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As far as I heard, from a pretty reliable source, the compere didn't so much as hide backstage as grab his coat and do a runner, leaving the ever reliable Tony Stevens to do the v.o. - just as well Tony was backstage!

He was by far the worst compere I have ever seen, ruined the first half of the show as he seemed to have no concept of his audience and what was going down well. Other than this I thought the convention was brilliant this year. Loved the fact that you could drop into the Opera House throughout Saturday and see a variety of short acts. Provided some real flexibility to the weekend a was a nice respite when seeking solace from the buzz of the dealers hall. Speaking of which David Jay's Sleeve Star - amazing. Saw him in The Ruskin on Friday night and it blew me away. Saw it again first thing Saturday morning and it blew me away. Could happily watch it all day. Trick of the convention for me.

We didn't see George in The Ruskin on Saturday night, dunno why...... perhaps he had some gardening to attend to.....

I had a great convention, Thanks to everyone that came and said hi and supported the DVd release. (it was a massive success)

I was pretty busy and pretty knackard in the evenings and I didnt get to see half the people I wanted to.

But still had a great time meet lots of new friends and had a great chat and catch up with some old ones.

Good convention allround this year for me.

Tho I did miss most of the shows.

Another great copnvention for me. I bought everything I needed/wanted on the Friday morning.

Mullica Slim Wallet
Toppit
Refills/replacements

I also got to see everyone I wanted to & more. Managed to get up early for lectures & stay up for Dobson.

Compare was a complete disaster. I listend back to it yesterday & he was getting next to no laughs leading up to having a go at gay people. By that time he'd also layed into Scots, Welsh, Irish, Yorkshire, French, Americans & got a fair few names mispronounced. His material was straight out of a 1970's working man's club. I just hope this wakes Blackpool organisers up & persuades them to get a decent compare for the first night. Best one i've seen in the last 10 years was John Archer, get him back if you ask me, he's a genius.

If you Google his Showreel you'll hear the same jokes...... Worst joke for me was the World Cup one - not about the last World Cup but the one before so that's a 5 year old topic? Lazy, very lazy. Most previous comperes I've seen have had the wit to tune the routine in the general direction of magic or matters more topical.

This convention in my opinion was poor.
It was my 7th Blackpool convention, and by far the worst (in my opinion).
a lot less lectures, a shambolic Saturday night show (compere-wise)(i'll get back to that), and a frankly crappy Sunday night gala show. Usually the Sunday show is filled with great varied acts, but this year we had 3 very similar manipulation acts, a tacky illusion act... Just the 2 Russian guys were very good (even though they performed the same act a few years ago), as well as the comperes (thank god for that).

So.
My take on the convention:

THE LECTURES (I saw):

-Jay Sankey: basically exactly the same lecture than 2 years ago, not very inspired. I didn't find Jay as funny as usual either... a big disappointment in my books.

- Richard Sanders: A very funny anf good lecture, however, like Jay's exactly the same as the one he gave 2 years ago or so.

- Michel: An excellent lecture about hold outs. Not my cup of tea, but I was fascinated from start to finish. He presented the history of the hand out, with powerpoint presentation, and then showed his contraption and its functioning. Very nice.

- Richard Osterlind: A very nice lecture, I am not familiar with the man's material, but very inspiring speak, and amazing spoon bending routine.

- Wayne Dobson: Even though he lectures every year, this year was the first time I saw the guy. Very funny lecture. Gotta bow in front of the guy. He's amazing, and I find his determination to perform despite his disability an example that we should all follow.

- Tom Anders (Salvano Jr): walked in, sat for 3 minutes, when I saw it was manipulation, walked off. However his card handling was very nice from what I saw (i'll get back to him too)

- Bernard Bilis (my idol): It was the first time that I saw Bernard Bilis lecturing. He's my teenage years inspiration when it comes to magic. I love his humour and his magic. A great lecture left down by his English that is not the best; not bad at all, but I felt that it broke the rhythm... I would have happily translated, for a smoother lecture. However, he is actually way better than I expected him to be!!! Amazing technique, and fantastic tricks!!!! Signed cards across (that gives you an idea)! Talked with him at the end of the lecture, very nice chap.

THE SHOW:
Saturday:
All the acts were very nice. Very good quality, and in my opinion better than the acts we saw on Sunday.
Ok, the entertainment of the evening was George King, the compere. I feel like I need to expand on what has been said previously.
The guy started ok, with a few good lines, but things started going sideways, from the moment he went into the sadly unavoidable (it seems) "where are you from" routine.
I am French, I have been living in the Uk for 10 years now, and I can take a joke. You know, the froggies, the garlic, the beret and the accordeon... I can take it, and laugh about it (it is funny sometimes). But this guy started having a go at the French, and being down right nasty. Bad idea in my opinion when about 25% of the winning acts were french...

then it went down the disgusting route when he started talking about sex well "gardening" as he called it (which was fnny in itself), but started making nasty references to women's menstruations and all. Not classy.

