this wonderfully powerful uh device, utility device, and now you've stopped dead.

SPEAKER_01: 48:02

Well, that's uh a hard one to come back from uh and say anything about because Devil's Advocate just popped up again, and he's telling you that you can only perform one thing or routine with your rubber bands. Um maybe crazy man's handcuffs, we'll see. What would you do?

SPEAKER_02: 48:24

You know the irony? I don't do crazy man's handcuffs out of spite because every bloody magician does it. So no, I don't do it. Um, I would say there's so many great rubber band tricks, but the one that I come back to again and again and again, and it's because I've got such a great presentation for it, um, is Strange Exchange by um uh by Joe Reinflees. And Strange Exchange, so you get two different coloured rubber bands, and I have the spectators pick them off my wrist. Which colour would you like? Which colour would you like? And you do an old cat's cradle type thing. So you've got a rubber band around the outside and one in the middle making an X thing, and you do the most visual transposition where they change places visually, and you do it twice, and then there's a really nice moment at the end where you show it from one side and show it from the other side. And I'm now I I my presentation is all about the rules of magic. And I say, look, there's three rules in magic that we're gonna break. The first rule is you don't tell people what's gonna happen ahead of time. I'll tell you what's gonna happen. I'm gonna make the bands change places, and I do. Boom. Second rule of magic, don't repeat a trick. First time it's entertainment, second time it's educational. I'll do it again. Boom, do it again. Third rule of magic, don't tell you how it works. I'm gonna tell you how it works. You see, it's perspective. From this side, it looks like this, from this side it looks like this. That's how it works. Just don't tell anyone. It's big enough for me to perform to a group of people. If I'm in a parlor show, a former close-up show, I'm on a banquet table, I can do that absolutely fine, and everyone's gonna see that. If I'm doing it close up, it's great. It's absolutely fantastic. If I do it, uh, it's it's something that kids really follow easily because it's two different colours. You know, I know some magicians, close-up gigs, they're worried about kids. Like, oh my god, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna perform together. I'm not a kids' entertainer, I have to perform for kids. Just do something visual. This is super visual, it's colours changing places. They absolutely love it. Um, it's very easy to follow. It's a very easy trick to do. And and and by the way, for anybody, here's a little golden nugget for you right here. Uh, for anybody who does go to weddings and isn't a kid's entertainer, because I've I've been a kids entertainer for 30 years, but if you're not a kids' entertainer and you worry about kids following you around from table to table, those kids that follow you around, what am I going to do about the kids that follow me around? What I do is whenever there's kids, I'll do Strange Exchange and I just have a load of rubber bands in my back pocket. And then I'll teach them, I'll grab all of the kids and I'll teach them the old jumping rubber band that jumps from one uh from two fingers to two fingers. And I say, right, I've just taught you that. I want you to run around and show everybody at this wedding that trick. You've got your job is all of you have got to go around and show this trick to everybody. And I'm gonna watch you while I'm performing.

unknown: 50:52

I'm not really going to watch them.

SPEAKER_02: 50:54

But I'm gonna watch you while you're going around and performing, and I'm gonna pick one of you, uh, and the person who I pick is gonna win a prize uh at the end of the gig. At the end of when I leave, you're gonna get a prize. And so two things happen now. One, they're out my hair for the entire time. My prize is the deck of cards I used because I always do a thing at the end of the gig. When there's kids there, I always turn round and I say, Look, this is my deck of cards. I always open a fresh deck before I go into every show and I always give it to one person at the end of every show, which I do. I say, You what you weren't, you you did the best performance. This is this deck of cards for you. It doesn't cost me anything because I'm gonna throw it in the bin when I go anyway. Um, but the other thing it does is the client, the amount of times clients come back to me and they go, you know, you were such an everyone was talking about you, but you know what? You've inspired the kids so much. They're all running around doing tricks for everybody. I wasn't expecting that. Thank you very much. And I'm it and I feel like going, well, that's a happy coincidence. I was just trying to get them out of my hair. Not that I've got any hair, but yay, for you, woo, great stuff. But it it it works on so many different levels.

SPEAKER_01: 51:54

So well, I think that's another great choice in at number five. Let's go straight to number six. What's in your sixth spot?

SPEAKER_02: 52:01

In number six, I'm going to go for uh the extractor deck, E2. Uh because I absolutely love it. I think I've gone on record so many times on my channel and on various different places I've been interviewed by saying that this is probably my favorite magic product that I have ever owned. And I have four of them. I love E2, it's amazing. And I'll never forget seeing it for the first time. And as magicians, sometimes we lose that sense of wonder. As magicians, as we go through magic and as we learn more techniques and we learn more principles and we learn more about magic, uh, we can't help but look at something and analytically in our head go, oh, okay, that's a very clever use of that principle. We do that, even if we don't want to, even if we don't want to, we we can't help ourselves. We look at it. Most magicians are like solving puzzles, they have an analytical brain. They look at a performance and like, right, I think that that would work this way. It's rare. You talked about my magical knowledge, and I I it's rare for me to be completely flawed. Completely flawed. When I saw Peter Nardi many years ago, he had hair um and it was dark. Many years ago, Pete coming up to me in the rough skin and saying, Craig, can I show you a trick? And I wasn't even that close with Pete. I became closer with Pete after COVID when I started working with Alexander. Before then, we were just like, you know, passing. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Show me. And he showed me just a basic extractor routine. And I just didn't have a clue. It didn't make sense to me. It was just, and I couldn't even formulate an idea of how it was done. I couldn't even think, oh, I think I know how this works. It's because I had nothing. I had absolutely nowhere to go. And immediately I wanted to buy it, and I couldn't because he was just showing it to people. He didn't even have it for sale for another year. And when I eventually got it, oh my God, I was like, this is just brilliant. A lot of the time in magic, you talked about how I'm a magic reviewer and I see a lot of tricks. A lot of the time in magic, a lot of the time, the method is a bit disappointing. You know, it's like, it's just a bit disappointing. It's like, okay, you see this trick and you're like, oh my god, how is this going to work? I think it's going to be electronics and I think it's going to be this thing. It's not a piece of thread and a flap, how it works. A lot of the time the method's disappointing. With Extractor, it did not disappoint me. I was like, oh my God, this is genius. And I haven't even talked about how, you know, you can do so much with it. You know, you want to do a super clean card to Impossible Location, there's no better way than the Extractor deck. You want to uh do a super clean control and have a card go in the wallet, no better way than the extractor deck. You want to do a super clean, you want to have someone pick a card and have a free choice and be able to peek it even though you're not looking at them. You don't see the card and they put it back in the deck and you're not looking and you immediately know what their card is, there's no better way of doing than the extractor deck. It's a thing that you can have with you that lives in your pocket that you can use to do so many different routines. And when people start using it uh as much as I do, they realise that you know, oh my god, there's so much you can do with this. Um, so yeah, the extractor deck, E2, whatever you want to call it.

