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KGB Day 4 – Final Day! :(

Posted by kimmomagician on January 11, 2013
Posted in: chit chat, For Magicians, Fun stuff, Magic, News. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Well, the last day of our little conference seemed to come round really quickly. Having a little lie in this morning before we get started!

Yesterday was a packed programme again. We began with a Skype chat with Doug Scheer about the KGB Website. We are hoping to have this up and running soon and Doug has done a great job in getting it all together.

Ken Scott treated us to a motivational lecture entitled ‘Why We Stay Busy. We Are F***ing Rock Stars.’ Ken is a very funny guy and despite the tongue in cheek title, his professionalism and passion for our art shone through in this great presentation.

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Jozo Bozo gave an incredible lecture on how to entertain 2 year olds. We had all been skeptical about this but wow!! We were treated to a masterclass, packed with useful information and I am now determined to try and crack this untapped market in my area!

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Jozo Bozo – Entertaining 2 year olds

Over lunch, we read out columns from Magic magazine by KGB members Mike, Payne and David.

I was next, giving my presentation on Edwin – ‘Meet Bideford’s Mr. Magic’. Edwin probably contributed more to the art of children’s magic than anyone else in the 20th Century and yet many younger entertainers no nothing about him due to the fact that he existed before the internet. I showed some video clips of behind the scenes of Supreme Magic and of Edwin performing back in 1977.

We had dinner at my favourite fast-food place, IN AND OUT BURGER, followed by middle eastern ice-cream (ginger and rose-water flavour!) , then staged an impromptu KGB show for the kids in the hotel. The kids were pretty much all Australian and aged 10 and over, but we had great fun.

Gary hosted and performed ‘Colin the Chicken’, I did a little baby cry routine and Knitty Bang Bang, David Kaye did three new tricks (I won’t give details as he may want to keep them under wraps) and Payne closed with a brilliant ropes through body where a child appeared to escape from a strait jacket!

Afterwards we had Show and Tell until the early hours of the morning, then retired to bed exhausted!

Today we are eating lunch at the Magic Castle and visiting the library, then we will exchange gifts before our Gala dinner at Yamashiro’s. then we will be discussing our plans for Saturday’s charity show.

Sounds fun to me!

 

Kidabra 2012 Review: Part 1

Posted by kimmomagician on September 8, 2012
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I know, I know – in my last post I promised a full review of Kidabra 2012, then fell silent again. Well here it is! I hope it was worth waiting for! The 21st Kidabra conference – ‘The Year of Inspiration’ proved to be the best I’ve ever attended. Tamar and I began our long journey to Pigeon Forge, Tennesse on August the 12th, when we drove up to the Manchester Airport Hilton. We spent the evening watching the olympics closing ceremony and discussing the trip ahead, which was also going to serve as the second part of our honeymoon. To cut a long story short, we arrived in Knoxville at 5.30 the next evening, picked up the hire car and drove to the Music Road Hotel. Unfortunately, our luggage had failed to arrive on the same plane as us, deciding instead to stay in Philadelphia, so the first excursion was to the huge local Walmart to buy a few essentials. All this fuss almost made us decide not to attend Dave and Sally Andrews’ Brits party, but I was really glad we did. When we opened the door we were greeted by a Krispy Kreme donut wedding cake, complete with decorative trim and bride and groom! All this was courtesy of Gus and Monica Harvett – a great couple and two great friends. We were over the moon!

Gus and Monica’s delicious creation

It was great to see Gus and Monica again, along with GG and Charlie Siebert, Kevin Doig, Scott Thatcher and Sally and Dave, but jetlag soon got the better of us and it was time for bed. Tuesday started well, with the discovery that our luggage had been delivered to the hotel, and just got better and better. Gus and Monica had arranged for us Brits to spend the morning horseback riding, which was a first for me! I always love the first day of Biz Builders at Kidabra, because it’s fun to just sit in the hotel lobby and watch old friends and acquaintances arrive. By lunchtime we’d met up with my KGB brothers Ken Scott, Joe Romano and Mark Daniel and we were really starting to have fun. There was definitely a buzz in the air this year! The first lectures were from Kevin Heller and Brad Ross. Kevin dealt with the Pitch- selling your show. I’m no marketing expert and this proved really interesting.

