Paul Daniels

This guy, right? had a huge responsibility.

Not only was he juggling budgets, and we now know that he was juggling finances, the books didn't balance, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and the pressure that that brings.

Not only was he doing that, He's trying to manage staffing.

He's trying to ensure that the bills are paid in terms of the maintenance bills and all those kind of jobs are all done.

But who will be at the hub? Who will be the captain of the ship? Don't tell me it's going to be Roddy Collins coming back.

I really hope not.

please don't tell me it's going to be John O'Leary himself because that will be well he'll be like Paul Daniels just appearing out of nowhere because so far since the takeover nobody's seen him nobody's heard him nobody's heard from him apart from what's on this statement what John O'Leary has said about Damien thanking him for his work etc etc and Damien has been very complimentary of him of John O'Leary in return, which I'm sure he would be because it's the right thing to do.

But no one's seen, no one has seen John O'Leary.

You don't want to know.

I remember watching Paul Daniels on TV when I was a kid.

I felt it was a bit naff, but now you look back and you're like...

It was pretty mad that there was a primetime magician on BBC One.

I thought you were going to row back, but there was zero rowing back.

No, I just feel like you're, I can imagine you had a spy kit and a magician's kit.

No, there was Paul Daniels' magic set, but I was just never really interested in it.

I'm not really interested in magic.

It's like, "Oh, no. I'm not-"

Paul, Paul Daniels

... magician, I'm a magician.

[laughs]

I hope that, um, you like, um, the conversation today, and if you're a new listener, then, uh, check out some of the other episodes.

We talk with a bunch of other exciting and, um, amazing magicians such as, uh, Nick The Fat and Paul the Beck and Mac King.

So yeah, check it all out.

So without further ado, let's, uh, get into this conversation with Piff the Magic Dragon.

Tommy Cooper also doing all the working men's clubs and all this-

Yeah

... like you, and Paul Daniels, too.

Like, literally doing thousands of shows, which in magic or actually in show business, like, it's, it's not so easy to get to a thousand shows under your belt.

Yeah, yeah.

We also had Paul Daniels, and he was doing comedy, wasn't he?

Yeah.

But in terms of the tricks and the magic he was doing, you just...

Paul, we've talked about that an awful lot.

You know, it's...

I love Paul Daniels and backstage, you know, we've been running in Vegas forever and everybody's come back there, you know, from Steve Martin, you know, Martin Short, Bob Dylan.

You just go the whole list of people and the person who held court the best and told the best stories of everybody we had backstage was Paul Daniels.

But if that makes him sound serious, he wasn't.

He was a funny, charismatic performer who appeared regularly on TV in Spain and here in the UK alongside Paul Daniels.

One of his former students is the Spanish magician Jorge Blas, who's been sharing with me his memories of Juan.

I am from Spain.