SPEAKER_01: 55:21

Well, Craig Petty, you have now broken a record uh for the Alakazan podcast. The most times Devil's Advocate has come out in an episode because he's back. He's back. If you were to do anything with your E2, then if I had one routine that you had to do with that, what is the one routine you would do with E2?

SPEAKER_02: 55:43

It's it's the one that Pete showed me right in the very beginning, the first thing that you learn with the extractor deck, which is one of the best things that you can do. It's simple, it's direct, it's powerful. If people don't know what it is, you have a deck of cards. You give the deck of cards to the spectator to shuffle. You have them go through the deck themselves and take any card out that they want to. You take the rest of the cards back, and while they're signing the cards, you put the cards in the box. You then look away, they put the cards back, they put their signed card anywhere they want to into the deck. It goes into the box, you're not looking. You close the box up and you put it away. I always put it in my pocket down there and I say, look, I'm gonna put it away. Then, with no fishing, no nothing, I can immediately tell them what their card is, and I can, which is which is incredible. And my presentation is I'm gonna show you the difference between a mentalist and a magician. I actually even reference Peter Nardi. I go, I'm not a mentalist, but I've got a friend, his name's Peter, and he's uh he's a mentalist and he's taught me how to read someone's mind and tell them the card. They're thinking of look, go through this deck and find any card, one that you can vibe with. If you've got one, yeah, fantastic. Sign it because I'm a magician and I get cards signed because that's my job. Uh put it back in the middle of the deck, fantastic. Now, my friend Peter told me this. He said, if you could, and I I tell him the card, I go, of course, I'm a magician, not a mentalist, so I do magic. You put the card in the box. We put the cards back here in my pocket, remember? Here's the crazy thing. In my pocket over here. I've had a wallet. The wallet's been here the whole time. You're not going to believe this, but in the ID compartment of my wallet is your card. When they see that, brains melt. It's the same. And you know what? Sometimes we turn around and we say, Oh, laymen are stupid. You know, that you can do anything to fool a lay person. Now, I think that lay people know when they've seen something special, something ridiculously special. And I think they're very impressed where something that looks like it should take hardcore sleight of hand is done with no moves at all. And that's the beautiful thing of this. There's no moves, there's no nothing. And you know, you you you take this card and you you show it's their card. It's just it's mind-boggling. You can do a lot more with it, but just the beauty and simplicity of that basic routine. Find me something stronger with the deck of cards.

SPEAKER_01: 57:50

Yep, I agree. I think it's a great choice in at number six, and leads us into the tail end of your eight. So we've got two more items, uh, starting with number seven. So, what's in your seventh spot?

SPEAKER_02: 58:01

It would have to be a deck of cards set up in the moniker. It would have to be a memorized deck. Not just any deck, it has to be set up in the moniker. And I am ideally a marked deck. Marked mem deck. Give me some elitian duets. That's my favorite marked deck. Let's get some Phil Smith shit going on here. Get yourself some Elysian duets because that's the best mark deck you can buy, and they come in uh mnemonica, which is amazing. So you can open them up and they're already in mnemonica, and they're marked so that you know what the card is, you know what the position is, you know what the next card is, you know what the next position is. What's Dr. Love? I it's there is so much that you can do with a mem deck. There is literally so much. I don't understand, right? Here we go. Here's another thing. I don't understand why magicians don't learn a memorized deck. I was having this conversation with my friend Thomas Maloney the other day. I do not understand why magicians don't do memdeck magic. Um, or they go, I don't want to learn a memdeck, or I can't learn a mem deck. I've tried and I've got to number 10. You can, you can. It's not a difficult thing to do. My son learned it at the age of seven. My daughters learnt it. Everybody I know, it's not a difficult thing to do if you just spend a week or two and you do, you do it. It's not a difficult thing to do. But once you've learned a mem deck, it opens up so many possibilities. And you know what? I said to my friend Thomas the other day, I said, and he started to learn the mem deck properly. And I said, Why aren't why aren't you learning the mem deck? He's like, it doesn't really give you any advantages. I'm like, what are you talking about? Right. Let's say I could snap my fingers right now and give you the power immediately to have that deck of cards memorized. What would you do with it? He's like, well, I'd do a pseudo-memory routine. I'd tell people I can memorize the deck and then I'd tell them what the next cards are. I was like, right, what else would you do with it? That's it. I'm like, yeah, because you don't really understand what you can do with the mem deck. There are so many different things you can do with a mem deck. You can uh, you know, beyond that, you know, just very simply have a card and immediately know what the card is, with no free choice of a card and immediately know what the card is. But you can you can do estimation. You can you can they can give you some cards and immediately know how many cards are in your hand. You can do uh instant you can do jazzing. Like my favorite thing is to jazz with it and have someone name a card and and just jazz with the deck and immediately know you know find that card for them when they've named any card at all. Have them find their own card. Um, you can do so much stuff, so many incredible routines. You can what a mem deck does, Jamie, as far as I'm concerned, is it takes any pick a card trick and turns it into a name a card trick. And and you you m anybody watching this, listening to this, you know, whatever, must know that a having somebody name a card freely is much more powerful than having someone pick a card. So mem deck.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:58

Okay, well, our little horned red friend has just popped back out again because you're only allowed one routine with your mnemonic mark deck. So, what is that one routine you would perform?

