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that I was ‘the man that had swallowed the goldfish’. We stood there for a moment and between us worked out that she must only have been two years old when she saw the show. This demonstrated to me yet again the power of the entertainer and his medium. When people say that violence in films and television doesn’t affect kids to a degree they are right. It doesn’t affect all kids, but it affects quite a lot. So why bother affecting them badly?
    I went on to perform lots of shows in that club room, not only for the Youth Club, but also as a guest on the Young Wives Concerts as well. I can only remember what I did on the very first show, however, and none of the dozens of tricks that followed.
    My parents continued to voice their concern at my seemingly addictive hobby. Doing my homework was an unavoidable evil that had to be completed before I could spend the evening developing a new routine.
    Grammar school held a natural audience in the form of my peers who began to respect me for what I could do. I never bullied friends into watching my tricks, but developed the knack of drawing a crowd in. Sometimes this was done simplyby practising an effect which others would be inquisitive enough to watch, and even Pietrowski, our Polish war hero, loved magic. If he walked into a classroom while I was finishing a trick he would join in. On more than one occasion, we did magic for the rest of the lesson and didn’t bother learning French. I became a linguistic ignoramus.
    Mam and Dad were not all gloom and doom and were concerned not to discourage my love of magic. They took me to see the famous Australian illusionist, The Great Levante, who was on tour and visiting the Middlesbrough Empire for a few days. I can’t remember much about the show. I know that he vanished a nun in an organ pipe; he did the ‘One Thousand Pound Trunk’ trick which most magicians know better as the ‘Substitution Trunk’, and one of his great claims to fame in those days was the disappearance of a kangaroo. It would lie in a suspended net hammock with Levante’s beautiful assistant Esme one minute, and then they both instantly vanished as the net fell to the floor. This amazing illusion was always rewarded with a great ovation, to which Levante would make his exit.
    This great magician was not only a master of his craft, however, but a clever manipulator of the press as well. Each time he visited a town he gave the local newspapers the story that his kangaroo had escaped. There was an abundance of free publicity to be gained from this story, but no one ever seemed to ‘twig’ that the animal was always found just in time for the first house on Monday night, accompanied by a whole range of celebratory articles in the press once again. I thought he was wonderful.
    A strange thing happened during my early teens. Do all children have nightmares? I certainly did. There was the witch who chased me from the back yard toilet and, in my dreams, caught me as I woke up in a sweat. Another involved beingchased by a lion and it pulled the skin off my back in one piece, again at the moment of waking. There weren’t too many lions in our area so maybe the Tarzan films were getting to me.
    The most persistent of the nightmares were completely different to those two. In my dream, I was ‘floating’ along a lane and seeing everything through my eyes, rather than watching myself. When I got to the top of the lane on the left there was an old lych-gate that led into an old churchyard. Ancient, leaning gravestones surrounded the old church and, as I floated towards the main door, the L-shaped church offered another door on my right. I knew, in my dream, that the door in front of me led into the church and I knew, with increasing horror, that the door on my right hid Death. I could not stop myself. Against all my wishes I opened the door and woke up screaming. I never got to see Death but I knew it was there. This nightmare was with me for most of my young life