I had first met Roy in Brighton
at a meeting of the Sussex Magic Circle where he was a member; although rumor had it he had long since stopped paying any dues. Roy was something of a rogue member amongst the group and was allowed the luxury of doing pretty well whatever he considered suitable. This seemed to suit Roy just fine. I had won the junior performers award three years running. Not quite as elite as it sounded as there were only two junior members in the club. The other junior was a kid slightly older than myself called Neil who was awkward and uncoordinated. These are not the best attributes for a magician and I quickly became the club favorite causing Neil to loose interest in magic altogether. My parents kept the silver plated cups I won in prominent display throughout their lives. I never won any awards again and they prized them mostly because they had been present to see me win them. No success I achieved in America seemed quite as real to them as those cups. After my second win Roy decided to take me under his wing. Nobody in the club actually said anything bad about Roy but there was a clear undercurrent of disapproval over the matter. Being under Roy’s wing didn’t amount to much more than spending the occasional evening in his rather dismal flat hoping to God the python was in its glass tank. Roy gave me advice, told me stories and sold me a few tricks he thought would improve my act. Even at my tender years I was aware these were probably tricks that Roy wanted to unload from his own repertoire. One of these props was a Lippencott box. What you may ask is a Lippencott box? Well I didn’t know either but according to Roy it was going to be the key to my future success as a magician. Without the rhetoric, it was a small wooden box with various hinges and hidden secrets that allowed an object to be introduced inside it secretly. The main use for this device was to allow the magician to apparently make a prediction about future events. There may have been other uses for the box but I could never determine them. I decided to debut this trick in conjunction with the Mid-Sussex Fair by predicting the headline of the local newspaper two weeks in advance of the actual paper being printed. A pretty cool piece of magic if all goes well.With as much ceremony as a teenager could muster the box was signed, sealed and placed on display in the window of ‘Beaumont’s Menswear’. The box was to remain there in full view before being brought to the fair and opened during the festivities. There was nothing out of the ordinary in this stunt and many a magician has done it before and since. What made my prediction cause a stir was the timing. The night before the unveiling of my prediction the entire country was ablaze with the bolt from the blue news that the Beatles manager Brian Epstein had died.
Was it suicide or natural causes, who knew, but everyone wanted to know the details so they could make a guess. The T.V. and newspapers went into overdrive and the entire country was intrigued by this event. Up until then the Beatles were the golden boys of Britain and nothing negative had cast a shadow over the mop tops.Rather cunningly, I phrased my prediction carefully, and said that one of the Beatles or someone close to them would die. Sometimes it is more convincing to be a little vague rather than too accurate. I received a great deal of press for my stunt and enjoyed every word of it. I had studied Houdini and knew that publicity and press were the first steps to becoming a super star. Well it didn’t work out quite like that but I did learn a valuable lesson about the way of the world. If events work with you, then the sky is the limit and if they don’t, nothing amounts to much. If the headlines that day had read ‘New tax increases’ my moment in the sun would have been a lot less bright.
The important lesson was about time-shifting though. By setting up my stunt two weeks in advance I was able to reap the dubious benefits of psychic powers. Although I didn’t know it at the time I had chanced upon the ‘One Ahead Principle’ in it’s most primitive form. R.I.P. Brian.
