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hehe well his reaction could have been a lot worse so you got off lightly Tom... this is why i practice in front of my webcam a lot of the time, this way i can move it around to see what angles work and dont work

Your not alone Tom. I have had tricks go wrong in that way and it can make you lose confidence. You have to get back in the saddle though.

For me I think the problem is actually more acute with the easier tricks. Probably because I've been doing them for a while and forget about all the subtleties.

I now try to have a run through of every trick just before I am going to perform it, even if it is soemthing I've been doing for ages, and if I cant do that, I'll run through the whole thing in my head first.

The one thing that I have learnt is never take any trick for granted, treat them all with the respect they deserve.

This is so timely! I was doing the Case of The Missing Hat for my ever-loving a week or two back - this is a DIY routine from Paul Curry's book, The Magician's Magician (Reviewed elsewhere on TM) and involves a DF card. She spotted the card right away and sweetly told me so although she was complimentary about the trick apart from the 'pig's ear' bit. This was good thing as it brought me up very sharply to realise I'd held the cards too high, was seated in the wrong place etc and immediately made me realise that all the practice in the world probably means diddly squat unless you've ballsed it up in front of someone you can trust to be objective and constructive!

i used to do a lot of coin productions and vanishes for kids, then one show i did a full coin routine with a kid sitting under the table unbeknown to me.
he gladly whent around and told all the kids what i was doing.
the problem was that i had three further bookings that week with kids that were at this party, luckily for me i had my trusty stamp book and change bags as backups for there partys.

so the moral of the story know your angles, know your patter, know your positioning and above all know were your audience is.

i have this printed out and stuck to my door along with my packing list so its the last thing i check brfore i leave.

Multiple card selection.

This has happened on a few occasions (but undetered I will continue to use it). I collect back all the cards, some are shuffled back in to the deck, others a just placed back in the deck. All hunky-dorey, usually. I would like to point that the first reveal/discovery of card number 1 I use is, the Simon Lovell open handed colour change, magical. However as I ask the person to shout out their card do the colour change and it is the wrong card. Sometime it gets a laugh from the audience, but on the inside I am dying. The fact the wrong card has appeared, now means that I have no idea where the other six or so cards are. Time for some JAZZ MAGIC some might say - MY A***E is what I say.

No doubt others have the get outs and will give me their comments (I hope) but generally I just point out how difficult it is to control six or seven chosen cards and then start over. Generally I will get a cheer when the first card is then revealed.

My other worst story is the finger chopper story (isn't that right Bananafish?) which has been posted elsewhere. Not for the faint hearted.

best get out i can advise is to look totaly stuned and then say thats not how we rehersed it is it.

now i'll have to start again with all new people.

My other worst story is the finger chopper story

I still cringe at your finger chopper story. It gives me nightmares.

Tom, if you think someone spotting a move in double back is bad, just imagine chopping off someones finger!!!!!

Suddenly it aint so bad after all...

(And if Midas Kid ever tries to saw a lady in half, I'm getting the police on to him...)

i have just two words for you m8.

your the reason public liabilaty has gone up passed 3 grand.

only jokeing accidents happen, did you get a repeat booking

lol

I would love to be all aloof here and tell tales of my perfect executions of effects but I know you all know me better than that

I'm not sure of the name and obviously can't go into all the details but on one of the Sankeys Secret Files tapes there is a trick with a matchbox with a silver key and a copper key, one of them is shall we say bonding firmly with the box, the last time I did this effect I had been drinking
For some unknown reason the first thing I did was empty the keys from the box into my hand to show them, "wheres the other key m8?" etc.
Sigh.

Oh well you live and learn.
What did I learn?
Drink more next time and I wont mind as much

Talking of magic disasters, just after I joint my local magic society I went in for a close up competition.

I was doing one trick, and decided to pick on one of the older more respected members of the society to check that the rope I was using was a normal rope.

Anyway - in my nervous state I said

"...and as you seem to be the biggest septic maybe you’d like to check the rope for me?”

I knew I had said something wrong at the time, but was so nervous and flustered I just contiinued with the effect.

He came up to me afterwards and said. "Just for the record, you did mean sceptic didn't you?"

Needless to say I din't win anything that day...

Not sure whether they're Spoonerisms or Malapropisms but anything where the order of letters in words, or the words themselves, are slightly changed always gets my vote. Things like:

'The world is my lobster'

'I'm always nervous at Public speaking - I just start gibbering absolute talkish'

(One of the original Spoonerisms where Spooner was lecturing a class and two rather idle scholars walked in towards the end of the lecture) 'You have hissed my mystery lecture - if fact, you have tasted a whole worm'

(When pulled over by the boys in blue) 'Consternoon affable, I'm serfictly pober and I'm not so much under the affluence of incahol as some thinkle peep.' (but expect them to get revenge when they find out you're stone cold sober!)

Why stick to plain English when you can mess it up and have fun?!

This is a funny story. It is not really a mistake as such but I was stunned. I was doing a performance at a respectable dinner party. One of the guests at this party decided it would be funny to play with my head. I took the jokers out of my deck (I always keep my jokers with me just in case, some of my greatest magic uses jokers). I got one of the spectators to pick a card, and place it back in the deck. I was going to make his card jump to tje top of the deck ect (ambitious card). When i turned his card over it was a joker. The spectator had swopped his card for a joker. The first time someone has managed to misdirect me when i was performing the trick.