I’m too secretive for even Magic Circle

AS a magician, Hugh Shields, naturally plays his cards close to his chest.

But Hughdini, as he is known professionally, seems to have been too secretive for even the Magic Circle.

He explains: “What happens in the Magic Circle is you go in at entry level and they want you to keep progressing. In order to go up the ladder you have to do a little magic routine and they wanted to know how I was doing all my tricks but I wasn’t prepared to tell them as they’re known only to me.

“I wasn’t doing lots of sleight of hand as I use memorisation and that seemed to bother them.”

He lasted two years with the Magic Circle and is now a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and the International Magicians’ Society.

Hugh, who will appear at the Kenton Theatre in Henley this month, has been honing his tricks, especially with playing cards, since he was a little boy.

“My grandmother gave me a magic set for Christmas when I was seven and I’m now 57,” he says. “I did my first public show at the Edinburgh Festival in 2012. Before that, it was really just for friends and family and things that would pop up.

“I’m not a traditional card magician. My signature trick is one that I created and I’m the only person in the world who knows how it’s done.

“Most card magic only involves one piece of ‘technology’ but my trick has got three different things going on — one of which is memorisation, one of which is sleight of hand and the third of which is a secret.”

Hugh has a good memory and recalls playing a game as a child where you had to remember a number of things on a tray which you were only allowed to see for a limited time.

“I would always win those things,” he says. “In 2013 I did the World Memory Championship and between me finding out about the competition and entering it was just six weeks, which they said was the fastest they’d ever known.”

With competitive memorisation, there are specific techniques that people use and Hugh uses the journey method.

He explains: “You convert each card into a well-known person, or somebody who’s well known to you, and when you see that card, you visualise that person. Then you put them on points of a journey that are also familiar to you, so when you’re recalling the deck of cards, you’re recalling these people at different points on a journey.

“When people talk about photographic memory, that’s what they’re talking about, really.”

Hugh will be joined by 16-year-old Liam Price, a semi-finalist on The Voice, and Croatian fire dancer Daria Pejić for his Henley show, which is called Dreams Come True.

He says: “The idea is that as people come into the theatre, if you have a dream in your life and you’re happy to share it with the audience, write it down on a slip of paper.

“I will look at these slips of paper in the interval and I will pick one. I will have that person on stage and then I will explain to them how it will come true for them if they do certain things. We’ll see whether it works.

“I wanted to do something which was original and different which no other magician has done and this is ticking that box.

“It’s not traditional magic at all but it’s helping somebody’s dream come true.

“I think what I’m going to say can impact everybody’s life. Anybody with a dream can hear what I’m saying so I’m potentially helping everyone’s dreams come true if they have one.”

• Hughdini — Dreams Come True is at the Kenton Theatre on Saturday, August 20 at 7pm. Tickets cost £20 adults, £15 concessions, £60 family price. The running time is about 110 minutes with a 20-minute interval. For more information and to book tickets, call the box office on (01491) 525050 or visit www.kentontheatre.co.uk