Jeff McBride released his Commando Act on video a number of years ago. It was a brilliant idea. It was an entire act that he could carry as hand-luggage on a flight. The biggest prop was his linking rings. If his luggage got lost Jeff could still perform.

Around that time I was beginning to pare back on my children’s act. This was purely pragmatic. If I am going out to do a show, I like to do a second or even a third while I am at it. The most I have ever done was seven during a communion Saturday. To take on that amount of parties in succession you need an act that breaks down quickly, and that involves little set-up. Ideally you need an act you can carry in one trip from the car.

Adding to my problems was that air travel changed completely after the 9/11 attacks. The good old days of flying with a seventy kilo flight case are long gone. I perform each December in Lapland, and take every other opportunity to travel at other people’s expense. But now I had to cram two forty five minute acts into one suit case and one piece of hand-luggage. In fact both shows had to fit into the hand-luggage, with room for a few books.

Could it be done?

From that problem arose my Kids Kommando Act.

Here are the rules:

1. The act has to use ordinary props that every magician would have anyway.
2. There can be no special kids props, or dealer routines.
3. The act must fit into a toilet bag for easy travelling.
4. The act must be capable of being loaded into the pockets of a regular costume.

The act that resulted is suitable for small to medium sized rooms. It is ideal for birthday parties, and groups of up to sixty or seventy kids. It is not suitable for large rooms or big stages. It is also an ideal starting point for close-up workers who want to make the jump into children’s magic (where the money is). It uses the skills any good close-up worker will have anyway.

Needed: Two sponge bananas. One sponge carrot. Three regular sponge balls. A few modelling balloons. Eighteen playing cards. One ribbon. One thumb-tip. Set of ropes. Mouth coil.

Set-up: The sponge bananas and carrot go into my left-hand trousers pocket. So do the 18 cards, and the mouth coil. In my right-hand trousers pocket I put the thumb tip and ribbon, as well as one of the modelling balloons, ready for the balloon-eating effect. Two sponge balls go into my right-hand jacket pocket. The other goes into my left-hand jacket pocket, along with a handful of modelling balloons. The ropes go into my right-hand trousers pocket.

The Routine.

I open by explaining that I became a magician recently but went into the wrong shop for my wand. I ended up with a banana instead. Now I do the repeating banana effect. Every time I put the banana back into my pocket another one appears at my fingertips. Eventually I get fed up and accuse the kids of slipping me bananas. I get them to promise not to give me any more bananas, then put the final one away. A carrot appears at my finger tips.

I then blame hunger for my problems, and tell the kids I must stop to eat a sausage. I produce the doctored balloon and go into a routine loaded with gags, which culminates with me eating a fully inflated balloon, the producing a mouth coil.

Now I explain to the kids that the venue was built over a graveyard, and a ghost is annoying me. He is sitting on the head of one of the kids. I tell the kids that ghosts are afraid of Barbie Dolls, and I have Barbie’s hair ribbon. So I produce the ribbon, and do a one-handed knot to catch the ghost. Then I vanish the ribbon with the thumb tip, then produce it from the stomach of a kid.

After this I explain that I did not always work as a magician. I used to be in charge of quality control in the spaghetti section of an Italian restaurant. This is my cue to do the Professor’s Nightmare. But any rope trick would do. I like the Professor’s Nightmare because it does not involve cutting any ropes. So the one set of ropes will last me forever.

I now stop for a public safety announcement. I tell the kids that if they are swimming they have to be careful of jellyfish. They have a habit of laying eggs in girls’ hair. Then I produce a sponge ball from the hair of one of the girls, and go into a simple sponge ball routine.

Now I take nothing from my pocket and tell the kids that what they are looking at is a new deck of cards from Japan, that are so miniaturised that they can only be seen if we moisturise them. I place the nothing on my tongue, then produce the eighteen cards (cards from mouth as done by Bill Malone). With the eighteen cards I do the six card repeat, throwing cards on the floor as I go.