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:12

Uh there's uh whenever I use a mem deck, there's a routine that I use to open, and I open every mem deck act with this because it's the perfect trick. It's very quick, it's very uh very and it's by Darwin Ortiz. You have somebody, uh, so you put a deck of cards on the table, and you say to them, What I want you to do is I would like you to uh name a card. So they name a card. Uh let's say they name the, I don't know, Jack of Hearts, for example. They name a card. Once they've named a card, um, once they've named a card, you take another card out of the deck. You just randomly cut and you take a card out of the deck, and you have them put that card face up anywhere into the deck face down that they want to. So they put that card face up anywhere into the deck that they want to, uh, the rest of the deck's face down, and their card goes in face up. Um once they do that, ah, got it. Once they do that, uh uh it's called test your luck. I've just found it while I've been talking to you. It's called test your luck. This is the description, the perfect effect for a newcomer to memorize deck work, yet also an effect so strong Darwin performs it regularly. Well, he did. He's dead now. A participant thrusts a different card into the deck and places it directly next to the card he named, and that's exactly what happens. So they take the card, they put it into the deck themselves, and then they have put it right next to the card that they named. Think about how powerful that is. They name any card, they then take another card and put it into the deck themselves, and they put it right next to the card they've named. There's a couple of reasons why that's really powerful. The first is it's any freely named card. There's no limitation. It's not like add copy to some tricks. This is a freely named card, as long as you get them to pick a court card. It's any card, and they can name any card, which is super strong. But then, secondly, I think that the best type of magic is when you empower the spectators. I think the best type of magic is when they're doing the magic themselves. That's when they go away and they go, Oh my god, that's that's that's incredible. That's amazing. That's that's awesome. Um, uh, because they they have done the magic themselves, and that's what this is. You've done nothing, you've just supplied the deck, which is a normal deck, by the way, but they name the card, they find the card themselves. Test your luck. I mean, what's stronger than that? It's incredible.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:33

Okay, next question. Just touching on this uh one second. Mnemonica, why did you go for that? There are lots of stacks out now. Obviously, you've got Aronson, um Joshua J recently came up with the particle system. I think Patrick Redford has a stack. So why did you go for this particular stack?

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:50

It's a great question. So the answer is very simple. If I was going to learn a stack today now, I'd learn the shadow stack by Tom Crosby. I think that is the best stack because Tom created a stack that um effectively um has so many features built into it, it's brilliant. Or I might go for Redford Stack. Um, as much as I like Josh, I don't think I go for the particle system. Um but in lockdown, Ryland was bored, and he started to learn memdeck magic, and he wanted to learn a mem deck. So he was getting me to test him all of the time. So I was testing him and I learned the deck by accident. True story. I learned so years ago I'd learnt Shadow Stack, but what I didn't realize is the key to learning a mem deck isn't learning the mem deck, the key is constantly using that knowledge so you don't forget it. So in my and you don't have to like sit there with a deck of cards, but in my head, I have drills that I do every morning. So every single morning while I'm doing the ironing or whatever I'm doing, I'll be like, right, okay, Craig, where are the four aces? Right, ace of spades is at number seven, ace of clubs is at number 43, ace of hearts is at number 51, ace of diamonds is at number 39, brilliant, right? Where are the four twos? Okay, so the two of spades is at number, so on and so forth. So I'm constantly drilling, so I'll never forget that deck. I didn't do that with the shallow stack and I forgot it almost immediately. And I learned to mem deck again by accident because Ryland chose to learn mem mnemonica because he had an app that he couldn't get on with. And uh, and and and because of that, I was testing him and I learned mnemonica. And I'm too old now to forget mnemonica and learn something else. I'm not gonna purposefully forget a stack to learn a new stack, even if I think that another stack has extra features and benefits. Now I'm not gonna do that. Uh, but if I was going to advise anybody to learn a stack now, it would probably be Redford's or Tom Crosby's.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:47

Okay, well, there you go. No more questions on that one. Uh, and it does lead us to your final one uh before you have to pick one of your own one. Um, so number eight, what's in your final spot?

unknown: 1:05:59

You

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:00

Probably not had anyone say this before, but don't forget, I spend more time doing illusion shows than I do anything else. Um, so I would take my split press. Um, so for those of you that don't know, I I do an illusion show, that's what I spend most of my time doing. Probably 70% of my gigs are doing illusion shows on stage. And um I have a warehouse full of illusions, and the split press for me is the ambitious card of the illusion show world. Um, because you can just um wheel it into a venue, and when you wheel it into a venue, it's just ready to go. You don't need to build it. Trust me, when you start to do illusions, not having to build a bloody prop when you get to the venue is such a bonus. I don't have to build it, I can just wheel it on stage and I'm good to go. Um, I can have it set up there, it's completely angle-proof. I was doing a gig over Christmas, and the audience, there was one table in front of me, and there was 150 to the left and 150 to the right. And with most illusions, you're screwed. But with the split press, it's not a problem. You can do it completely 360. Um, it's it's a wonderful illusion. The girl gets in the box, or the person you're doing on gets in the box. You divide them into three, like a classic trio soaring in half, but then they vanish and then they reappear. You can do a production of a second girl if you want to out of the box, depending on the size of the girl. Um, there's just it's just so practical, and it's just one of those routines that when you watch it, you go, Oh my god, that's amazing. It is such a good prop. Um, and I think I would be doing myself a disservice by talking about all of these wonderful stage props and all of these wonderful close-up props, and not mentioning um the the the probably the prop that I use more than anything else, because that goes with me to every single uh illusion show. The only time that doesn't go with me to an illusion show is if Ryland has stolen it for his show first. That is the only reason.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:05

