More TV, A Wedding and Kidabra 2012

Posted by kimmomagician on August 30, 2012
Posted in: chit chat, News. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

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!

Home from Hoop-La!

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

I’m finally back home after yet another 5 hour drive and feeling very happy to be part of what looks like a great new kid’s TV show. Shortly after my last blog post I was called to record my spot. It was nice to find out that I had already met the director and much of the crew when I was on ‘The Slammer’. I was the last of the three acts to be filmed and I performed on a small, high stage with the the audience of kids and adults standing.

I’d asked if I could have a few minutes with the audience to warm them up prior to performing and this was great for helping to get rid of any last minute nerves. The two guys they’d picked as helpers for me were great and the whole thing went very quickly. My voice didn’t feel 100% – the results of doing 3 shows yesterday and recording early in the morning, but it was agreed that the one take was enough.

It was a lot of fun watching this show come together – Dick and Dom performed several truly surreal and hilarious pieces to camera and it was nice to chat to Dominic Wood afterwards about Supreme Magic and meeting him at the Reading Junior Day when he was a young lad. The boy has certainly done very well for himself!

I had one more piece to perform to camera – my introduction, from a rapidly spinning waltzer!  I was in a car alongside Timo Marc and our brief was that he was supposed to appear super-relaxed, while I was to act terrified!  I’m not a big fan of spinning rides, so my acting skills weren’t pushed too hard!

All that was left to do then was sign some autographs and say my goodbyes.

After filming wrapped I thought it would be fun to move the door sign from my trailer to a porta-loo and have a picture taken. Timo and Terri were up for this and we took some shots, only to realise that there was someone actually using the loo and afraid to come out while we were messing about outside. We all ran off like giggling school children.

So all in all, a very fun weekend – the cast and crew of this show is great and I can’t wait to see how it looks in September.

I’m off to bed now to sleep for a week!

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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.

More Jubilee Shows and Back to the iMac

Posted by kimmomagician on June 4, 2012
Posted in: chit chat, For Magicians, Gigs, Magic, Practical Magic. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

As I write this, Practical’s Fireside Chat number 13 is rendering on my iMac. I finally managed to grab a couple of spare hours to piece it together and it should be online tonight.

Tamar and I headed off in different directions this morning for our Jubilee Shows – this celebration has certainly been good for business! We actually got to see some of the TV footage of the flotilla yesterday and think I can say with some confidence that the Queen and Prince Phillip would probably rather have watched our magic shows than that never ending procession of rather dreary canal boats in the pouring rain.

Here are a couple of pics from where I performed my first show today in Dore. I was on an outdoor stage with no steps up to it, just a rickety old plastic chair. It was difficult to get kids up on stage, but not impossible. Halfway through performing ‘Knitty Knitty Bang Bang’, my young helper announced that he needed the toilet and I could sense by the look of panic in his eyes that it was a matter of some urgency. Luckily we managed to get him down from the stage without any further embarrassment for the poor lad.

Ok, the Fireside chat has rendered – gonna get it uploaded to YouTube.

The Crowd at Dore Village.

The wonderful stage plus rickety chair

 

Jubilee – Wet Weekend in Wakefield

Posted by kimmomagician on June 3, 2012
Posted in: chit chat, Gigs. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Ok, the title is slightly inaccurate, but Wet Weekend in Dewsbury doesn’t sound anywhere near as good.

I only had one booking yesterday, due to the cancellation I mentioned in an earlier blog post. This was for the Schoolcroft Resident’s Comittee in Dewsbury. It was back to basics for a change as I had no power, so that meant no music and no microphone and we were outside in quite a small marquee, so the children and parents had to cram inside and it was a little more intimate than usual. Was a lot of fun and I actually ended up doing 10 minutes extra, trying out new material. Really enjoyed it. Today I’m off to Todwick for another Jubilee show, but this one’s been moved indoors due to rain so we’ll have to see how it goes.

Last night was fun – Tame and I went to see Ken Loach’s   ‘The Angel’s Share’ at the cinema. It was a great film and terrifically acted by a largely unknown cast. I’d recommend it. It gets a Kimmo rating of 4 out of 5 stars. We also got tickets to see Prometheus tonight in Imax 3D, so looking forward to that.

After the movie we decided to go to the Flaming Dragon Oriental Buffet just outside the cinema. I used to love that place, but I’m not sure if it has gone downhill or  all this fine dining Tamar and I have been doing since we got together has made me too much of a food snob to enjoy it. It had all the atmosphere of a school cafeteria, the food seemed really poor quality and it was by no means a cheap option, since we managed to drop close to £40 on a meal for two. Don’t think we’ll be going again. Tame didn’t even want to take a picture of her meal, so I knew it must be bad.

Cutting the Cake

The Queen didn’t show, so Jambo and I got to cut the cake.