Kevin Heller throwing out free stuff – I seem quite determined to catch that vanishing silk hanky!

Brad’s Facebook and social media lecture really struck a chord with me. Both Tamar and I are addicted to Facebook and there were so many good ideas in Brad’s talk that could be implemented right away. I got LOADS out of this lecture – thanks Brad!

Brad looks more like a Disney character every time I see him!

After the lectures it was time to head to Terry Evanswood’s theatre to watch a special one-off performance of ‘The War Wizard’ by Max Howard. Max is incredible! He is such a fine actor and consummate professional. Everything this man does oozes class. To see him transform into Gus Rich was pure magic. I am so thrilled to have had the chance to see this amazing one man play. What a great end to day one! Wednesday opened with the second round of Biz Builders sessions. Dal Sanders gave some great advice on turning a restaurant gig into a ‘dinner theatre’ show, along with lots of practical marketing ideas. I didn’t get a chance to attend the lecture by Tom Dowling AKA Tom Phoolery, but Tamar raved about the ideas and brought back a complete set of everything that was on sale at the lecture, so I guess that’s a vote of confidence!

Tamar was particularly impressed with Tom’s low-cost, mini backdrop!

During Tom’s lecture I had been discussing the opening ceremony video with Ken Scott, and on Tamar’s return we set about recording and editing it. This unfortunately meant that we both missed David Farr , Dave Risley, and Jason Hudy’s lectures, but Scott raved about them, and he’s a hard man to please! Here’s a clip of the opening ceremony – along with the video we made:

After the opening comes the auction, with Kidabra’s beloved auctioneer Gary Shelton. I’ll leave you with some photos of the first two days. Part 2 coming soon!

More TV, A Wedding and Kidabra 2012

Posted by kimmomagician on August 30, 2012
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Wow! It’s been almost two months since I last wrote a blog post. Between then and now I have made another trip to Devon to record my second appearance with Dick and Dom, I’ve got married, had a short holiday in the Lake District, recorded a new DVD for children’s magicians, spent a week entertaining our niece Lola and showing her the sights of Derbyshire, flown to Tennessee to attend the Kidabra convention and MC the Gala show, then had a few days in a secluded log cabin in the smoky mountains!

I’ll try to give a full review of Kidabra 2012 in my next post, but I feel it would be a little remiss of me not to talk a little bit about my wedding to the lovely Tamar Chappell, AKA Barmy Bella, children’s entertainer.

Tamar and I met (quite fittingly) at the Kidology Magic Convention in Wolverhampton last September (2011). We’d chatted online before in a professional capacity, but this was the first time I ever saw her face to face. Things happened very quickly from that moment on. By October, we had confessed our feelings for one another. By November, we had moved in together and by February this year we were engaged. I’m not one to rush into these things, but when you finally meet the right person, you just know.

Our wedding was not a big extravagant affair – it is second time round for both of us and we felt we’d rather spend money on travelling and enjoying our lives together than blow it all on one day. Several good friends from the magic world were in attendance. along with loved ones from both our families.

Our wedding

Our wedding – photo by Clive ‘Emazdad’ Helmsley

The ceremony itself was at Chrsterfield Registry office  – it got a nice laugh when the registrar pronounced us husband and wife with the words ‘You may now update your facebook statuses’ and we both promptly got out our iPhones.

Our reception was in the Olde House hotel  – after the speeches we played a little video compiled of clips from people who couldn’t make it to the wedding. Here’s the video – there are a few in-jokes, but even those who weren’t in the know found most of it funny:

After a great day of celebration, it was off to the lakes for a short honeymoon at the Old Vicarage at Ambleside. It was incredibly relaxing and we managed to pick the only 4 days of sunshine that July had to offer. Couldn’t have been better!