I pick a boy and a girl, and have them race to pick up as many cards as possible. Then I divide the cards evenly, nine to each child. I then do cards across, pretending to be a pick-pocket. This provides a lively close to my act.

The whole routine takes forty five minutes, and fits into my pockets. It is my act when I travel. I was able to do it at my brother’s wedding with just what I could stuff into my suit pockets. I was able to do it in a Himalayan village 15,000 feet above sea level, in my hiking gear. I did a season in Irish Ferries with it.

It is not the only routine that meets my criteria for a Kids Kommando Act. Quentin Reynolds’s beautiful routine with a pocket hanky would fit in perfectly. A linking rings routine with ninja rings, or a ring on rope routine, or a rigid rope would also work. The possibilities are legion. Misers dream using a borrowed cup would work – and would suit a skilled close-up worker.

What are your ideas for a Kids Kommando Act? Don’t be afraid to comment – all suggestions are welcome.

Tony Black (real name Anthony Galvin) is a hypnotist and mind-reader based in Munster, but who performs throughout the country. His hypnosis show is a good deal wilder, and less structured, than most, with a heavy emphasis on comedy. Often he opens the show with one of his mind-reading routines, such as Russian Roulette with exploding toilets.
Tony has been performing magic for twenty five years, and hypnosis for fifteen. His show has brought him all over Ireland, as well as three tours of the middle-east, and a summer as the only hypnotist on the Greek isle of Kos.
As a magician he has spent twelve winter seasons in Lapland, three summers on the high seas, and been arrested twice for driving while blindfolded. His book Teach Yourself Magic has sold extensively in Britain and America. He also briefly held the world record for the longest public lecture (62 hours 15 minutes).

Talk magic

Talk magic are magic forums that are unaffiliated with any store. Talkmagic was one of the first forums I found myself at, and one of the few I still use today. There is a very friendly user base there, mostly English, but there are a few internationals there (four or five of the regular posters there, including myself, are Irish). Talk magic often attracts publishers of material and they will often answer questions about their products in the relevant review threads. For example, Anthony Jaquin (Reality is Plastic) is quite active in the (extensive) review thread for Reality is plastic, David Penn (Coinvexed) stops by quite regularly to answer questions regarding his products, Jon Thompson (Naked Mentalism) is a very regular member of the forums, and has been since long before his books were released. You also often find people from the likes of BBM and RSVP will stop by to answer any questions when one of their products is brought up.

The review section there is very extensive, and it’s a wonderful place to find out about products that may be much less mainstream than you would normally go for (But still excellent).

Talkmagic can be found at www.talkmagic.co.uk

Boards.ie

Boards.ie is is an absolutely huge Irish forum, it is very very active and has forums dealing with everything from classic cars, to religion, to distributed computing. More importantly to anyone who would be reading this post however, there is also a Magic & Illusion forum there. At the moment it is very low traffic, but you can normally get a quick enough response and it would be wonderful to build up a more regular user base there.

The Magic & Illusion forum can be found here.

Facebook

In my opinion, Facebook can be a fantastic resource for connecting with other magicians.  There are plenty of different magic related groups (Including Irish Magic).

Facebook can be found here.

The Magic Cafe

Like Talkmagic, the cafe is a large international magic forum that is unaffiliated with any specific place. It is probably one of the largest magic related forums out there, and while I am not a regular visitor, in the past I have found them to be very accommodating and friendly. One of the most noticible attributes of the cafe is the huge quantity of sub forums that exist there. You can probably find one touching on nearly every aspect of magic that you could want to investigate.

The Magic Cafe can be found here.

Magic Ireland

There is no harm in a little self promotion!

There is only one magic shop that I know of in the Republic of Ireland, there may be another in Northern Ireland, but I really don’t know. The only magic shop in the country is ‘The Magic Shop’, which is owned by Paddy Clancy in Limerick. It is a small little costume/magic shop within walking distance of the town center, he does not have a huge range of stock, but it can be a wonderful place if you are either new to magic, or you need specific supplies (Sponges, Flash Paper etc). Paddy is happy to demonstrate anything that he has in stock, and he is a wonderfully plesant guy.