Balls, Weddings, Traffic Jams and Toilets

Posted by kimmomagician on June 2, 2012
Posted in: chit chat, Fun stuff, News. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

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.

Practical Pictures

Posted by kimmomagician on May 31, 2012
Posted in: chit chat, For Magicians, Magic, Practical Magic. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

For anyone who was waiting for Fireside Chat number 13 (ooooooh), I’ve been away from the computer all day. I was driven up to PBJ Engineering to film a demonstration of a new kind of circuit breaker. It’s my first commercial job and filming took a lot longer than anticipated. Perhaps I should stick to filming Magic tricks.

Tomorrow is my first Jubilee show, but I promise to get to work on the Practical stuff after that. Until then, here’s a slideshow of pics:

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Practical Magic

Posted by kimmomagician on May 30, 2012
Posted in: Practical Magic. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

It was today that I made my monthly trip over to Shropshire and Gadlas Villa, home of Jeremy and Cheryl le Poidevin, A.K.A. Practical Magic. I rolled in at around 10 to 12, just in time for lunch. Jeremy tells me they had record sales in April and May and it certainly seems that way, judging by how busy they always are whenever I’m there. It seems we can barely start a conversation without the phone ringing and interrupting us as people place their orders. I’m always impressed by how quickly these are dealt with.

I took loads of pictures and we filmed a new fireside chat and some more demos, but I’ll have to upload those tomorrow. It’s nearly 1.30 am and I’m very tired…

…and Tamar just pointed out that I haven’t given her a proper cuddle yet since I got home.

So I’ll finish this tomorrow…

Bad Backs, Burgers and Bins (again!!)

Posted by kimmomagician on May 28, 2012
Posted in: chit chat, Magic, Practical Magic. Leave a comment

I have been a martyr to my back over the last few days – my sleep has been really disturbed and consequently I’ve been sleeping in even later than usual, which explains why I missed the bin lorry this morning. It was the black bin this time – the one that hasn’t been emptied for four weeks and now needs to wait another two. There is barely any space left  – I’ve climbed in it and stamped it down twice already. It smells. There are life forms growing inside it that have started to develop language and use rudimentary tools. It’s grim, really grim.

I have no excuse this time for not putting it out the night before  – unlike it’s cousin the red recycling bin, who’s collection day seems to be a moveable feast a bit like Easter, I’m well aware that the black one goes every other Monday. I have even in the past, resorted to scrawling ‘PUT BIN OUT’ in dry erase marker on every shiny surface in the house and still forgotten. My own incompetence amazes me sometimes.

We didn’t do a lot today – after sitting up late last night updating the BARMY BELLA site and then lying in till nearly midday, we went off to the Handmade Burger Company for lunch (although, as my son Harry pointed out – aren’t ALL burgers handmade?), then we bought sun loungers and sat in the garden.

And people say professional entertainers don’t work hard for a living!

That’s it for today – Tomorrow I’ll be spending the day at Practical Magic in Shropshire, so maybe I’ll treat my readers (all 3 of you) to a photographic and video tour of their premises and some sneak previews of upcoming goodies.

Burgers

These burgers are HANDMADE, apparently

Too tired to blog

Posted by kimmomagician on May 28, 2012
Posted in: chit chat, Gigs. Tagged: , , , , . 1 Comment

I won’t be blogging tonight as I have had a very busy day with shows and then spent all evening /night updating Tamar’s website – she wanted to include a guide to local halls and it was quite a lot of work.

My day started badly when I couldn’t find my phone, so I went onto iCloud to locate it. The wonders of modern technology! A few seconds of scanning and the computer reported back that my phone was on a trading estate in Rotherham. Tame and I went out for a meal and to the cinema up that way last night, so I presumed it had fallen out of my pocket and someone had picked it up and made off with it. It was with a heavy heart that I performed a remote wipe on the phone and then with an even heavier heart that I found the bloody thing in the kitchen, now completely bricked and useless because I’d just wiped it! I had no time to sort it out, so I was without my phone all day!

Things did get better when I arrived at Daniel’s party – Dan is 14 and lives in Maltby. I’ve done his parties before and I think he knows my act almost as well as I do. It was nice to see him and his friends again.

Then it was off to Barnsley for a very big party – 80 kids!! Henry  (the birthday boy) and his friends were all little angels though and the venue was very high class!  I did make the mistake of twisting 80 dog balloons and then allowing one of the kids to have a sword. Oops! Of course, after that EVERYONE wanted a sword and I was scared of being left with 80 balloon poodles that no one wanted. You’d think after nearly 30 years doing this job I’d know better.

So as I say – no blog today, I’m far too tired!

cake

Henry’s cake

James

This is James, from Dan’s party

Henry's Party
The Bluebell Conference Centre in Dodworth – Classy venue!