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Published: 28 October 2010
by SIMON WROE

ON Monday evenings, members of a secretive society meet in a Euston backstreet. 

The building where this meeting takes place is known as “The House of 10,000 Secrets”, and its doors on Stephenson Way bear the society’s motto, “Indocilis privata loqui”, which means “Not apt to disclose secrets”. It is a pretty secret meeting. 

This is why, on a re­cent Monday evening, a small man in a bowtie is growling at me in the clubroom. “I hate re­por­ters,” he says with just a hint of a smile, grabbing my notebook and throw­ing it on the ground. “Who let you in here?”

The man is Jack Delvin, president of The Magic Circle. I pray for a top hat to disappear into.

“You bastard, you come here and ask for my secrets,” he continues. “The first rule of magic is ‘Never tell your secrets’. Without the mystery there’s no magic.”

For a shadowy organisation, The Magic Circle is unusual. It craves the limelight. Its cardholders dream of primetime television slots and sell-out audiences. 

Since The Paul Daniels Magic Show was axed in 1994, British magic has been relegated to behind the scenes – to the street and the end of the pier. The country’s most popular illusionist, Derren Brown, avoids the word “magic” and is not a member of the Circle. 

Now the Circle is staged for a comeback.

In September the BBC announced plans for The Magicians, a new Saturday evening magic show. In the Strictly Come Dancing format, celebrities will act as the magician’s assistants. Two high-ranking Circle members, Scott Penrose and Angelo Carbone (both sworn to secrecy), will advise the show’s producers.

Despite the promise of long-lost exposure, the mood at the Circle remains uncertain. 

“Magic is at a tipping point,” says Michael Vincent, one of the world’s leading close-up magicians. “The preservation of secrets is no longer considered a commodity.”

The Internet – or “some young punk 18 year-old on YouTube”, as Vincent puts it – has blown the profession wide open. Magicians make most of their earnings by lecturing on their secrets and copyrighting their tricks, not through performing.

“My expert on trademarks is having a baby,” says a concerned Mr Delvin, before he has even insulted me.

For this reason alone the BBC programme, offering “step-by-step guides to give budding magicians an introduction to the art”, could be problematic.

Around the club, men in blazers and elaborate waistcoats are trading secrets. Tantalising snippets carry over the hubbub: “It was an evening of deception”, “It looks like it’s covered in blood”, “Actually a hollow wand”, “Do you prefer bees or bicycles?”, “Is it a production or a vanisher?”, and “I made Stonehenge disappear for Jeremy Beadle.”

To have one of these exchanges, you must be a member. This requires an interview on the history of magic, then an audition in front of members of the Circle. 

Prince Charles is among those to have earned this honour, and his magician’s cup and balls are on display in the building, alongside David Berglas’s floating table, Houdini’s padlocks and Houdini’s clock. 

Nick Fitzherbert, a former PR agent turned magician, is my appointed chaperone, introducing me to people with: “This man is a member of the Press so we want to keep his nose out of anything secret.”

He tells this to Dr Lionel Rush, 81-year-old curator of the Circle’s own museum, who reveals a Hammerson birdcage with a flourish.

“I think you just ex­posed how that trick works,” says Mr Fitz­herbert. “Oh,” says Dr Rush. The secrets of magic have always been spilled. Magicians were keen to divulge their methods for the first book on the subject in 1584, Reginald Scot’s The Discovery of Witchcraft – a primer for county judges who were mistakenly burning its practitioners as witches. 

David Devant, who founded The Magic Circle in 1905, was expelled for writing a magazine article explaining how tricks were performed. He was later readmitted. 

Mr Delvin, a kindly host underneath his illusion of grouchiness, is optimistic about the future of magic. Though many things annoy him – journalists, spillers of secrets, TV’s “one top man at a time” rule that ignores so much talent – he believes the profes­sion will always find an audience. “Magic will be eternal,” he says. “Until someone discovers that there really is magic. Then perhaps we pack up.”

Ali Bongo