Chichester magic: can you believe your eyes!

Graham Jolley is promising to take you Out of Your Mind at a special event of mind-reading and magic at Chichester’s Edes House on Sunday, September 20 at 7.30pm.

“Most of us start off as magicians doing traditional magic, but gradually we go over to what we call mentalism,” says Chichester-based Graham, and that’s what he will be serving up at Edes House.

“I will be trying to convince people of the validity of telepathy… I do an act which is designed to be entertaining but also to stimulate the audience into thinking ‘Is this really possible or is there something else going on here?’”

Graham says he doesn’t believe it is possible to walk into a room of complete strangers, ask one of them to think of a number and then reply ‘Oh yes, you are thinking of 67!’ He will be doing something considerably more subtle than that.

“I do think it is possible in certain conditions to get someone’s thoughts going in a certain direction and then tell them what they are thinking.”

Graham recalls he was about seven when he became hooked on magic.

“My grandfather bought me a book on how to be a magician by Robert Harbin (the South-African born, British magician and author who was noted as the inventor of a number of classic illusions).

“As soon as I opened that book, I was absolutely fascinated by it. I read it and I read it and I read it. And I used to go to the library to find out more, but it was always the same books there!

“For me, it was just about wanting to know how it was done.”

Graham has been working professionally in the business for 40 years now.

Inevitably, some people will always be sceptical.

“You have got to try to relate to them. You have got to keep communicating. You have got to make it all fun. You have got to stop the audience wanting to analyse it. You need to do that with humour. It’s also all to do with stage charisma.”

But as he says, there also needs to be a certain willingness.

“If you don’t want to be hypnotised, then don’t come up. If you go to the dentist’s and sit in his chair, and he says ‘Open your mouth’, you wouldn’t say ‘No!’, would you? You have got to be wanting to experience it.”

Over the years Graham has secured a reputation as one of the UK’s most talented and versatile magical performers, entertaining audiences with his unique style and mind-reading capabilities.

His work has seen him perform for a large number of international organisations, as well as appearing on the high-profile ITV series Penn and Teller Fool Us, among many others, and successfully baffling both the audience and the judges.

In 2012 Graham was star of the show in Las Vegas; and in 2010, he was invited by Lord Peter Levine, a former Lord Mayor of London, to provide the entertainment at his 60th birthday party.

Past engagements also include providing the entertainment at a private party at Atlantis on Paradise Island in the Bahamas and a session entertaining the Arsenal Football Club directors.

He has also appeared on television in Central America and enjoyed a successful theatre tour of South Africa

Tickets for Graham’s Chichester show are £7 available on 01243 782951 or 07850 780191 or [email protected]. See also www.mindreader.co.uk.

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