Then it went down the fart joke alley (I think that when the slow clapping started), and it ended on the gay route, stating that when at the hairdresser, he refused to get a haircut by "nancy boys". Again, not very clever, as there are quite a few gay magicians...

So Shame on the Blackpool organisers for booking and wasting our money on a racist / sexist / homophobic compere. Not clever when you are organising a very European event, with probably 50% of non English speaking people in the crowd.

As a true French person, I will complain in style to the Blackpool organisers. I might even go on strike, who knows?
And this is why the guy got booted offstage. He said that he would just come back to announce the acts, but we never saw him again... very sad. And the saddest of all, is that he probably believes that he is great and that the crowd was made of morons...

thank god the acts were fantastic on that night, apart from my compatriote Tom Anders who looked very good at manipulating during his lecture, but who only managed to perform a rather embarrassing and tacky manipulation act. Gosh, this was bad. imagine the water bowl act by McBride (the little bowls that refill magically)... He probably bought his bowls in Ikea, and I don't know where he learnt it, but it was awful.

Sunday show:
Sunday was the complete opposite.. Good compering, but mostly crappy acts. And we got Tom Anders AGAIN towards the end... I was hoping that he would make things better.... well he failed. Badly. The tack was back, and ... I can't go on.
Michael Finney unfortunately picked an imbecile from the crowd, and got his card stuck on forhead routine ruined... i felt sorry for him; he kept his cool and compoisture until the end, but his act was ruined.

I wish I didn't go to the show on Sunday.


Result:
What Blackpool needs is a bit of a kick in its *rse.
Stop booking Jay Sankey, and book new and different acts!!! There are so many fantastic magicians who would deserve to come and lecture!
Oz Pearlman, Mathieu Bich, Garret Thomas, Lee Asher, David Acer... I am talking about close up, but I am sure you are missing out on fantastic stage acts...
Why book Tom Anders???? Surely you watch tapes before booking the acts?

Last year was probably one of the best conventions I attended; I knew almost none of the lecturers, but I discovered loads of different things about IT, and other things...
This year's convention was a big let down I felt.

Thank god it was all saved by the ruskin, catching up with friends, etc etc.

And I agree with Ruspee, John Archer was great.

Great post Jerome.

I pretty much agree with everything you said.

It way my 6th convention and easily the worst.

I absolutely hated the way the FISM judges brought the curtain down on a number of acts. These poor performers had travelled many miles to take part, and had been through a screening process already. At least let them finish their acts, and provide feedback about how they need to improve them. To kick them off the stage was disgusting. I was thinking about going to the FISM 2012, but not after seeing that.

One act was a young couple (umbrella act and a manipulation act). They were pretty good but perhaps a little nervous. Maybe it was their first big competition? Part way through the routine, the judges decided they had seen enough, and switched on the red lights.

I'm sure the couple would have liked to have finished and then hear feedback off-stage from the judges about what they need to do to improve, but instead, they were kicked-off. They could have had an amazing killer ending - but we'll never know. What has that done to their confidence and their love of our art and respect for their peers?

The Last Deck on the Left wrote:Great post Jerome.

I pretty much agree with everything you said.

It way my 6th convention and easily the worst.

I absolutely hated the way the FISM judges brought the curtain down on a number of acts. These poor performers had travelled many miles to take part, and had been through a screening process already. At least let them finish their acts, and provide feedback about how they need to improve them. To kick them off the stage was disgusting. I was thinking about going to the FISM 2012, but not after seeing that.

One act was a young couple (umbrella act and a manipulation act). They were pretty good but perhaps a little nervous. Maybe it was their first big competition? Part way through the routine, the judges decided they had seen enough, and switched on the red lights.

I'm sure the couple would have liked to have finished and then hear feedback off-stage from the judges about what they need to do to improve, but instead, they were kicked-off. They could have had an amazing killer ending - but we'll never know. What has that done to their confidence and their love of our art and respect for their peers?

I unfortunately didn't see the stage competition...

The Last Deck on the Left wrote:I absolutely hated the way the FISM judges brought the curtain down on a number of acts. These poor performers had travelled many miles to take part, and had been through a screening process already. At least let them finish their acts, and provide feedback about how they need to improve them. To kick them off the stage was disgusting. I was thinking about going to the FISM 2012, but not after seeing that.

