Ali Bongo

Born William Oliver Wallace on December 8 1929 (he claimed to be a direct descendant of the Scots warrior), he was brought up in India where his father was posted as a regimental sergeant major. It was here, aged six, that he performed his first magic routines for the benefit of an indulgent uncle, picking up tricks from the children's pages of the India Times.

Returning to England in his teens, William attended the Sutton Valence public school in Kent where his father had taken a post as head of the Officer Training Corps. But though a success academically, schoolwork could never quite capture his full enthusiasm, and by the time he was 17 he was already working as a semi-professional magician, piecing together a career performing at children's birthday parties in villages around the Kent countryside.

Having played the part of a wizard called Ali Bongo in a village hall pantomime, he borrowed the name for his stage act. On stage Bongo always claimed himself to be of "Pongolian" descent, but the character he created was no doubt partly inspired by his Indian upbringing. He wore brightly-coloured clothing, spoke in a ringing Asian accent, and tore through his act at a frantic pace, with a litany of endearingly absurd catchphrases – "hokus-pokus fishbones chokus" or "uju buju suck another juju" – thrown in for good measure.

The purple turban (from which, midway through a show, a flag would suddenly and mysteriously hoist itself) and exuberantly-curled golden shoes became his trademark. Though he would go on to work with many performers in a variety of different styles, on stage Bongo himself was always very much a comic magician.

Returning from National Service, he moved to London, where he took a series of office jobs before becoming a demonstrator and salesman at Harry Stanley's Unique Studios. Stanley was publisher of the magicians' monthly magazine Gen, and the most respected magic dealer in London.

Orson Welles, a keen amateur magician, was an occasional customer and highly-rated professionals like Hugh Miller and Ken Brooke worked on the staff. At the time it was commonplace for aspiring performers to help out at a place like Stanley's during the daytime, and tour the nightclub circuit in the evenings.

Four years later Bongo became a manager in his own right, at the magic department of Hamleys in Regent Street. When eventually he left the store to become a full-time professional, he came to the attention of David Nixon, a likeable and witty magician with his own show at the BBC.

Impressed by Bongo's ingenuity and grasp of stage technique, Nixon employed him as an adviser on David Nixon's Magic Box until 1971, when Bongo was given his own slot on the children's entertainment series Zokko. His reputation grew and in 1972 he was voted Magic Circle Magician of the Year. But he continued to be employed as an adviser on such television shows as Tarot Ace of Wands, Doctor Who, The Tomorrow People, and later worked with Nixon's successor at the BBC, Paul Daniels, with whom he was to remain a close friend.

In 1973, the usually unassuming magician found himself at the centre of a controversy which the Daily Mail called "the great debate of the moment". Bongo was the first experienced magician publicly to challenge the Israeli-born showman Uri Geller over his supposed psychic powers. Vowing to "put my money where my mouth is", Bongo made an appearance on the Blue Peter programme aiming to recreate Geller's spoon-bending and mind-reading experiments in front of a studio audience using only conventional magic techniques.

The experiment was a muted success – "He didn't break the fork, he only bent it," complained the metallurgist Alistair Brown – but Bongo emerged from the episode as a likeable figure, self-deprecating and generous with his expertise. He had been taken to Geller's hotel by a Daily Mail journalist the previous day in an attempt to force Geller into "proving" his abilities before an expert. The Israeli psychic ordered him out of the building with the words: "I have no time for magicians! What do they know about my powers?"

Bongo was rather more realistic about the source of his abilities. He devoted an extraordinary amount of time to professional self-improvement, often staying up all night in his south London flat to work on routines or plough through the magic magazines which constituted his only reading material. He ate irregularly, surviving on self-concocted dishes such as "Pongolian hotpot" ("I start with a tin of stewing steak and add anything I can find").

His props were equally innovative. And though several of these, like the Bongo Hat, have now been mass-produced, the originals were generally designed to last for no longer than the length of a show, fashioned from whichever materials Bongo happened to have to hand at the time.

David Renwick wrote the part of the flamboyant Adam Klaus in Jonathan Creek after meeting Bongo on the set of his sitcom One Foot in the Grave, where the magician had been overseeing the filming of a guillotine trick. Bongo continued to advise on the show, and seemed to have enjoyed teaching actors. "They have a sense of drama," he said, "and that is the most important part of magic."

Despite insisting that he would continue with Ali Bongo "as long as my legs hold out", in his later years he gave up the character in favour of a more sedate existence, lecturing and judging at magic conventions around the world. With his bald head, thick black spectacles and bright bow ties, he was a familiar figure at conventions from Brighton to the United States, and enjoyed nothing more than mixing and "talking shop" with other magicians.

In 2008 he was elected president of the Magic Circle and remained a frequent visitor to its premises near Euston, helping to run the Young Magicians' Club where he passed on the tricks of his trade to the next generation of performers.

Ultimately he was a man obsessed with magic. Indeed at one point his flat in Clapham became so crammed with props that Bongo was forced to buy another on the floor below in order to have a place to sleep.

Though he described his home as "a slightly upmarket Steptoe's yard", his existence, in truth, was somewhat more salubrious, as his many years of television work had earned him a quite substantial income.

But by his own admission it was not one which allowed much room for family life. Though Bongo had several girlfriends he never married.

"There are a few lady magicians but not all that many," he said. "Grown-up men playing with toys – that's how people see us. Magic props are like toys, and they take up a lot of space."