You must just have a metric ton of illusions now.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:10

Yeah, we've got an entire warehouse, it's like an Aladdin's cave. Um, and and Ryland and Thea will just come after school and they'll just go down the warehouse and they'll open up a flight case and they'll just have a go. Yeah, it's it's it's yeah, it's it's I I love them. I I know some people don't like illusions, some people do. Um I I I will tell you that the uh being an illusionist, it it if you're a professional magician saying that you do an illusion show really the client has so much more respect for you. Um it's crazy how it works, but like every time I go and do an illusion show and we turn up, it's like, oh, uh uh, here's your green room. Um uh uh we'll serve dinner at this time. Is there anything else we can do for you? Please ring us if you want a drink. And anytime I go and do a close-up gig, generally as a rule, it's like, yeah, where can I get changed? In the disabled toilets, is it? All right, yeah, brilliant, great. I'll go in there. I'll go and get changed in the bog, shall I? Right next to where somebody changed the kid's nappy. Lovely. I'll go and do that. Yeah. Anyway, I can sort my close-up case out. Right, lean on that bin over there. Yeah, brilliant. All right, cool. I don't think sometimes, like I did a gig the other day with Nemed Phoenix and we went, we went uh to Liverpool and we did a two-hour close-up job for 700 people, and we were there for two hours. I turned around to Nemed and I was like, this is the equivalent of a fart in a wind tunnel. We are a box ticking exercise. We could literally walk out this venue right now and and and come back in two hours later and say bye to the client, and they wouldn't even know that we've done that because we're not going to be able to get around 700 people, just the two of us. At best, we're probably gonna be able to hit 300. And and we're gonna have to bust our bulls to hit 300 and rush from group to group. I'm like, we're a box ticking exercise. Uh now that's not always the case. Sometimes you can book a close-up magician, and it's fine. A lot of the time it's fine, but sometimes it's just like I go to gigs sometimes as a close-up magician, and I'm kind of just thinking to myself, why did they even bother booking me? What is the fucking point? I did a gig once and I was I was at uh it was a corporate event, and they're wanting me for an hour doing drinks reception, and there were 800 people. What do you expect me to do? I'm not gonna hit all 800 people in an hour. I you know, but uh, you know, when you're an illusionist and you're doing a show, you make or break that event, but you are normally the the final thing that comes on, and you know, you're sending them home happy if you do a good show, and if you don't, it's you know, so and and also I love the fact that look, here's the thing with close-up magic. You could be uh you could you could go up to a table or a group, and it could be the best group in the world. They could be like giving you David Blaine style reactions, they could be like doing cartwheels and running away screaming, going, Oh my god, no! And they could be doing all that shit. But here's the thing after five minutes, you've got to move on. You're gonna win another group of people over, and then you've got to move on, you're gonna win another, you're always constantly having to uh win people over. Hey, I'm not as dodgy as a look. My name's Craig, I'm the magician, I'm here to do magic. Yes, I know it's weird, but just watch. It's with a when you're on stage, I've got them for half an hour or so. I can take them on a journey. You know that, Jamie. You do a lot of stage shows. Uh you know, I mean, regardless of the stage show, illusions or whatever, you take them on a journey. Uh, you're there. You can get them from the beginning, they get who you are, and then you can take them on a journey that that goes through to the conclusion of the show. And that's why I love performing on stage more than I do close-up. Not that I don't love close-up. I like I say, I've got four close-up jobs in the next five days. I love doing close-up. Um, but for me, stage shows is is is where it's at, you know, just in for many different reasons. And if you can have a stage show and you can advertise and market yourself that you're a stage magician as well as uh uh a close-up guy, I guarantee you you people will respect you more. The client will respect you more.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:10

Well, I think that's a great way to lead out your list. So we had uh your Rubik's Cube with Tattoo Reveal, we had Trick Shot Prediction, we had Destination Box, Fibre Optics, Strange Exchange, E2, the Mark Deck in the moniker, um, split press to close you out. I think very few people would have had that as a great play list. Um, so I think that's super diverse. But we do have the forced item. So we've never given anyone this choice. You are the first person. Uh if you had to put one release, just one of your 13,000 releases, what is the one release you would take with you to your island?

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:51

Good question. Before I answer that, you said that you had John Allen on a couple of weeks ago. Did he put a Craig Petty uh trick in his list? Because if that might make me decide to change the destination box and put something else in instead.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:03

Let me have a look what his list was. So, spoiler alert, if you've um not listened to his episode, do not listen now. Uh, he had silent treatment, destination box, no risk, double back, uh, coin and ball of wool, pain game, card stab, and any card at any number.

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:19

It's all of his own shit. John, come on, mate. That's the equivalent of a lecturer going to uh uh uh going to a lecture and just doing a deal of them. Well, first of all, oh let me change my list. I'll start with the Mirage coin set, then I'll go on to chop, then I'll go on to oh, come on, John Allen. You really telling me that your tricks are the best tricks that have ever been created? He's a very good magician. I very much love John Allen, but come on, you could have put a couple of other people's tricks in there, especially mine.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:52

That that was the caveat there, John. I think if if you are listening to John Allen, that was the point.