One act was a young couple (umbrella act and a manipulation act). They were pretty good but perhaps a little nervous. Maybe it was their first big competition? Part way through the routine, the judges decided they had seen enough, and switched on the red lights.

I'm sure the couple would have liked to have finished and then hear feedback off-stage from the judges about what they need to do to improve, but instead, they were kicked-off. They could have had an amazing killer ending - but we'll never know. What has that done to their confidence and their love of our art and respect for their peers?

That was us. And yes, we were utterly terrified.

We always knew that we weren't going to win; we just entered for the experience, but it was still absolutely horrible to go through that. If it hadn't been for the other members of the NWMC cheering us up afterwards, I think we'd have just gone straight home.

We didn't see much of the stage comp, but it sounds like the judges red lighted a fair number of the acts? I honestly don't know how much screening was done beforehand - we did send a video with our application, even though they didn't ask for one. I would have thought they screened every act to minimise the number of people being kicked off stage, but perhaps they didn't.

Those of you who did see us, any feedback, or comments? It'd be really helpful to hear what other people think. A couple of people have said it looked like I stormed off stage after I missed a juggle, but I was going off stage at that point anyway, it was just unfortunate timing!

We're not entirely sure what we'll do now. The whole thing was humiliating, and we might just step back from performing for a while while we re-think things.

I'm at work now, so I'll write a proper reply later

but in relation to your comment...

"We're not entirely sure what we'll do now. The whole thing was humiliating, and we might just step back from performing for a while while we re-think things."

Please don't do that. I really did like your act, and whilst you were performing, we were both making some positive comments to each other and some nice touches that you both did. I'll PM you some more thoughts later. Don't give up though!!

I think we sat a couple of rows behind you on the Sat night at the Gala and I nearly came over and said hi and hoped you were both ok - I wished I'd have done that now (I wasn't the guy shouting at the compare - we were behind him!)

Thank you. I'd really appreciate any feedback.

That guy was really noisy, even the people he was sitting with were telling him to shut up!

Did anyone else witness Derek Lever playing hell with the judges for being so Buzzer Happy? For what it's worth, I completely agree with him. There were some acts buzzed off which could have been a slow start leading up to a killer ending that we never saw.

The buttons were not working the previous night, and one of the annoucers explained there were about 6 acts that were disqualified from the night before. We'd been sat watching the show and were getting frustrated that the curtain kept coming down. Derek Lever arrived a little later than we did and sat in the second row, behind the judges.

The next act was the guy manipulating the musical notes and doing a juggling style act with orange balls. He was gonged off and the curtain came down, and as far as I could see, this was the first act Derek had seen gonged off from the audience point of view. The audience boo'd and this got really quite loud.

I was sat 2 rows behind the judges. Derek got up and headed to the judges table. He shouted at the judges, "there's some VERY unhappy people behind the stage, what do you think you are doing?" and other stuff I couldn't quite make out.

"THAT WAS A GOOD ACT!" Derek shouted at one of the judges, just before an American guy from the audience came down to the front to scream sweaing and abuse. The man shouted at the judges table that they were "f---ing a--oles".

Before I knew it, both tables of judges, the head guy from FISM and a few others I didn't recognise got into a very heated discussion. The main issue from what I overheard was there was no need to gong these acts off - there was plenty of time to see everyone, and the audience were getting frustrated whilst the acts behind the scenes were upset because they did not see the curtain coming down until it was at their own eye level.

The discussion subsided, and not one act was gonged off for the rest of the day.

However, it was really hard to know who was in the right or wrong, because the FISM rules stated that the acts could be gonged off, and the judges were following those rules. My own opinion is that the acts should have been allowed to complete their full running time, even if they had not qualified. Dropping the curtain midway on an act that's travelled across the world to get there is just plain rude.

Good on Derek Lever for stepping up.

Enjoyed the conference overall.

The Russian guy manipulating the musical notes was a late entrant so not listed in the programme however the main problem was that, from the stalls, his routine of manipulating and multiplying black musical notes was against a black backdrop and the only time we could see what he'd done was when he held the notes across his white suit! The multiplying oranges was just getijng interesting when the curtain came down so, yes, he should have been allowed to fiinsh - as should the rest of the acts. Let's face it, the extra time would probably have been less than half an hour so would it have hurt to let all acts carry on?

Good to hear that Derek Lever was giving the judges some well deserved grief, I just hope they sort this matter out properly before FISM in 2012 otherwise blood will be shed!