That just about wraps it up for this post. In short, I am now married to the woman of my dreams and life is very exciting at the moment.

My next post will be a review of Kidabra 2012 – it was definitely one of the best magic conventions I’ve ever attended!

See you soon!

Busy, busy, BBC

Posted by kimmomagician on July 1, 2012
Posted in: chit chat, For Magicians, Fun stuff, Gigs, Magic, News, Ventriloquism. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Back to blogging! I know it’s been a while since I wrote anything and it’s certainly not been because I had nothing to write about. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been pretty busy and had some fun gigs. I particularly enjoyed returning as guest act for Britain Does Variety for the second year running. The standard of the acts this year was incredible – I’m really glad I wasn’t competing. The crowd were very nice to me though and gave me a really good reception.

Yesterday was probably the most tiring day I’ve had in years. I said goodbye to Tamar in the morning and drove to my first show, a birthday party in the north of Sheffield. That was followed closely after by another full 2 hour party in Chesterfield, then an evening show in a particularly soggy marquee in Winster. I finished my gigs at 9pm, exhausted – then had to drive nearly 300 miles to Devon, where I am filming for Dick and Dom’s new TV show, Hoopla.

It was a 7am call this morning. I got about 3 hours sleep and I staggered into Dingle’s Heritage Fairground bleary eyed and feeling pretty lousy. . I’m writing this in my trailer and people keep running back and forth Bringing me coffee and food, so I’m starting to pick up already! It’s a far cry from doing birthday parties, but it’s best not to get used to this kind of treatment. It doesn’t last long.

I’ll blog later when I’ve recorded my performance.

Balls, Weddings, Traffic Jams and Toilets

Posted by kimmomagician on June 2, 2012
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For those of you still waiting for the Fireside Chat, I promise it’s coming soon. Fate seems to be conspiring to keep me away from the iMac, but I hopefully will get some editing done soon.

Had to drag myself out of bed this morning to take Chris to the Showroom Theatre in Sheffield for a film workshop he was attending. On arriving back home it was time to hoover up the balls.

This tiny cottage that I rent has a lot of quirks – the dodgy floorboards, the cooker on castors that you have to drag out of the way to get to the washing machine, the ever-flushing toilet (more on that later) and the polystyrene balls that ooze out of the air vent in the downstairs bathroom.
My landlord had cavity wall insulation installed late last year and since then every time we get a moderate gust of wind or a sparrow flaps its wing at the bottom of the garden, tiny little grey polystyrene balls cascade from the vent and scatter all over the floor. On some occasions they can be an inch deep and fill the sink. How they can still be coming out several months on is a mystery to me, but they do. Having said that, I’ve never actually SEEN any of these things emerging-  you just get up in the morning to thousands of the things. They are a bit like the xenomorphs in ALIENS: ‘They mostly come out at night… mostly.’

Perhaps more important news, at least to me, is that Tamar and I have finally set a wedding date! We’ve decided to just go for it and get hitched at Chesterfield Registry Office, so that our families can attend. It will be the 9th July at 11.30. I really can’t wait.

Only one show today and that proved pretty stressful. This wasn’t  because of the children, the audience were wonderful, but because I got stuck in traffic and ended up being ten minutes late. Ten minutes doesn’t sound a lot, but it is awful watching the start time of your show getting closer and closer and being in a stationary traffic jam. Luckily I was able to maintain contact with the school who had booked me right up until the moment I arrived, so everything went smoothly once I did get there. I had to be super nice though, so I cut the jokes I’d planned to do about the spelling mistakes on the school website.

We had another panic tonight when Tamar anxiously exclaimed that she thought she’d hoovered up her engagement ring! I took a knife to the dust bag and was up to my elbows in muck, dead skin and hair when she came out to sheepishly tell me she’d found it under the bed. For some strange reason I found it hard to stop what I was doing and actually carried on searching through the crap even when I knew it was safe. I found a hair clip and 20p so – result!