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:58

I deserve to be in your list, John Allen. That sounds good enough. All right, I was thinking about this as I was answering your other questions, and it's very, very difficult. Um and I was mulling it over, and I at one point, I I weirdly, I've put no coin tricks in that list, uh, which is random as hell, because I'm a coin guy at heart. Um and I was thinking, well, I'll hold the coins off until this bit, and I'll I'll mention one of my coin things. But honestly, I think it's gonna have to be chop. It's gonna have to be chop. It's gonna have to be chop. Uh that you know, like every single creator, there's a trick that defines them. It doesn't matter how hard they work, it doesn't matter how much effort they put in. There's that one trick that's constantly going to be the thing that people talk about forevermore. Uh, like Wayne Goodman, for example, is Look Sharp. Wayne's bought some incredible magic out since Look Sharp. But I think the thing that everybody always thinks of when it comes to Wayne Goodman is Look Sharp. Do you know what I mean? Uh every every magician has the same thing. They really do. I think that if you're a creator, you have that thing. And no matter what I release, no matter what I do, everybody always the thing that people come back to me about again and again and again is chop. And and I uh, you know, it's been around a long time now. Um, and it stood the test of time. But I think one of the reasons that it's it's it's it's so good is because it's very, very practical. You know, I mean, uh you can, you know, a chop cup has been around for years, but this allows you to do a chop cup with with a borrowed headphone or a borrowed bill or a borrowed piece of paper or a C S somebody's pocket, borrow a ceramic cup or a see-through cup or a glass or a styrofoam cup or a solo cup or a red cup or whatever you want. Take any cup, take any glass, take any uh any sort of paper thing or whatever the case may be, and you can do an incredible routine. You can do things with chop that you can't do with a normal chop cup. You can you can put a ball on the spectator's hand, cover it up with a cup, they can lift it up and see it's not there, and anytime you want to, you can lift the cup up and the ball's gone. And you can show the inside of the cup and you can show your hands. You can literally control the drop of a ball. So you can put a cup on their hand and you can have them say go and you can drop the object at the second they say go. You can literally hold a cup mouth up. You can get them to drop the object inside, and immediately you can show it's not in there. Find me a chop cup anywhere in the world where you can do that. You're not going to be able to. It's a combination of a gimmick that actually makes sense, that is built into something that you would carry around with you anyway. Everybody would carry a Sharpie, which is what the gimmick for chop is built into. But not only is it a gimmick that everyone, not only is it a thing that everyone will carry with them, and it writes like a normal Sharpie. Uh, so it's like a James Bond style thing. But not only that, you've combined this really cool gimmick with sleight of hand, uh, basic sleight of hand, which means that you can do a routine as long or as short as you want. And and it's not just a chop cup. You know, in the new tutorials, we talked about how you can do coins across, you can do a really impossible um, you know, build uh bill or card to impossible location, you can do stuff with airpods, you can do billets, you can do predictions, you can do so many different things. And, you know, that doesn't even take into consideration the fact that it's probably the most logical bill in lemon ever, because the bill has a reason for being in the lemon because the lemons appeared instead of the bill, and now the bill's in the lemon. It's just it's it's the thing that I think out of everything, if you if you if you polled the entire magic community and you asked them what's your favourite Craig Petty trick, I think you would have a higher percentage, say chop than anything else. Even with you know how amazing the Mirage coin set is and how many reviews it's had and the Nightshade coin set and all the stuff we've done with the Elite Coin Range. You look at the atomic deck, you look at the savant deck, you look at the quantum deck, you look at all the stuff I've done with Phil Smith with all of the uh specially printed decks of cards that aren't cards and stuff like that. You look at Key Master, you look at all the different key tricks that I've done over the years, you look at all of that stuff. I still think that chop is the thing that everybody will remember long after I'm gone.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:10

Yeah, I I remember getting Chop the first time around and thinking. I mean, what's lovely about when you get a trick is when you go, that's just so clever, and it works so well, and it's so well thought through, and it lifts the restrictions that that trick had before it, and now it allows any presentation and uh any props, and it really did just blow that genre of trick wide open. It it made it more accessible than ever before. You could do it in an impromptu situation, in a professional situation, you know. You get versions like the um I which I love the uh play-doh version, which I think is great, but I maybe not use that prop at a more corporate event. Maybe that would be a great thing for for walk around. But your version, sure, I could just get a real play-doh cup and use that, and then use the exact same gimmick with a coffee cup or a takeaway cup or whatever I want.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:14

Yep, exactly. It's it's got so many possibilities, it's it's it's endless, really. Um and that's what that's that's that's what I love about it. And you know, unlike a lot of magic, and we talked about this earlier on, the method isn't disappointing. You you you you learn how it works, and you go, oh, that's really clever, and it's got that toy factor, it's one of those tricks that's really fun to practice, um, which is great, but also it's accessible. You'll be able to do it and it's nonlinear. You can do one phase, then a second phase, then a third phase, then a fourth phase, and yeah, it's uh it's a reputation maker. It really is. You do it right. You're gonna, you know, yeah. If I was going on TV and I I I was asked to do something close up, um, I I I would probably do Chop. That's the thing I would do.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:02

Well, there you go. Officially, we have found out what the best Craig Petty release is. You heard it here first. It's Chop.

SPEAKER_02: 1:20:10

Until next week. Change my mind next week.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:13

Well, we are on to the banishment. So, Craig, I want you I'm so worried where this is I could literally lose my job at this point. So, uh Craig, I want you to imagine you're gonna dig a big sandy hole, you're gonna throw something inside, never to be seen again. What are you gonna banish on your island?