The details of the store are as follows.

The Magic Shop
6 Mallow Street
Limerick
086 2563681
www.magicshoplimerick.com
Link to Map

This is the final of a series of three essays that Owen Lean has graciously allowed us to publish on the site. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have, please comment and tell me what you think. I would now like to formally thank Owen for allowing us to use his three essays, and hopefully we will be seeing more from him here in the future!

Hello! I have loads of money. Seriously I’m absolutely rolling in it, i have cash coming up to my eyeballs. I mean really, just the other day I dropped a 50 Euro note on the ground, I could have bent over and picked it up but i didn’t because I’M ABSOLUTLY LOADED! Yeah, that’s me, the guy who’s made of money, all self made of course, and my house is huge and I have seven cars, twenty gorgeous girlfriends and an Olympic sized swimming pool with a retractile sunroof and waterproof plasma screen at the bottom so i can watch David Blaine specials while I snorkel…

Not very convincing is it?
You see, when someone comes up to you and spends all his time trying to prove something to you, we tend to question it. In fact, the more he tries to prove it, the less we believe him. Let me give that example properly – from my limited 22 years of experience of life on this planet I’ve noticed that the people who constantly talk and boast about how much money they have are usually the people who have no money at all or are very insecure in their wealth and know full well they’re about to lose it all. The same with sex, I used to go to an all boys boarding school, where it was of course customary for the majority of the boys to boast constantly about their sexual conquests, despite the fact everyone knew these people were still sending valentines cards to their own right hand.
But those who really are wealthy? Or those rare cases who were were getting all the action these adolescent morons only dreamed of? They never talk about it, they never mention it, they just KNOW it. They know it and you can tell it about them as soon as you meet them – they don’t need to prove it because they know what they have and they know everyone else should know what they have and even if they don’t – they don’t care.
So where the bloody hell am I going with this? Allow me to elaborate with another example.
Hello. Would you like to see some magic? Here choose a card. You put it back in the deck. I shuffle them, i snap my fingers, and look it comes to the top. I put it back in the middle, snap my fingers and its back on top. Every time I do it your card comes to the top. Amazing isn’t it?

Allow me to translate this awful piece of bog-standard patter into the subtext behind it:
Hello! I can do magic! Look, I can do magic! See I can do magic! I really can do magic! Yes! Its magic! I can do magic!
Not very convincing is it?
You see, this is the impression that I get about a lot of magic, as magicians we spend almost all of our time trying to PROVE we can do magic. All of the focus of most of our tricks seem to be based around that, and there is nothing convincing about that, not only that but there is nothing even remotely INTERESTING about that either.
Now there are many different reasons we may perform magic, some of us do as part of a comedy show, and our aim is comedy – in my street show this is the case, the show is about the comedy and the magic plays a secondary role to it. Some of us do it in motivational speaking, where again the magic takes a secondary place to something else, in this case the “Look i can do magic” presentation may just work. However the reason I got into magic believe it or not, was because I wanted to do magic! And this is what I try and do when I perform magic close up. Anyone who’s seen me on the street or on the stage will know my show is mainly stand up comedy – but as the few who’ve seen my recent close up performances will know, I’m a different performer.  I’m relaxed, polite and most importantly, I DON’T DO TRICKS. I spent a long time considering this – if you really could do magic, just supposing you really could – you would not spent all your time showing off and trying to prove you could. So what would you do? For me the answer was that I would be someone who told stories, taught lessons and revealed hidden knowledge about the spectators life and the world around him and would be using magic to illustrate it.
The first routine I changed was the ambitious card that I already mentioned – now I no longer talk about the card, I tell them outright at the beginning a card is a meaningless thing, and ask them to make it meaningful by writing there name about it. The routine from then on is no longer about the card, or my ability but about them, I’m not telling them about what I’m doing or what’s happening (after all they have eyes, they can see that) and suddenly i started getting more gasps and reactions then ever before. I will post of video of this some time so you can see what I mean.
A lot of “bizzare” magic tends to lean this way I know, its an area that far too few magicians study, but again there can be a little of the “look I can do magic” flaw in bizzare magic performances. The less you state, the more you imply, and the more powerful it is. The less emphasis you put on the magic, the far more powerful it is, it should look like you are performing something only trivial, something that’s only a glimpse of ones ‘true power’ to use a very pretentious phrase – a brief glimmer, but one that is so powerful, like a gnostic only needs a brief glimpse of the divine spark within him to break free from the Demiurge’s prison, so too a spectator only needs a brief glimpse of magic to break free from the mundane reality that society confines them too.
Isn’t it strange? The way we set our sights so low? I don’t want to be just another magician I don’t want to be Dai Vernon, or Slydini or Ed Marlo. I want to be Simon Magus, Merlin, Mephistopheles and Cthulhu. I want to change the world, raise the dead to life and bring war on the Demiurge one mind at a time. Yes, its an impossible target, one I probably will never obtain, but if I aim that high and miss, what I hit, surely can’t be a bad thing? But then, that’s just the impression that I get.

