There's a very good reason why uh casinos make us use these as opposed to real money, and that's because we have far less of an emotional attachment to them. And therefore we're not as bothered when they disappear.

I'm here with the fabulous James More. Great to see you.

Hello.

Fabulous. That's a nice compliment.

Hello.

I love your accent.

Thank you. Trying to do it now. Thanks, my mother.

Hey, should we jump in and talk about your mom since you brought her up?

Yeah, sure. Why not?

Um, you got a tat. You said sorry mom on your Instagram.

Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah.

You apologize?

I got it here. I got it here. I actually got it in LA. I waited. I wanted to get it in New York. Um, I'll show you it.

You got it in LA?

It's a tree. This tree represents my life and this is the bird cage at the bottom of the tree. And amongst the branches of my life is a sign saying Broadway, so that is what the big achievement is.

And you had the highest grossing magic show of all time on Broadway.

And there's a bird there. You can touch that if you like. You can touch that after I said that. Yeah.

Um, so how old were you when you first got involved in or knew you wanted to do illusion magic?

Uh magic, I started when I was about eight, but I didn't really take it seriously. Um, I I was doing all sorts of things. I was juggling. I was I had a puppet. I was doing ventriloquism. Um, and I really

Can you do it?

No. Not very well at all, but to the standard of an 8-year-old, maybe. But um, I entered my school talent show. Really, I just put a magic trick in to fill fill the time because I needed a certain amount of time, and I didn't have enough, so I made a trick out of a shoe box and with a deck of cards. It wasn't very good.

What was it? What did you do?

Uh, someone picked a card. I put the cards in the box. I stuck one of the cards to this this gummy stuff. Shook the box around. They didn't know the card was stuck there. Reached in, pulled out one card. It was their card. It wasn't very good, but it was creative.

Sounds about like what I could do about at this level right now. About this. About now. Yeah. As an adult.

I'll give it to you later. You can have it. Put it in your repertoire.

Can you juggle really well? How many things can you juggle at once?

I can juggle, actually. I can juggle four balls. That was it. I stopped at four. Yeah, but I can do some tricks. I can do like under the leg.

Any other hidden talents?

A few, but not that we can mention on camera.

Really? Oh, gosh. Can you give us a hint?

No. Not on this side of the morning.

Well, I know you do a lot of extreme sports. I saw some of that on your on your social media.

I had this phase in my life where I was kind of searching for myself, so I decided that I'd just start doing things that I wouldn't necessarily want to do. So I started jumping off stuff. It's like, I got into paragliding and skydiving, and and going and visiting tigers and all sorts of weird experiences. But I it was just a period in my life where I wanted to just do things that I wouldn't normally do cuz I'm very safe, and obviously, within this industry, we're always very concerned about how we're coming across, and I just wanted to feel more like me. So, yeah, I started started just trying out different experiences, and I didn't necessarily enjoy them, but

Was the craziest thing you did?

Feeling myself. Probably the the tiger. I went when I went to Thailand, we went into this this cage with a tiger. And I I don't know whether the tigers were sedated. I don't know if they were or not, but but it's a wild animal and you can never never control it. And and and after I came out, they told me that that about a year before the tiger had actually killed somebody, and if I'd known that information before I went in, then I probably wouldn't have done it.

Wow.

But it was great. It was like a fantastic experience, you know, being that close to to a wild animal.

Yes, it went well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it went well.

So, I know your show on Broadway. You had a lot of really incredible people come to see the show. Jerry Seinfeld, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese. When those kind of people are in the audience, do they tell you ahead of time, like, so and so's going to be in the audience? Do you spot them with, you know,

Mhm. Sometimes they tell us. Sometimes, like, we had William Shatner come backstage and meet us all before the show.

And how was he?

Fractured a magic pun. But

Did he? What was the magic pun?

Just something to do with we should all go and uh disappear at some point. And I felt like saying, beam me up. But, you know, you should know better. You should know better. But, yeah, he was lovely. He was lovely.

You guys are like rock stars now too. You have groupies at this point?

We do. We do.

You're You're sorry, but you're like hot magicians, so

Well, you know. We don't We don't have mad like One Direction fans, but we get We get the occasional middle-aged like man or woman who's a bit of a crazy stalker. Yeah, that that does happen.

A man or a woman who's What's been uh any fun stories of people?

Yeah, I've been sent some parcels before, and uh I let the costume ladies open it in case it was like anthrax or something. So, yeah.

What's in the parcels, James?

Well, a guy sent me like English teas, obviously, because I'm British, I obviously like English tea. Um, which is true, actually, I do.

I would be remiss if I didn't ask you to perform a trick or an illusion today. Do you have anything that you want to show us?

Okay. So, here's the idea. In my pocket, I've got a casino chip. We're going to show the guys that on the camera. We'll get a good shot of that. This is actually worth $10,000, and it was given to me by the Queen of England. At least, that's what you called yourself. Take hold of that. I've also got a pen in my pocket. You can be the girl.

I guess I can be the girl.

You can. Oh, look at that. Beautiful assistant.

Thank you. Perfect.

And take hold the pen. Put your initials on both sides of that chip for me, please. Uh that's just a so that you'll remember it if you see it later on and also the guys at home.

See, I'm a natural born assistant. Showing you both sides.

You are, but you're hogging too much of the light.

Oh, sorry.

There's a very good reason why uh casinos make us use these as opposed to real money, and that's because we have far less of an emotional attachment to them. And therefore we're not as bothered when they disappear. Also, we're therefore far more likely to reach into our pockets, take out our purses or our wallets, so that we can place another bet. And that's why I don't actually keep money inside my wallet. Inside here, I actually keep another much smaller wallet. It's pretty practical, right?

Too much wallet?

And guess what I keep inside here?

Too much wallet? Sorry.

No, no, you're fine. You can help a bit. Um, and guess what I keep inside here?

I wouldn't ever hazard a guess.

It's actually another much smaller wallet.

Can I keep the wallets? They're pretty.

You can. And I'm sure I'm sure some of the ladies in the room will tell you that uh the best items come in the smallest packages.

Not always. Not always. No.

So, I'm going to open this up.

I beg to differ. This is becoming quite

So, sorry. I can't help it. You set me up for that one. Okay. Open that up. Have a look inside. Make sure there's no slits in the wallet.

I could say something, never mind. What is this? There we go. And turn it round. Make your no back. And make your initials on the other side as well. Make your no back. Nickie, no chance. No back. There you have it. You are wonderful. I'll give you the queen's clap. Thank you for coming in. This is a pleasure. Can I keep this and go to Vegas?

No problem. You can.

Is it really worth $10,000?

You can take it to the nearest casino. They'll tell you exactly what you can do with it.

Oh. I have a feeling it's not a good answer, is it? Were you lying about the $10,000?

I was lying.

There goes my Chanel bag. So, right.