SPEAKER_02: 1:20:33

Chris Congrief. No, I'm joking. No, of course not. I love Chris. Um you know that I've spent the last five years running a YouTube channel for magicians, and every Sunday I do a QA where I take questions, and there's lots of questions that come up again and again and again. And people will send me messages and they'll send me emails and they'll ask the same question over and over again. And this question that comes up is um, and it's interesting actually, because I know you said that uh just I think it was off camera you was you said that a lot of the time people put ego as something that they would get rid of, which I think is complete bullshit. Because I don't think having an ego is a bad thing. I think as a performer, having the you know, but if you're going to be walking out on stage in front of people, I think ego, as long as it's kept in check, is not a bad thing. I think you remove the ego from a situation. I don't I I completely disagree with that. But what I would take out, because people ask me the same question over and over again, which is I want to perform, but I I don't think I'm ever going to be able to perform to people. I wanna, I wanna, I want to enter this competition, but I'm too scared to enter this competition. I want to be a creator, but I'm too scared to have my name put out there and and you know, I'm I'm too scared that I'll have a rejection from the production company I go to. I want to create I want to be a content creator, I want to set up a YouTube account or a TikTok account or an Instagram account, and I want to share my magic, but I'm too scared because I don't know what I don't think I could deal with the negative attention that they're gonna get or the comments or whatever the case may be. Um I want I want to go full-time pro, but I'm too scared to go full-time. I I would remove and banish self-doubt, and I would try to make it so that more people have belief in themselves. Because if you don't believe in yourself, then you've got nothing. You have to believe, you have to believe, you have to believe every single day. Look, I've been criticized on the internet by saying openly, I think I'm the world's greatest magician. Now, in reality, do I think I'm the world's greatest magician? No, no. However, I say to myself every single morning, Craig Betty, you are the world's greatest magician. Because here's the thing if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have done everything that I've done. And let's, you know, let's talk about this. I've I've I've won, I've been the Penguin Magic Creator of the Year four years in a row, every single year, never been done before. Alakazam, four years in a row, never been done before. Alan Magic Society won every single award that they've got, and then some. And we're talking about going up against people like Tobias Dostel, who in every single fucking way is better than me. Outside of this, I've built big businesses. Outside of this, I've won competitions, I've been very, very successful. I'm not the best, I'm not the best-looking guy in the world, I'm not the cleverest guy in the world. I'm dumb as a post. I'm not the most creative person in the world. However, what I do have is I believe in myself. And I think if more people started to believe in themselves, I think we'd be in a better situation. And if I could take that person who says, I want to go and be a magician, but I'm too scared to perform to my friends, and I could snap my fingers and remove that self-doubt and make them go and perform, because when they do, they will realize how amazing the reactions are that they get from that performance. It will change their life. If I could take that person who wants to release that magic trick, but they're too scared, and I could remove that self-doubt and they do it, and they're finally able to get a trick published with a with a with a box on a shelf and everyone sees their name on there, that will change their life. Self-belief comes when the action happens, but self-doubt is what stops that action from happening that will allow you to believe in yourself. And I really believe that if we could make it so that more people believe in themselves, I think we'd be in such a much better place as a community. And I think that the, and look, here's with my kids. My kids have achieved an awful lot. Uh, my daughter's been doing magic for a year and a half. She's headline buttlins, for God's sake. Something that some magicians wish they could do. She's been on buttlins on the main stage three or four times. She's the youngest person to ever win an award at the J Day. You know, she won the Comedy Award with Ryland. Look at what Ryland's done. Look at the look at the, you know, that the Britain's got talent, America's got talent. Are Ryland and Theater best magicians in the world? No, probably not. No. Have you seen Harry Merlin Piper recently on Star Search? The kids are freaking prodigy. However, they've achieved so much because I taught them from a young age to believe in themselves and not doubt themselves. If you don't, if you stop doubting yourself and you start believing in yourself, you'll achieve so much more. So I would eliminate self-doubt. And as part of that, I would try to eliminate toxicity in the magic community. Because I think the thing that leads to self-doubt more than anything else is the community being toxic about stuff. The amount of times I see somebody post a video in Magicians Only, going, Oh, I've just been working on this trick. What do you think? And there's going to be some guy in the comments that's going to go, oh, you're terrible. It's awful. Why did you post this? The camera's pointing at your crotch. You should be ashamed at yourself. Your double lift is terrible. And then typically you go and look at that person's videos and they suck, right? But there's a certain, and I've experienced this firsthand. The amount of times I've had toxicity aimed at me and like, oh, Craig's the worst magician in the world. Craig's terrible. I get that every single day. I get messages every single day. I go on YouTube comments. I bet I could open up the YouTube comments now. And in the last 24 hours, I've had three or four people say, no, Craig's terrible. Craig just drones on. Craig likes the sound of his own voice. Yeah. Guess what? It's that toxic. Anytime people say that sort of stuff, it's because they're trying to push you down. You know, uh I wish that the community would lift people up more than try to push them down. And it's frustrating because 98% of the community do. We have some wonderful people in this community. We have wonderful people on Facebook pages. Ryland posted a video recently on Magicians Only of him doing car manipulation that he's been working on for two months. And he's not got it to a point yet where he wants to do it in a show. Um, but he's he was he's been practicing car manipulation for two months, and he's doing, he's palming like 40 cards, and it's it's incredible. And he's choreographed this whole piece. And you had people like Sean McCree who went on there was like, This is amazing. I can see how hard you've worked on this. My advice would be to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. And Rylan read it and was like, oh my god, that's amazing. Um, there were other people that went on there going, I could never do this. That is brilliant. But then there's people that have gone on there and have gone, you're terrible, give up. Like, never do this in front of a live audience. And there's people that have messaged him off the back of him putting that video in that group where they've gone, oh, you're an embarrassment to magic. And it's kind of like, hang on a minute. We're dealing with a 13-year-old kid here, somebody who's had the guts to post a video in a private group for magicians and openly say, I am not ready to do this in a show yet. This is my rehearsal footage. Can I have some feedback? And some guy who will remain nameless has sent him a message going, Yeah, quick, get out of magic. That right there is what I would get rid of in this community. I would get out rid of people who think it's okay to push people down. Because as an industry, as a community, we should be trying to build people up. The future of magic, look, I've seen. I've seen people quit magic because of bullying on the Magic Cafe. I've seen it. I've seen it happen. I've seen people leave Magic and never come back into it. That person could have been the next Shin Lim. That person could have been the next world champion of magic. But they're not. Instead, they're not even in this industry. They're not even in this community because somebody somewhere had a choice. They had a choice when they saw that person post a video, when they saw that person post a comment, or when they asked for advice, somebody had a choice. They could either help that person out and give them advice in the right way, like Sean McCree would, or they can push them down, belittle them and squash them. And every single time someone is made to give made that choice, it's it's it it needs to stop. You know, I I remember bringing the atomic deck out last year and people like coming down on me like a ton of bricks over stuff that was ridiculous. You know, there's ways to do stuff. And if I wanted to banish one thing, it would be eliminate toxicity so that the members of the magic community that want to go and take their career to the next level, whatever that career might be, whether it's to be a creator, a professional magician, or just a really, really keen amateur that just loves going and performing for friends and family, whatever your goal is, out of magic. I wish the community would be in a situation where people can have more belief in themselves and less self-doubt. And that starts with members of the community and understanding that they need to push people up rather than push them down. It's like I remember Max Maven's final words before he passed away in his final Facebook post. You know, uh, I believe that we can do better, and I think we will. And I believe that as a community we can do better. And, you know, I've been guilty of this in the past. I've been guilty of doing rants about people, and you know, I haven't done that for years because I understood this. I started to understand this years ago. And I think that as an industry, as a community, that we need to be able to do that as well. I think we need to start to raise people up and not push people down. So I would eliminate toxicity and I would eliminate self-doubt.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:11

