Duxbury Park Golf Club Gin Tasting Event

Seasoning their Gin with Great Magic

On Friday I entertained the guests at Duxbury Park Golf Club’s Mad Hatter themed gin tasting evening.

It was a great opportunity for guests to taste a wide selection of gins. There has been an explosion of popularity for this drink recently. This was a lovely opportunity to try out some of the many new flavours available.

The Duxbury Park Golf Club management  team wanted to make the evening distinct for their guests. As well as the speciality gins there were cakes, Alice in Wonderland playing on the screen, a caricaturist and me, the strolling magician. This meant that the guests were able to ‘season’ their gin drinking experience with a steady measure of different types of entertainment.

This was clearly an example of thoughtful managers turning a good evening into a great EVENT.

The, mainly female, guests gave me a terrific reception and it was a sheer pleasure to entertain them. In fact, I stayed longer than agreed because the guests were enjoying the magic so much.

The Reluctant Guest

I want to talk about one guest. She was sitting with her two friends. When I approached the table and introduced myself, it was immediately clear that she wasn’t that interested in magic. I could tell from her body language. Besides, her friends immediately told me she as ‘hard to impress’.

Now, there are all sorts of reasons why some people don’t enjoy magic. They might immediately think of some of the ‘cheesy’ magicians from TV. Perhaps they once saw a bad magician. This often puts people off magicians. Funnily enough, if we hear a bad singer we don’t dismiss music but this often happens with magic. Perhaps they have never seen anything more interesting than their uncle pulling a coin from their ear. So they regard magic as something for children. I don’t know.

When I meet guests like this one part of me thinks, let them be. There is no reason why anybody must like magic. We don’t expect everybody to like football, opera, classical music, athletics etc. I should just focus on entertaining her two friends, who were looking eager and expectant for some magic.

However, I love magic and I don’t want to see people missing out. So: how to ‘convert’ the reluctant guest?

What Is To Be Done?

Well, I began by saying up front I was not going to engage in a competition with her. I HATE it when a magician presents magic as an opportunity to show how clever they are. Nobody like a ‘clever dicky’ and that’s an approach which is puts people off magic in the first place. They will be HOPING you fail. I aim to for my guest to WANT me to succeed.

Instead, I showed some magic to her friends. I notice that at least she was watching all the way through to the end. Perhaps she had never seen this type of magic before. Perhaps she had never seen close up magic before.

I then joked and said I’d like to show her something too. I appealed to her sense of fair play: she should at least give me a chance! She agreed but was still looking suspicious. I led her through an extended magic exploration with several steps and stages to the magic. Each moment of wonder and surprise built on the previous and by the end…she was laughing along with the others.

It was a lovely moment in a wonderful evening.

The Smile I Was Hoping for.

Using the Power of the mind to bend a coin

Watching close up magic is an opportunity to leave the logic of the everyday world and experience something that should not be possible…but has just happened. You’ve just seen it in front of your eyes.  In your own hands.

Magic Frank Farrell performs outstanding magic and mind reading across the North West. You can find out what his clients say about him here. These days he is very busy a the weekends, so if you would like  to book please call as soon as possible 07981853155 or complete this simple enquiry form.