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Where do the ideas for your shows come from?
"Sitting around, really! There's me, and a friend who's worked with me from day one. Sometimes there's a third person, but I try to keep it a small group. One thing I'm always trying to do is to keep my material fresh and moving forward. It's never been about 'what haven't we done?' and it's never been difficult thinking up ideas. As I get older and become interested in new things, I try to take the show with me. The material is really driven by whatever I'm interested in at the time."
What do you think it is about your programmes that make them good television?
"I don't know, really. I try and do things which are dramatic. It's never been about being controversial or being an amazing magician. I try not to make the shows about me and my own ego. That's a danger for magicians - generally they're quite cool for a couple of years and you start to get a bit sick of them and not take them seriously because everything becomes quite overblown and self-indulgent. I'm sure some people think that about me, but generally I've tried to avoid all of that. My material isn't all about me looking clever; it's about the people that are taking part and their experiences. Like with The Heist, other people committing crimes is much more interesting than whether or not I could hold up a bank."
Do all of your illusions always go according plan?
"There's often no plan, as such. I have to change everything that I do to work with what the other person is doing and how they're responding. So it's not that I have a fixed plan at the beginning that rolls out. I remember that I did a show in Belfast as part of the tour a couple of years ago and this guy just came up and started throwing up on stage – he wouldn't stop! This all came out of a subliminal film that I'd been playing to the audience whereby I said to them all that four of them would have this uncontrollable urge to get up on stage. This guy just didn't stop throwing up. He was throwing up all over me, the floor, the stage. When he went back to his seat, he was still throwing up in the aisles."
I hear you're filming a new series at the moment?
"Yeah, for a series that's going out next September, so it's quite early but we're getting started on it now. I don't quite know what the shape of it is yet. I think it'll be four one hours instead of six half hours. Before then, though, I'm doing some documentaries which will be going out in spring. They're documentaries concerned with people involved in paranormal areas. It's taking off a little from where Messiah left off. I've only done one of those at the moment, so I've got another few to do. The next series is out next September, so that's a way off yet. The next thing is the Christmas special which will be the stage show I did this year called 'An Evening of Wonders'. "
Will you be touring in the New Year?
"Yeah. I'll be touring next year with a brand new show. Every two years it's a new one. The plan is, in the spring March/April time, we'll kick off the tour and do a few nights in each place. Then we'll hopefully be doing a West End run at the end of that if we can get a theatre."
What's been the strangest request you've had?
"There's a whole lot of letters that I get from people who don't quite embrace the entertainment side of what I do. Some are in desperate positions and are clutching at straws. It's not so much strange, more difficult and often upsetting. I get anything from people desperately needing to win the lottery because of their financial situation down to people who have someone dying in their family and they think I'll be able to cure them. There's a constant influx of letters like that. All I can do is send a generic response saying that all I do is entertainment. Within that, there have been some really odd and difficult requests. I guess it comes with the territory.
"I had someone who thought I was psychically assaulting them in their dreams. They were going to sue me for it, which, of course, I encouraged them to do because I thought it'd be quite fun – and probably good publicity! In the end, they went down from 'I'm going to sue you' to 'I won't sue you, but can we talk about it?' to 'can we just meet up for a coffee?' down to 'even if you won't meet to talk about it, can we have a conversation on the phone?' Then it went to 'can I just meet your assistant for a coffee?' It just went from legal action to wanting to chat to me."
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