You know, I think a lot of what you just said is absolutely true. We see it time after time, the amount of uh comments that we get on our YouTube, and it's typically from the same people. We know we know the names, um, and that they're always negative. There's no there's no positive perspective on on anything. And I I always remember one of my favourite sayings is um your candle never grows any brighter by extinguishing someone else's, and it's very true, just because you put someone else down, it doesn't make you any better. It it doesn't it doesn't advance your career or your perspective, it it really does nothing. Um, and you mentioned someone had given um Ryland constructive criticism, and it was you know, here's what was great about it, here's what I would recommend that you do based on my experience, and you know, carry on. I I can't wait to see what you do with this and how you advance. I think that is more impactful because you know, we're we're then advancing the art. It's not just about us as individuals, it's about you know, here's my experience, take that, and then someone else will say, Well, here's my experience, and that's how we become better performers, that's how magic grows, that's how you know it it becomes better for all of us. So I think that's a great banishment, Craig. Um not the banishment that we all thought, let's all be honest, guys. Um, so we we got away with our jobs intact. Uh, but you do have two more things. So obviously, we've given you eight of everything else, we're only giving you one each of these, so you've only got one book to take with you, Craig. Which book would you take?

SPEAKER_02: 1:31:51

I would take my own book, Absolute Magic. Absolute Madness, available from Penguin Magic. Now I'm going to uh I have been studying at the John Allen School of Self-Promotion, and so I would like to put the Absolute Madness. It is the best magic book ever written. You can get it from Penguin Magic, and I will even sign it yourself myself if you see me at magic convention. No, I'm joking, not really. Um I would, I would, uh, I would say, because it was such a key, uh, it was the moment that my magic changed. It was the moment that I realized that magic could be more than what I thought it was, was when I read Impossibilia by John Bannon. So I would say, which was one of John's very first books, and I know he's brought out 75 million books now, but um his first book, the big pale blue book, Impossibilia. Um, there is so much stunning material in there, including Coin Tricks. I know John Bannon coin tricks, right? Um, and it would either be that or Smoke and Mirrors, which is also John Ballin's book, but one of the two of them, both incredible books. And you could literally buy those two books, never buy anything else ever again, and you could have you could be a very successful close-up magician. Because the material in there, you think about the stuff, the stranger's gallery was there in the for the first time. Uh the best version of the Torn and Restored uh Um uh cigarette paper is in there, uh his cutting the aces routine is in there. Uh just everything, everything that's in there is just brilliant. Um, it's just brilliant, absolutely brilliant. So uh uh I would say Impossibilia, Smoke and Mirrors, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:36

Well, I think both of those are great. We have had John Bannon quite a few times in this position, uh, and for for obvious reasons, they're both phenomenal books. I remember I think Smoke and Mirrors was the first John Bannon one that I read, and that was one of the times where a bit like we mentioned with Chop, you read each trick and your brain just goes, That's clever. Oh my god, that's really clever. Oh, that's so clever, all the way through the book. Uh, it's it's the the magic equivalent of watching fireworks and constantly going, whoa, whoa.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:09

I completely agree, completely agree. Absolutely amazing books, and you can build a career out of them.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:17

Well, we do have one more thing that we worked out. You could have put several of your tricks in here, um, including your you know, April and your Rubik's Cube, but you do have one magic item, uh one non-magic item, sorry, that you use for magic. What would that item be? It would be a paperclip.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:38

Because then I could do paperclip to buy Jay Sankey, which still to this day is the best goddamn card routine ever made. Like, as much as we take the piss out of Jay sometimes, and I'm the first person to take the piss out of Jay, he struck gold with paperclipped. He absolutely did. I have done it for probably 30 years now, and it is just the most amazing finale to any routine that you could possibly do. I mean, just think about it. I've got a pay I'm you know, I've got a I'm gonna take a card, I'm gonna put it in a paperclip. You hold on to that. Pick a card, sign it, boom, let's look at the paperclip card. It's your card. And it's a you can do so much with it. You can do mentalism, you can do matchups, you can do cards to impossible location. It is the perfect, perfect move. And it's the perfect example of sometimes you don't need a gimmick, sometimes you can do incredible magic just with something very, very simple. So, yeah, a paperclip.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:38