I’m signing off now. Going to go and check the toilet because it’s going through one of its non-stop flushing phases. Our toilet either flushes all the time or not at all. There are times when you have to stand pumping the handle in a demented fashion to coax a trickle of water out of it, then sometimes it just keeps filling up and flushing like crazy. I’m sure this house was designed by a practical joker.

Ok, going now.

Goodnight all.

This is why I don’t follow Football!

Posted by kimmomagician on May 26, 2012
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Sheffield United just lost 7-8 to Huddersfield on Penalties. This must be the first and only football match I have ever taken an interest in and that’s because I had the promise of a really nice gig if they won.

Apparently if they won, they would be ‘going up’. Where they would be going up to is a mystery to me, but it is all incredibly important to a large number of people. Quite why, I have no idea.

I was told that should they win, I would be entertaining at a huge celebration for the players and their families – it sounded like an amazing gig, so I followed the game with interest. Apparently after 90 of the most boring minutes ever with no goals, they decided to run around for another 30 minutes and then gave up and had a quick fire round where they competed to see how many times they could kick the ball past the men in the goals. All riveting stuff, followed by crushing disappointment – which for once, I was a part of.

Why do people bother?

 

 

Hot, hot, hot! and Hollie’s Party

Posted by kimmomagician on May 26, 2012
Posted in: chit chat, For Magicians, Gigs, Magic, News. Tagged: , , , , , , . 2 Comments

Wow, the weather has been amazingly hot lately! I finish each show looking like Meatloaf in concert back in the 70s. I’m going to have to carry a couple of changes of clothes with me if this carries on. I had a friend who used to say he took extra shirts with him, packed in ice. I’m not sure if this was really true, but it sure sounds like a nice idea on days like this.

Hollie's party

The kids meet Jambo Bananas.

My wonderful wife to be Tamar, a.k.a. Barmy Bella, Children’s Entertainer has changed my life in many, many ways – perhaps the most surprising of all though is that I have lately started doing full two hour children’s party packages. The latest of these was today, for a charming little girl called Hollie. I managed to snap a couple of pictures during the show, although most of the boys seemed very camera shy for some reason. The boys were very shy throughout the party actually – it took a great deal of encouragement to get any to come out for my ‘Princess in a Pickle’ bit and I ended up using a little girl called Tia as my contestant for ‘Watch the Water’, which is a role I always give to a boy.

They were a really fun crowd though.

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Jubilee Cancellation. Aaaaaaargh!

Posted by kimmomagician on May 25, 2012
Posted in: chit chat, Gigs, Magic, News. Leave a comment

Don’t you just hate it when you’ve turned down enquiry after enquiry for a popular date and then your original show emails and cancels at the last minute? I’m sure they have a legitimate reason, but it’s still a bit of a disappointment.

At least they’d paid a deposit.

So if anyone is looking for an entertainer for June 2nd in the late afternoon / early evening , I have an opening!

Take care folks!

 

Videos, Websites and Blogs, Oh My!

Posted by kimmomagician on May 23, 2012
Posted in: Fun stuff, Magic, News, Ventriloquism. 2 Comments

Well it’s time for another attempt at starting a blog. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep this up (past experience would suggest not), but I’m told it helps to get the creative juices flowing and it doesn’t hurt website SEO either!

It’s 1:07  in the morning and I’ve spent all day wrestling with our new websites and making a new promo video. My desk looks like a bomb’s hit it and I feel physically drained – this stuff is sooo much harder than standing on stage and making people laugh!

Anyway here are the website links:

Click here to visit mine   Click here to visit Tamar’s

As you can see, we now have matching his and hers websites. Aren’t we nauseatingly cute?

The video was cobbled together from footage taken at some of my higher profile gigs over the last year or so. It’s just a shame that the footage is a bit grainy, but it wasn’t taken on my camera!

Bed now!