This is the first of a series of three essays that Owen Lean has graciously allowed us to publish on the site. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have, please comment and tell me what you think

What is it you first think of when you think of magic?

Got an answer? OK now imagine that you’d read the question before you became a magician. What would you have thought of? Would it have had anything to do with cards, silks, coins, doves or whatever it is we tend to associate magic with now we’ve been initiated.

Its a question I used to ask some of my friends who weren’t magicians – they would usually bring up images of a supreme power able to command the elements bring fear across the lands. When I asked them what they thought of when they heard the word “magician” – the response was to do with some form of funny little man in a tuxedo and top hat with a gaggle of scantily dressed assistants – generally the images aren’t too positive.

Why have we created such a divide between these two images? Surely doesn’t the magic we can do have the potential to be just as frightening and have the same ability to shake people’s worlds the way the magic does in fantasy novels and role playing games? Robert-Houdin is often quoted as having said “A magician is an actor playing the part of a magician.”, but do we do that? Honestly when we look at our acts can we say “Yes, If I met somebody who could really do magic that’s exactly what I think he would do!”. Honestly if you really had magical powers would you stand on a stage and produce fans of cards, make billiard balls multiply and pull a signed and freely selected rabbit out of your assistants sponge bra? I wouldn’t.

Because magic is something much more then that. Granted if we want to call ourselves illusionists then this is unimportant as all these things could be classed as “illusions” – but I for one never learned magic because I wanted to create illusions – I wanted to do magic. This is why I like walking down the street use floating a banknote over my hand. I believe that in the moment some people see that banknote float something extremely powerful happens – up until that moment the person currently staring at you knew that the world was simple, logical and could be explained – suddenly in a single moment all that certainty has been broken and destroyed – after a few seconds, their brain kicks back in and realizes there has to be some kind of logical explanation like magnets or something but still the fact remains that they have had that moment – that moment that grabs them out of themselves and screams at them “there is more to life then what you think is real” and throws them back – in that moment their are taken back to the primitive, a state of mind where the laws, restrictions and limits that society imposes on us cease to matter, because the society and world we knew ceases to exist – I don’t think the phrase “childlike wonder” encompasses enough -

its something pure yes, but at the same time it is something pure in that was a Japanese mythical daemon posses “yu-gen” in being so pure it is both sublimely beautiful and completely terrifying. That is what I mean by taking magic back to the primitive – returning both the art itself and its spectators to a pure state that is free from restrictions and limitations.

Where to the limits come in magic? Only from ourselves. Why do we only levitate? Why not fly? Why do we catch bullets with out teeth, why not stop them in midair before they come towards us? Why do we turn the twenty pound note back into a fiver again? If I could really turn a five pound note into a twenty – I’d give it away, after all I can just create another one can’t I?
Expensive perhaps. But perhaps it is the distinction that removes a magician from a man in a silly hat.

