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Hi All

I will be giving my new lecture at Leicester Magic Circle this Monday evening. The lecture will be a full on performance of magic, pick pocketing and hypnosis followed by a q & a.

Let me know if you are coming

See you there

James Brown

I'm definately coming along with a friend from the Leamington & Warwick Society.

As stated I trundled along to Leicester last night to watch James in action and I was particularly looking forward to the new lecture. Knowing that James is very much into mixing his sleight of hand skills with a little Hypnotic suggestion these days I was particularly interested in seeing what would be included ad how.

The evening started with all of the visitors and the lecturer being asked to leave the room and wait in the bar while a club meeting was held. Personally, I found this rather rude to be honest and would have thought that a meeting could or would have been postponed until a normal club night, particularly as a number of us visiting magician had been invited and had been charged £10 for the privilage.

Anyway, some 15 minutes later we were back upstairs and were introduced to James who proceeded to set out his stall by explaning how the lecture would work.

James told everyone that he would perform around 45 minutes of magic and then after a short break would talk about the effects, the performance and answer any questions. All good so far and the audience seemed to be open to this as it was explained that this method would be more interesting than the usual trick - explanation, another trick - another explanation format. No problems so far and everyone moved in to sit or stand around the table for a closer view.

The first few routines didn't seem to work out as planned which frustrated James as well as some of us in the audience. There seemed to be a good number of people in the audience who weren't open to the lecture format and some were pre-empting what they thought James was about to do. As James said to them, they just appeared to want to see tricks and not magic. I have to agree that a number seemed to be fairly un-responsive to what James was doing which was a real shame and it left him with little option but to change the lecture into what he originally set out to avoid which was a trick - explanation approach. A real shame for some of us.

However, James shone through and his performance skills soon had the audience perked up whereupon the audience response levels started to pick up.

It was still a great lecture with some fantastic routines and psychology - something for everyone. Highlights for me were the card under anything routine which James eluded to being his favorite type of card routine. His card and then deck under and then into box was superb. James also performed his own take on Out of this World using a hypnotic theme which I also found to be really thought provoking. His spread cull and side steal alo had everyone fooled all of the time and were put to good use within a number of routines.

Given the start, I don't think that there are many lecturing magicians that would have had the balls the totally change their lecture 15 minutes in and then tell the audience that it's because of them. The look on some of their faces was priceless but James was right.

The lecture lasted just over two hours and it was worth the value in my opinion. I'd still like to see the new lecture so I will need to look for another opportunity somewhere else.

Still a good night out and it was nice to cath up with a few friends.