Jamie Raven's UAE tour won't just be a showcase of his best-loved tricks from Britain's Got Talent. For the up-and-coming British magician, who will perform as part of the Abu Dhabi Summer Season this weekend, it'll be as much about setting the record straight on the controversy surrounding one of his illusions.
Raven came second place in one of the United Kingdom’s biggest talent shows last year. However, viewers of the finale, in which Raven stunned the judges with a trick that involved making a banknote appear in a lemon, took to social media claiming they spotted a hole in the fruit. The accusation didn’t cost Raven his position in the show – instead it made his act one of the most- watched on YouTube.
“If you are performing magic, you are trying to get people to talk and think about it,” says Raven, who has been performing for 11 years.
“And if you’ve managed to do that, then you’ve achieved your goal as a magician. People will always speculate about how the trick worked. And I’ve never tried to contest that, I just let them think they know the answer. Between you and me, they are all wrong.”
Raven says he will be performing the illusion in Abu Dhabi, so that he “can address the controversy and prove they were wrong in a nice way”.
“So what I’m going to do now is change the presentation slightly, so when you watch it you think it is in my left hand. I’ll hold my left hand open, and that’ll make people think again.”
Raven is no stranger to the UAE. Before the 32-year-old took the stage on Britain's Got Talent to display his sleight of hand to thousands watching all over the world, he was a regular on the entertainment scene in Dubai.
“The first time I came to Dubai was in 2006, and I worked as a magician at a hotel for a month. I did that two more times. I was in Abu Dhabi last year for a holiday, too,” he says.
This time Raven returns with a show of his greatest illusions – taking a break from touring it in England.
“Magic is like any performance art, with lots of different styles,” he says.
“Some of the tricks I do are right under people’s noses, while others are all about spectacular illusions. There will also be some in which I invite an audience member up to assist me.”
The highlight of the show will be a levitation act.
“I will invite a child from the audience and will make them float up in the air. That’s always my favourite thing because when they come down, the look on their faces is priceless.”
Raven began trying his hand at tricks as a child following a family trip to India.
“We were on a holiday in India, and a magician came up to our table at a restaurant and showed us a trick. He then taught me and my brother one of them. It was called the Indian rope trick. It was a piece of rope that stands up like a snake, all rigid and stiff when you snap your fingers, and then falls down at the next snap. I learnt that 22 years ago, and I’ve still got it on my shelf at home to remind myself where it all began.”
He says the trick hasn’t featured in any of his shows because he wants to tweak it to make an original one. “I’ll come up with a routine for it one day,” he says.
Raven is keen to keep his performances contemporary, and uses technology to connect with a younger audience. He was the headline act of The Illusionists magic show at London's West End last year.
“That show ran for eight weeks and broke the box-office record to become the most successful magic show in London ever,” he says. “I had never dreamed of it.”
One of his modern tricks involves a smartphone, and he will be demonstrating it in Abu Dhabi.
“Magic, like any art form, evolves, just like technology does,” he says.
“So I have a routine that is based on how the world has moved on. I will ask somebody to come up on stage and will be borrowing their phone for the trick. I am always trying to keep things different and fresh.”
Raven says Britain's Got Talent changed his life, with people now recognising him on the streets. "I'm on an all-time high," he says.
But Raven has no intention of resting on his laurels. He says he wants his career to be as memorable as 20th-century British prop comedian Tommy Cooper.
“Sometimes you have to look to the past to gain a perspective for the future,” he says.
“And I know what Tommy Copper did was rubbish, his tricks were terrible, but that wasn’t the point. They were terrible on purpose, and that was what was brilliant about him. He was original and funny, and you had never seen that before and you’ve never seen that since. That’s what I’m trying to do – one trick at a time.”
• Jamie Raven performs on Friday, July 8, and Saturday, July 9, at Emirates Palace from 7.30pm. Tickets, from Dh150, are available at www.ticketmaster.ae
aahmed@thenational.ae