I’m currently in first year engineering in TCD.  Great college, grand course. As a stereotypical student I am, of course, bloody broke. In order to remedy this situation and feed my rampant alcohol and sex addictions, I have decided to take the big step, to sign a deal with the devil and admit I am utterly insane by turning into a professional magician. Given that my agent (yes I have an agent (www.kaboom.ie), thank you nepotism!), has said I can get €180 for a 50 minute Kiddies set I think it’s the perfect solution to my problems. Luckily, I love kids (as long as they’re well cooked). Actually I hate the little buggers but there’s not a lot I won’t do for 41 pints (there are limits Mr. Norton!) My set is well under construction and should be up and performing next year. Then my perverse habits can once again reign supreme!!!

That’s the money shot maker. The fun stuff is:

a. My TV debut. Okay it’s on TG4, the least watch channel ever but I at least get to stick ‘As Seen on National TV’ after all my promotional stuff! Beat that!!! The story of how I got the part is fucking hilarious, I’ll post it in full at a later date, but basically it was the most over-presented card force ever!!! Anyway I got the gig, I’m going to be on show four of the series in the new year. I’ll post an exact date. The effect I’ll be doing will be a design duplication using Banachek’s pad method of Psy Series Volume Two (Awesome DVD), should go down well!

b. Comedy club gigs. Got the number for two comedy clubs round town and am going to get a ten minute slot in one of their new performers nights. Should be a great way to get my name out!

I’m also gonna be busking on Grafton Street after Xmas and also handing my name into every hotel and restaurant offering to do a free demo set to see how their patrons take it! Hopefully might get something out of that!!!

Well good luck,

Harry

OK, firstly…

I’m Chris Jones, aka seige, and I run a magic shop called NothingUpMySleeve.

It’s not my ‘real’ job… by day, I am a web/graphic designer, and a bit of an entrepreneur. I live in the UK, and am married with no kids or venerial diseases. My wife, Deb, is my long-suffering magic guinea pig, and aside from regular grief about my chaotic opinion of ‘tidiness’, we get along like sparks and gas—I am sure married blokes know exactly what I mean.

I am mid-thirties as of 2007, and aside from being a computer nerd and magic geek, I am actually just a normal bloke—I wake up late, I fart, I shave if I need to, I work, I drink, I fart, I sleep. Nothing unusual. And yes, I have a life outside the internet… you’re not listening here to a spotty sun-deprived keyboard jockey… I am a real human being.

Anyway… as a kind of introduction, I would like to share a tale, and that is, how NOT to approach magic in an informal public house situation. Recently, this happened to me, and what started as a quiet few pints in our local town centre with a few choice tricks rapidly turned out to be a narrowly averted bloodbath. Read on…

Why do we bother… or, ‘I was pretty close to needing an ambulance’
So, it’s a typical Friday. Meet up with a mate, and get a cab into town, leaving our loyal womankind worrying about us—as usual. Armed with nothing more than a wallet full of receipts, a cashpoint card and a deck of cards and a PK ring, I was ready for the usual mind-battering overindulgence that a chap deserves after a hard week of work.

So, several quenching bevvies into the night—around 8.30pm/9pm—we finally break away from the ‘eye candy’ pubs that us thirtysomething blokes love… you know the ones guys… the ones full of young lasses, pissed-up lads and thumping beats. Crap weak lager on tap forces you to buy overpriced bottles, and try as you might to suffer this longer, you need to seek the solice of a quieter gaff with a pool table and a decent pint. And the bloody PK ring is a nightmare, every time you dive in the pocket for change, out comes a lump of coppers stuck to it…

So, into a more refined old-folks establishment… the stench of stale beer which has been stamped into the carpets, the ancient niff of nicotine in the now smoke-free walls, and a blessed selection of real ales on tap… no more ‘kids’ booze, we’re talking of unheard-of 5%-plus brews which you KNOW are going to hurt, but hey… it’s Friday…

Quickly settling into the warm climate of a real fire, sensibly volumed jukebox and proper pork scratchings, we finally sit down and reflect on the night’s events so far. Smalltalk isn’t an option—we’re way past that bollocks… this is manly talk about women in tight jeans, and how the youngsters of today don’t know how lucky they are. And that bloody PK ring is STILL picking up coppers every time I put the hand in my pocket. It’s now a topic of conversation.

