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late!
    It takes hours and hours of work. I’m talking in the thousands. I was stubborn, I kept on going, and I worked harder at magic than anyone could have done. If you really want to do something, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. So many people told me I couldn’t do it and they were wrong. You have to be stubborn but be smart with it. If you think you can prove others wrong, go for it.
    For a long time I felt quite shunned by some circles of magic. At first they thought I was destroying their idea of magic; that it wasn’t supposed to be done on the street by a guy in a hat and a hoodie. I’m more accepted now, as I’m inspiring the younger generation to get into magic, which is good for the whole art form.

    PEOPLE BEGAN TAKING me more seriously as a magician when I hit my mid-teens. I started to get asked to work around the estate at birthday parties, or my mum’s friends would want me to come over and perform at a party or a christening. Word spread slowly around Delph Hill, then Bradford, then Sheffield, and before I knew it, I was performing all over the North of England at clubs and parties.
    Initially, people would just offer to pay for my petrol; so if I was playing a show in Leeds, I wouldn’t make much money. But me and my boys found a great system to make a few tips. I always liked people to tip because they wanted to. That said, sometimes of course you have to give people a little nudge.
    Though I didn’t have many friends at school, I made lifelong friends when I was a teenager. Alex, Johnny and Marcus were myboys back then and still are today. I had all of them involved in my work: Alex would drive us, Marcus would be security, and Johnny would collect the cash and deal with the bookings.
    With the help of my friends, I formulated a routine that enabled me to make tips without really asking for them. I’d have a card, which just said ‘Dynamo’ and my logo on the front. I’d also have a glass full of props like pens, coins and cards, which I’d use for my magic. At the end of my act I’d say something like, ‘Here’s your card, the ace of spades. I’m Dynamo, thank you very much’… I’d then flip my logo card over and on the back it said ‘Tips please’.
    My boy Marcus would pick up the empty prop glass, and Johnny, who’s in there pretending he’s not with us, would rush over and throw a fiver in it. Before you know it, everyone else would start chucking in cash.
    It was all about the turnover. I’d do ten minutes and hit them with the tips. Usually, by that point I would have created a crowd of at least fifty people. They wouldn’t all tip but it was nice to have a few quid in your pocket.
    I started doing this at sixteen years old, sneaking into student gigs and the odd club night. As my name continued to grow, I went from earning just a bit of petrol money, to getting paid to turn up, plus petrol money, plus tips. Student nights especially were always great, because they were always up for a bit of fun and would part with what they could.
    Because people wanted the ‘product’ I was delivering, I started looking at merchandising and branding – albeit in a very informal, low-budget way. I would burn CD-ROMs with five Windows Media clips of me doing magic and sell them for a pound after each performance. I’d also sell Dynamo stickers which people would collect and cover themselves in from head to toe. We killed it.

the street has always been my stage
    We’d make a lot of money playing in Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield or Manchester and then drive home.
    We’d get back to Nan’s, where I was living at the time, at three in the morning, or whenever the club shut. ‘Shush, Marcus, you’ll wake me Nan up,’ I’d whisper as we sat around Nan’s dinner table and shared all the tips. ‘One pound for Alex, one pound for Johnny, one pound for Marcus and two pound for me.’ Everyone agreed that was a fair way to divvy up the cash.

    Whatever time we got home Nan