The events drew to a close for the weekend with the Sunday Night Session Gala Show. Introduced and MC’ed by Danny Buckler, he opened with a three card repeat. I have always loved Danny’s humor and it was great to see him back at a magic convention.

Next up was Mathew Wright, again with a strong set, this time doing sit down card manipulations and productions to an acoustic track from Lady GaGa, The track ‘Poker Face’ fitted well with the performance and got a great reaction from the audience.

Thom Peterson again showed was a polished and funny performer he is, two £5 notes borrowed from the audience and torn in half were found inside a freely selected sealed fortune cookie.

Dynamo was next up, with 8 selected cards chosen by audience members and revealed as only Dynamo can.. although he had issues with revealing the last three (because unfortunately he dropped the cards, however he was blindfolded at the time!), but as always Dynamo recovered finished the selections nicely, and was still funny and entertaining.

Alan Hudson filled the last slot before the interval with his comedy magic, correctly predicting the order that a spectator would pop balloons in, whilst both of them being blind folded with paper bags over their heads. It was a great performance, extremely funny and finished with ‘modern thimble manipulations’ as only Alan can.

Danny Buckler opened the second half of the show, hilarious as always, and unfortunately picked me as his willing (!) assistant for a book test.. Thankfully he didnt get hold of my notebook, although it said only one thing about him – ‘fantastic compere!’ (and Thanks to Andrew Green for the photo)

John Archer closed the show with a great £60 in envelope effect, spectators selecting an envelope from a selection, each finding a ‘John Archer Zero Dollar Bill’ instead of the £60 in their freely selected envelopes, before closing his set with a blindfolded effect where he correctly described a number of drawings made by volunteers. As always with John Archer, strong set, and absolutely hilarious play off the audience and volunteers.

All weekend people had been performing and session over the hotel, but in the break between Joshua Jays’ lecture and the Gala show, Illusions Magic Bar had set up a ‘mobile magic bar’ in the reception of the hotel and kept everyone entertained.

The first performer up that I saw was Mathew Wright, and proved extremely popular, in fact the whole bar magic event was so popular is was hard to even get near the stand, with people standing on anything they could find to watch some amazing bar magic.

I just about managed to get close enough to snap some photos of Alex (left) rocking the bar with some awesome magic, and fire breathing in the lobby!!!

Having the illusions Magic Bar running was a great idea and absolutely killed that dead time that normally happens between final lectures and gala shows for conventions.

It was great to see Joshua Jay Lecturing again his accident last year. Josh took some time to explain his accident the effected mainly his arm and hand.

Even with this Josh is still a fantastic thinking, inventor and performer, and the ran though a number of what he described as “prepared magic”. That is magic that requires at least some pre-preparation of cards or props, however, all allowing the performer to finish 100% clean. The effects were wonderful, extremely strong, and clean.

Josh also explained his ‘hospital set’, a set of effects that he created and used whilst recuperating and having only full use of one of his hands. Even these effects were extremely strong.

The effects were mainly with cards, but there was an lovely effect with a bank note, allowing a corner to be torn off, note vanished and found, minus the corner back in a spectators wallet, the corner of course matching, again leaving the performer completely clean.

A fantastic end to the lectures for the day, leading into the evenings entertainment of bar magic, and gala show.

Joshua Jay introduced a session based around some of the survey that Vanishing Inc did on what people thought was the strongest card tricks.

The session was about the aspects of what came out of that about why makes a strong trick. Effects from Jay sanky, Paul Harris and David blaines card through window were things that came up within the survey.

Rune Klan, Thom Peterson, Danny buckler, fritz and mark elsden all performed effects that showed what people seemed to find as the strongest elements of card tricks.

It was an interesting session to look and hear at what defined a strong card trick

Flash talks are short lectures focused on a single effect or idea, and were a great success at last years session.

Chris Mayhew is a new name to many, but his cards skills are worth noting, hes already publishes a clockwork apple and has more in the pipeline with Vanishing Inc.

Chris talked through and explained a very strong Any Card At Any Number, which was both clean, and from the spectators point of view very fair.

Watch out for Chris Mayhew.. Hes easy to spot when hes dressed as Super Mario!

Dotted around the walls of the hotel at The Session are some amazing paintings and prints by an extremely talented artist, Annabel De Vetten.

Her new new collection of portraits features vintage Magicians are just amazing to look at. This collection has already created a huge amount of interest from both magicians and non-magicians, and was launched at the International Brotherhood of Magicians convention this September.

The portraits range from Mandrake, Vernon, through to Jeff McBride and Eugene Burger, available as original paintings, or cheaper more affordable prints, you can check out the portraits and how to order them directly from Annabels site at - www.annabeldevetten.com