Deciding to stay for one more decent beer in our cosy tavern before braving once more the sweat-soaked ferocity of the Friday night battlefields, I shed my jacket and pull out the cards. An old chum joins us for a while, perhaps on a similar journey as ours—making various stops at overcrowded bars on our mission to visit all the ‘old favourites’ and find somewhere to settle for a few after’s before making our separate ways home to our women.

Our chum is on fire with enthusiasm and the latest jokes, which frankly may be new to him—but not to us. He offers a round of drinks, as his glass is out of synch with ours, and with half a pint remaining—we gladly accept. It’s getting cosier and more like home by the minute in here, perhaps we’ll stay a bit longer.

The deck of cards I took from my pocket—for reasons of logistics rather than the offer of a trick or two—are looking dangerously close to being drenched in drips as our chum returns from the bar with three pints of beer. So I grab the deck to rescue it from it’s impending doom. As he deals out the beers—nudging our half-empties aside in the act—he asks the question I’d hoped he wouldn’t… “Oh yeh, do a couple of tricks, my mate don’t believe you’re a proper magician…”

It’s without even a chance to answer that he calls over his buddy… someone we knew of, but didn’t share a mutual amicability with. Matey comes over, reluctantly leaving his conversation at the bar. All of a sudden the warm cosiness of the open fire turns into a rising hot-flush, as I feel the pressure of performing to a non-believer coming on. “A proper magician…” is a bold title for me, as I’m hardly Paul bloody Daniels. In fact, competence wise I’m more a cross between Tommy Cooper and Jeremy Beadle.

So, clutching at straws for a foolproof fooler, I decided on the biddle trick. Matey chose his card, lost it in the deck, and grinned. Now, for those of you in the know, there’s ONE GOLDEN rule to the biddle trick which makes it work. And handing the deck to the spectator to shuffle is practical suicide.

But, if you’re resourceful—as I’ve learned to be—you’ll make sure you have at least one shortened card in your regular deck. Mines simply a card from a Sven deck, and it works just fine. And letting Matey choose his card by means of a riffle meant that forcing him the short card was a doddle. In fact, it was almost embarrasing that he thought he’d made a fair choice as I said ‘put your finger in the cards at any point’. Shameful, on my behalf.

Anyhow… after carefully scrutinising the one card in the whole deck which was physically different, and exclaiming that it was perfectly normal (!!!) he remembered the value. My intuition paid dividends—because predictably, after asking him to place the card in the deck after I’d dribbled about a half, he actually grabbed the lower portion and did exactly that… placing his selection in the centre of the lower portion and squaring it up, before placing it back on my hand.

And then, he said it… four little words which were a red rag to a bull. Four mono-syllables which straight away turn me from Mr Niceguy into Mr Flamer…

“I know this one”.

Yep… he broke the cardinal rule: Do NOT try to outsmart a smartypants. This was really going to be fun.

Without averting my gaze from his now smarmy grin, I asked “So what comes next?”.

And then he waved a second red rag… with brass knobs on…

“What comes next? Well, you were GOING to try and find my card!” came his reply with the smuggest of smug grins. For some reason, I usually find it very difficult to hate someone, but in steps of almost exponental multiplication he’d already dug himself deep into my shit list. And also, he had one of those faces you’d just love to punch.

Now… before we continue, I’d like you to bear in mind the following: Anyone who knows me knows that I’m actually quite pacifistic, and almost every fight I’ve ever been in has been solved with reasoning—something that your average meathead cannot handle. However… anyone who knows me will ALSO know that if push comes to shove, I am relatively psychotic, and obviously owing to hereditary genetics I can muster up a fairly devastating melee of blows which tends to take even the most hardened of knuckle-heads by surprise.