Well, I think that's a great one in your final spot. And you know, I I may took the mickey out of you for putting those items in your trick list, but you've just given yourself an extra trick. So, you know, you put your middle finger up to me at that one. Um so well done. But I think that's a great list. So we had a Rubik's Cube, we had Trick Shot Prediction, Destination Box, Fibre Optics, Strange Exchange, E2, Mark Deck in the moniker. We had split press, your Craig Petty release is Chop, your banishment is self-doubt. Uh, your book is Impossibilia, and your item is a paperclip. What a great list.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:14

Thank you, mate. I really appreciate it. I think it's probably the best list that you guys have ever had. But I haven't listened to every episode where I wouldn't know. I'm thinking it's better than John Allen's approach, which is just all of his own stuff. But there you go.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:26

John's list was also excellent. Just putting that caveat out. We love John's list as well.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:32

I'm joking, I'm joking, I'm joking.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:33

We love that as well. Um, but Greg, if people want to find out.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:37

Can I ask you a question? Have you had Chris Congreve on here?

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:39

We have had Chris. Chris was one of our early ones, I believe.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:42

Can I ask you a question?

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:43

Go on.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:44

I haven't listened to him yet. Did he include any tricks on his list that didn't involve penises?

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:51

Uh, I cannot remember um what his list was. It was too far away.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:55

These days it's all about the cock man. It's all about let's do it, let's take it, let's get another knob gag in there. That's just more knobgags. It's got sales, that's what the people want. Why did we come to Blackpool for? Knob gags.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:06

Well, hopefully we'll have Chris back on an SOS episode soon. And we'll see if any any of his um episode uh any of his choices change. But Craig, if people want to find out more about you, about the Netrix, about your lectures, about every trick that you're doing in the whole world, where can they go to?

SPEAKER_02: 1:37:23

Just switch on the internet and just go anywhere. I don't need to self-promote magic TV. Just go onto any website that's got anything to do with magic, and within about 10 minutes, you're gonna see me. That's not an ego thing, by the way, because for all these people that come on this podcast and say, Oh, you should have an ego. I'm just everywhere. Yeah, I was thinking about that. And I didn't do it by design, but you know, yeah, Nemed was saying the other day when he was editing something for Ali Kazami, he's like, I just spent four hours editing and I was looking at your face. I switched on Facebook and I saw seven ads for seven of your tricks. So I decided to go on YouTube and your videos popped up through multiple different YouTube channels. I put on a podcast and it was you speaking, and then I went and like decided I was gonna learn a new trick, and it was uh the choices I had were your tricks. I just you know where I am. If you want me, just just I'm like the A Team, you know. Go and find if you can find me, then you can watch me. But I'm not difficult to find I'm nothing like the A Team actually. That's a terrible analogy. I'm not like the A Team. I'm like um I'm like somebody who's everywhere and people don't really want it. I don't know. I'm like, I'm like, I don't know, I don't know. I'm Rick Astley. I'm Rick Astley. There you go.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38:28

We're just Rick rolling everyone. Yeah, correct. Uh well I will say we've got tons of your tricks um ready to go. We've been, well, we've had loads in stock for ages um getting to go, and we're working on loads coming up as well. And you have been working with Unlimited, you've got some brilliant tricks on there that are always in the top ten. Um so do go check those out if you're an unlimited member. And we've got more of those being filmed later on this year. So you won't promote, but I'll cross promote there for you. There you go.

SPEAKER_02: 1:38:56

Yes, go and go and check out Alakazam because I've got some amazing stuff going up with the Alakazam this year. I'm also very honored and delighted to be uh uh you know at the convention. Uh I'm gonna be I'm gonna be at the uh the Alakazam convention. I I I like to believe I'm headlining. I haven't been told I'm headlining, but I look at the other names. You look at Tom Wright and David Jonathan and Mark Spellman. I think it's obvious I'm headlining, it's obvious. You can just tell with those other names there. It's it's me. It's me. Pete doesn't want to upset the others, but we know. We all know. So I'm gonna be headlining at the uh at the uh Alakazam Magic Convention. So, you know, uh I mean there's gonna be some other guys there and they're okay, but it's me that you want to say. I'm gonna be doing a brand new lecture. So make sure you come to the Alakazam convention. There's not many tickets left. I'm the headliner, just so you know.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39:39

I think we're gonna have to hire out one of those pop-up boxing rings as well at this stage. Um let them all have their go. Yep, that's great. Uh, it's gonna be a great, great time. But Craig, I know you're super busy. Uh so thank you so much for your time. Um, and for everyone who clicked onto this and looked at how long this podcast was gonna be before they listened. I bet it wasn't as bad as you thought it was gonna be. I bet you it wasn't as bad as you thought it was gonna be. Um so thank you so much for your time, Craig.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:07

You're more than welcome. Jamie, thank you so much. Guys, thank you very much for listening to this podcast. I really appreciate it. I'm sure I will see you again somewhere on a magic product or a trick or a podcast or a video, or you'll see me in public. And I'm pretty sure at some point in the next 12 months, I'm gonna piss you off somehow. So uh ahead of that time, I just want to say you're welcome.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:29

And of course, we'll be back next week with another version of this podcast. Don't forget we do have Stranded with a Stranger. We keep saying it every week. It'd be great to do at least one of these a month. So send in your list of eight tricks one banishment, one non-magic item, and one book to sales at alakazam.co.uk. Include your name, a little bit of a bio about who you are, and of course, why you chose those tricks. Don't worry, you don't have to put your favourite Craig Petty release into that list. Um, so don't worry about it. But we'll be back next week. Thank you all for listening and watching. We'll see you again soon. Have a great week. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00: 1:41:04

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