Paul Daniels

Born: April 6, 1938

Died: March 17, 2016

Paul Daniels, who has died of a brain tumour aged 77, was an entertainer and magician who started out in the working men’s clubs of Yorkshire, but went on to become one of the biggest names on British television.

It is easy to forget just how popular and acclaimed he was at the height of his popularity. Before Daniels came along, magicians were po-faced men in top hats, but he was different: funny, quirky and ordinary and he also consistently broke new ground on his long-running television show. Just one sign of his popularity is the fact that his catchphrase - “you’re going to like this – not a lot, but you’ll like it!” - was one of the most repeated of the 1980s and 90s.

In many ways, Daniels also did the groundwork for the magicians that came after him, and in the end replaced him. The likes of Derren Brown and David Blaine have become known for their “event” magic, tricks with a macabre twist and elaborate stage shows, but Daniels was doing the same thing 30 years ago. In 1981, his West End show, It’s Magic, ran for 15 months and on his television series, he performed tricks on an epic scale - in one episode, he made an elephant disappear; in another, a million pounds; and in an infamous Halloween special, he appeared to die when a trick went wrong.

In later years, he and his assistant and wife Debbie McGee, who was 20 years younger than him, became a target for some ridicule – in an episode of The Mrs Merton comedy chat show, Caroline Aherne asked McGee “what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” Spitting Image also zeroed in on the fact that for some years Daniels wore a wig. But, even as his star faded, there was never any doubt about Daniels’ skill as a magician, or his desire for magic to be seen as an art form just as worthy of respect as opera or ballet.

He first fell in love with magic for the same reason that many young boys do: he was chronically shy and performing tricks was a way of appearing more confident. He was born Edward Daniels in South Bank, a small industrial town in Yorkshire to Hughie Daniels, a cinema projectionist, and his wife Nancy, and spent much of his childhood indoors reading comics and books. His first experience of showbusiness was standing by his father as he worked in the cinema projection room and from a young age he would help his dad load and run the film.

He discovered magic for the first time when he was 10 years old and visiting the house of a family friend. Looking through her books, he came across an old Victorian volume about mime and magic and was immediately entranced by the feats the book said were possible: making a playing card disappear from the pack and reappear some else in the room, for instance, or correctly guessing the age of a stranger by using a set of numbers. The age guessing trick was the first one Daniels practised and performed, and from then on he was hooked and put on shows at his local youth club. All he ever wanted to be from that point on was a magician.

When he told his parents about his ambition, though, they were not impressed and tried to encourage him to think of a “proper” job instead. Daniels had won a scholarship to his local grammar school and after leaving joined his local council as a junior clerk, but the desire to be a magician never went away.

After completing his national service in Hong Kong, he returned home and started working the working men’s club circuit in the evenings, changing his name from Ted to Paul and slowly finding his particular mix of magic and comedy. “I looked carefully at myself and decided that I wasn’t tall enough to look good in tall suits and that my hard Northern accent did not lend itself to posh patter,” he said. “I read everything I could on comedy and, like the magic, tailored it to make it fit me.”

His famous catchphrase happened by accident one night in a club in Yorkshire when someone in the audience shouted out that he didn’t like Daniels’ suit. “That’s a shame,” he replied. “Cos I like yours. Not a lot, but I like it.” The audience laughed so he said it again later and by the end of the act he had catchphrase. It was one of the things that helped make him memorable and famous and later the phrase made it in to the Dictionary of Colloquialisms and Common Language.

By the time he was 28, Daniels had decided to give up his council job and help his mother run a grocery business, but his fame as a magician was growing and he was being offered bigger and bigger gigs. He then attracted the attention of the producers of the talent show Opportunity Knocks, appearing in one episode, which led to an appearance on an ITV show called The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, a variety show that sought to recreate the atmosphere of a real working men’s club; he was a success and was asked back.

The real turning point in his career was 1978 when he appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium and the Royal Variety Show which led to an offer of his own show from the BBC. It began in 1979 and ran for a total of 15 series, finally finishing in 1994. Daniels also did several game shows for the corporation: Every Second Counts, Odd One Out and Wipeout.

His long-running BBC series, called The Paul Daniels Magic Show, was a mix of magic and variety acts and over it years it became famous for a number of audacious tricks, including a kettle that poured out any drink the audience asked for and the vanishing elephant. It also caused controversy in 1987 when a trick inside an Iron Maiden-style steel trap appeared to go wrong with Daniels inside it. It was a trick of course, but there were many calls to the BBC from people concerned that it was real.

By the early 90s, Daniels was falling out of favour at the BBC and the show was eventually cancelled and he and his wife returned to the theatres. In 2011, at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre, he recreated many of the tricks of the Victorian magician The Great Lafayette, who died in a fire on the site in 1871, and the same year had a sell-out show at the Edinburgh Fringe. In 2010, he also appeared on Strictly Come Dancing.

Daniels had a reputation as a difficult person to work with and accepted that his blunt way of working was not to everyone’s liking, but he insisted it all came from a desire to get things right. He also had a difficult relationship with one of the sons he had with his first wife Jackie, also called Paul, who served time in prison for fraud. He had two other sons, Gary, and Martin - who also worked in magic and was a presenter of Game for a Laugh.

In February 2016, Daniels announced that he had been diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour. He is survived by his second wife Debbie McGee, whom he married in 1988, and his three sons.

MARK SMITH