Ergo: I knew in this situation I could handle myself readily should the drunken knob-head take offence at the belittling he was now about to receive. Otherwise, I would have quite happily sunken back into the woodwork, and admitted defeat. I’m no fool.

On one hand, I wanted to drag my knuckles across his face and remove his tobacco stained grin. But on the other hand, the word is mightier than the sword—at least I had hoped so.

So… the Biddle trick is in mid-flow. The cards are back in my hand. I hand them to the pillock for him to give it a good shuffle. And he did. Enthusiastically good.

So, it came as no surprise that when I performed the rest of the Biddle trick within 5 seconds of receiving the well shuffled deck, and correctly showed his card in the end display, he was a little miffed. Of course, I got accused of using fake cards.

Unfortunately, a few ales had got the better of me at this point, and I decided to put him in his place.

“Well…” I said… “Trouble is, there is no easy way to say this, but that particular trick doesn’t need ‘fake’ cards—if there was such a thing. It works because certain people are so dumb that they spend more time looking for ways to discredit the magician than they do watching the magic. Therefore, what you get—typically—is the spectator missing the moment that I remove their card, hide it in my palm, and put it back in the middle of the deck upside down. Did you notice it? Nope… didn’t think so…”

And with that, I turned back to my mate and carried on talking.

Needless to say, Mr Neanderthal was left speechless. And the fact that people were now laughing AT him rather than with him seemed obviously alien. I knew trouble was afoot, but escaping at this juncture seemed too obvious, as there was still one-and-a-quarter pints of beer in front of me.

So, I sat, I talked to my buddy, and we drank. Quite comfortably. So much so that I forgot about the caveman incident, and started to enjoy myself.

However… it was when I stood up to go for the pre inter-establisment amble pee that Mr Domehead stepped over and whispered through his teeth “I’ll show you some f****ng magic pal… think I’m a soft c****t don’t you” or words to that effect. Frankly, I don’t recall the exact text as I was still walking as he spoke, attempting to ignore.

It wasn’t until he followed me into the toilets—followed closely by out mutual chum—that I started to realise he did actually intend to lamp me one. Which was really unnerving, so much so that the pounding sensation in my bladder of desperately needing to take a leak vanished quickly.

It was when he flat-kicked the back of my calf that I whisked around, to see our uno-brow village idiot being held back by our chum. “Come on, don’t be daft…” he said to the defeated heckler.

Standing there, trying to ‘fake’ a piddle, I waited until the coast seems clear. I walked out of the gents and straight to my coat—playing it cool—and we left the pub. But Mister Muscle hadn’t quite finished. And this time, he had backup.

It was about a three point four second decision to turn to the wind and walk briskly. We did so at a blistering pace, with shouts and taunts from behind which I won’t detail, but basically we took a full range of abuse—from accusations of incest, right through to questioning our sexuality. But we carried on walking.

It was a strange decision—but we decided to go into another pub. And of course, we were followed. Things were getting hectic. I would have—at this point—been quite happy to take one on the chin. But now, Captain Caveman had enrolled some more thugs—none of which looked more than 19-20 years of age, all ready for a ruck.

Hang on: this was because I was too cocky. Was it? Should I have kept my mouth shut?

I guess it was too late by now. Things were going to get ugly fast. Not in here… this is a nice pub… but outside, later, who knows. We tried to look calm as we ordered drinks. Now… whether or not it was pure luck, or whether the Gods were smiling, but my brother-in-law and his Sunday footie league chums were on the tiles. Fab. Consider that these guys are mainly mid thirties, and totally rock hard. And—what is possibly even more advantageous—their reputation goes before them. In other words, if anything was going to happen, I was now on the winning team for sure.

And the moral of this tale is…
Sometimes it is far better to keep your mouth shut. If you’re getting some grief, don’t be a smart-arse. I kid you not, and I am not making light of this, but those plonkers could have quite easily put me in hospital. But for what?

For me wanting to have the last laugh.