Staff writer Andy Reay has written up his personal day of Magic at the 49th Bristol Day of Magic this year in our reviews section. You can read his full review here.

Highlights from the evening show for me were the flaming excellent manipulation of Colin Rose, the comedic juggling of Michael Pearce, the mind-frying mentalism of Nick Einhorn and the act that should have closed the show, Shawn Farquar. With magicians being very selective about where they spend their hard earned fees, Bristol did a wonderful job of securing a strong crowd for next years event.

Also read all our reports during the weekend and the run up to the convention here, and out video below (sorry we lost some of the footage so its shorter than we’d hoped)

The 50th Bristol Day of Magic takes place Sunday 9th May 2010

Once again the stars of the convention were happy to give up some of their limited free time to teach the magicians of the future. Rarely can you get personal one on one time with the likes of Shawn Farquhar,  Steve Beam, and local magician Jayne Corrigan, and the special session run at Bristol Day of Magic was an excellent chance for young magicians to learn directly from the current stars of magic.

Shawn Farquhar, who has recently sent material to be used in YMC’s ‘Secrets’ magazine, demonstrated and aided those present to learn several useful effects. A playing card was displayed with a ‘trap door’ in its middle. Whilst a spectator holds the card by this loose flap, the card was turned inside out so that from being face down it was now face up! This fooled everyone - yet all left the workshop able to perform it! Shawn also showed some other card effects, including ‘Lazy Aces’ for those who were just beginners.

Steve Beam delighted everyone with some of his self-working miracles and, once again, all were able to perfect the tricks before the end of the session.

Finally local female magician, Jayne Corrigan, taught everyone to make paper roses - a skill that she has found has got her some very good close up bookings. She was able to share this with the group of young magicians who left the room with a sheaf of paper napkins and spent a lot of the rest of the day practicing all the magic they had learned.

Mandy Davis, who organised the event thanked Jayne, together with Shawn and Steve, who were very happy to help her bring another exciting workshop to the West Country.

There will also be another star-studded Junior Workshop at the IBM Convention at Southport which we will publish the details for soon. For further information on how to join the Young Magicians Club head over to the main website - www.youngmagiciansclub.com

Photo courtesy of Mandy Davis

The dealers hall this year as we said had been moved to the Ball Room which gave the dealers a much larger area and for the most part a better layout. There were 24 dealers in total, although one or two appeared to not to be present.

Albion Magic Company, Keith Bennett Magic, T & M Baloons and Magic, The Card Collection, Discount Magic, Kaymar Magic, The Magic Attic, Merlins of Wakefield, Practical Magic, JB Magic, Steven Ticker, Made to Measure Magic, Adrian Sullivan Magic, Alakazam Magic, Big Blind Media, Dtrik - Wayne Dobson, Five of Hearts Magic, Magic Books by Post, The Magic Zone, Mel’s Magic, Playtime Balloons, Razamatazz Magic, Heidi Costumes, Zane’s Magic and Barrie James Illusions were all listed. World Magic Shop also appeared during the morning, minus some employees..

Although the range and number of dealers was very good, it was difficult to see that there were actually some dealers on the upper levels, especially when down on the main dealer floor, also the programme during the day, although excellent, was quite tightly packed together, with only 5, 10 or 15 minute breaks, other than the 45 minutes of the closeup sessions (which allowed a break either in the morning at 11:30 or afternoon at 3:45 depending on which session you were in). This meant little time to walk around the dealers unless you wanted to miss some of the lectures during the day (we had to miss some parts of them to get round all of the dealers).

This was a real shame, and it would be nicer next year to have slightly longer breaks between sessions or a longer period after the last lecture for the dealers hall to be open, although a balance between content, duration and breaks is hard, it would be nice to see a slight adjustment here.

Following on from Nick Einhorn’s Close up session, was a lecture in the Prince Consort Hall. In a change to the presentation of previous lectures Nick talked to, and addressed the camera as opposed to audience, with Bob Hamilitons excellent camera work this actually worked out really well, and made a much better presentation of the lecture overall.

Nick worked through a number of effects and routines, and brought the day of lectures to a close as only Nick can. An extremely enjoyabel and interesting session.

In a break from the lectures, John Archer took to the stage with his one man show in which he entertained the audience with comedy and magic for close to an hour.

John is always exctremely easy to watch, and had the audience laughing throughout the set. Between effects john did his signature ukulele songs, again to much laughter.

John is an extremely strong performer, and although I’ve seen him performing at many events recently I did enjoy this set just as much as previous ones.

Watching John is always a pleasure, and the session made a nice break from lectures.

Shawn Farquhar is not only a great performer, hes extremely funny, making his lecture a joy to watch and listen to.
A wonderful matrix effect utilizing cards with photos of his hands, finishing with the chip and coin appearing in the actual photo was pure genius in method.

Other effects included a signed CD where the cd vansihed, leaving the signature behind show how inventive Shawn can be.
He also talked through a misprediction on a card box that turns out to be correct, again through a very simple method.

The best parts of Shawns lecture is just how simple many of his effects are, and how much detail he goes into explaining that simple method, but however simple, all of Shawns material is workable, strong and fantastic. Add to that the pure enthusiasm Shawn has for what hes performing and talking about and you have something not to be missed. So Far the highlight of the day.