Oh What A Time... - #128 Magic (Part 2)

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!This week we’re talking about the great illusionists and conjurors of our times. We’ve got the man that pretty much invented the genre Jean-Eugene Robert, we’ve got the much-loved icon of British children’s TV Sooty and we’ve got the main man himself, Harry Houdini.Plus, is trying to work out who won the dad’s race via mobile phone footage basically the same as trying to work out who killed JFK from a single camera shot? The answer is yes. But you can email us anyway: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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What are your initial impressions? Is he sort of raggedy? Does he have a smell? Much funnier in real life. Okay. Oh, yeah? No, he's all right. I've met Kermit.

That's quite cool, isn't it? Have you met Kermit? When did you meet Kermit? He might have met. How am I? No, I haven't. I met, I know. Who am I thinking about?

Do you meet Keith Harrison-Ovill? I have met Keith Harrison, Orville. I saw them. live. Oh no, it's not Kermit. It was, uh, it was, who were you talking about a second ago there, Chris? You were talking about Sutty, sweet. No, I've, I've met Roland Rat. That's who I've met.

It'd be Roland Rat. How can you confuse Roland Rat? I don't know. Is it over Kermit the Frow? It's someone with a hand in his ass. You've met Basil Brush, haven't you, Tom? You surely met I have met Basil Brush, yeah. Oh yeah, I'm wrong, actually. It wasn't Roland, it was Basil Brush. Jeez. Oh my God. This is

It was a boom-boom guy, that one. Yeah, that's the one. Basel brush. Yeah. Hackettie Dog, I've met. I've done live radio with Hackettie Dog. And I will admit that I got elbowed out of it. After about a couple of minutes,

no one cared what I was saying, so I just kept quiet. That's the chart. It's a very chaotic broadcaster. Yes. It's the Johnny Vegas of the puppet world. But I met City. Well, actually through my brother

So my brother, I was a big Sissy fan So's my brother And then, through my brother And then he was half term Such a weird thing You'll never guess he's coming for a drink Who have you invited? Who is it?

Who have you? Oh, he's an absolute nutter My brother got called up on stage And then as we went up To bring him back down off stage It was like in the interval You could have like a picnic with Souti And I got to meet Souttie

For a brief moment But my brother actually had a picnic With Suti And that is so exciting That's so exciting that your brother ended up on stage, though. Yeah, during the interview, they were like, come up here, so these kids' random seat numbers were called out, I think it was.

Yeah. Got to go meet Souty. How's Sissy eating that picnic, out of interest? Is he just sort of looking at it? That's a great question. Just smearing cake one over his face. Yeah, it's not going down, is it? He'd been chewing that burger for a while, haven't you?

The dynamic between Suti Sweep and Sue always used to annoy me. Because obviously, Suti doesn't say anything. hearing speak, he's just whispering. Sweep is just beeping. And Sue has a full vocabulary. Yes. Yeah. And she's quite well spoken.

And I mean, I should probably let it go. Sweep needs to fucking grow up in my opinion. I'm just like, jee, whiz, man. Grow up. Just, the noise just goes straight through your brainstem of sweep, screaming of whatever, because he doesn't want a bath or whatever it is. Yeah, sootie, sweep, and so.

Now, for generations of British children, magic didn't just come from top hats and rabbits. Guys, do you know where it came from? It came from television. Yeah. If you grew up mesmerized by figures like Paul Daniels, like I did, with his famous, you'll like this, but not a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

And he's obviously glamorous assistant and partner, Debbie McGee. What first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels? This is Mrs. Miss Murders, Debbie. been booking on telly once. Great TV. Or the smooth, early television pioneer David Nixon, or the simply unforgettable Tommy Cooper,

who is my granddad's favourite magician slash comedian. Tommy Cooper, the towering frame, the bright red fez, and that distinctive mutter. Tom, to see your Tommy Cooper impression? Just like that. Is that right? That wasn't too bad.

Yeah, that's all right. That's quite good. What's that his catchphrase? He was, wasn't it? Just a. I love Tommy Cooper. Tommy Cooper is my dad's favourite, and I just loved him. Yes, my dad's up.

So naturally funny, just like... Well, I've probably mentioned this on the podcast before. I once read an interview with Tommy Cooper, or it was an article about it, like a piece about him in one of the papers. And because he was so funny, he would try and do normal things, like go to the shop to buy some bread. And he'd, oh, some bread please. And people would just howl with laughter.

And occasionally he was like, just trying to buy some bread. I read it back. I heard that actually became like a genuine point of frustration and anxiety in his life. Yeah. It's like, as you say, just everyday thing, people were just constantly pissing themselves when he was just trying to go about his day.

Just trying to get. I just want to make a sandwich. You can I just buy the bread? I read that when I first started doing stand-up. I remember thinking, God, I'd love that. If literally everything I'd say was funny. It's the appearance, isn't it?

I don't know what it is about. his appearance and the way he acts. I was actually watching a Tommy Cooper clip the other day and he's on stage like on a doing TV and someone just walks into the back of shot and he just reacts to the guy like what's he doing? And the crowd, the audience are just in pieces

at this one interaction. It's better than anything he's able to say. He's just so naturally funny. I think Eric Morecum had a similar ability as well. Eric Morecam from Morecam and Wise had a similar sort of just facial expressions and little... Yeah, facial existence.

It's funny. Some people are really funny, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah, like, clumsy stage presence with a disguised true magician's precision. And of course, Tommy Cooper famously, he dies live on TV in 1984, like people laughing even then as he died, because he's just such a comedic character. They thought it was part of the act, tragically, in 1984. But no magician, certainly no human magician could compete with the enduring appeal of a certain little bear, sooty.

silent, yellow, black ears, always holding a wand, always ready with his trademark, Tom. What was his catchphrase? I did never tell you then. I don't know. I'll give it a guess. What a guess? What a guess? Suttie. Those chimneys need cleaning. What is it? What was it? Elle? Izzy-wizzy, let's get busy. Izzy-wizzy, let's get busy. Of course.

Sutty, Elle, you'll be delighted to hear, was the first non-human member of the magic circle. Is that true? Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. I mean, the hand was humour. Come on. I wonder if Harry Corbett or Matthew Corbett got to go to the Magic Circle events as long as Soutty was with them. Suti gets the plus one. Yeah.

Citi made his television debut in 1955. This actually, like, I always thought Matthew Corbett was the originator of Suttie. So when I found out, as I got older, that Soutty had been around forever and that Matthew called his dad Harry had actually originated the character that this blew my mind. Yeah, family business. Yeah, what a family business. It does pose the question.

You know, when we're retiring, maybe our kids could carry this podcast on. Yeah. You're what a type of family business. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Souty made his TV debut in 1955, Suti on the BBC, before moving to ITV a decade later

in what became the Suti show. A lot of people do that, get criticised. Sooty's really got away with that. Yeah. And that's one of those weird transfers that has actually worked for Sutty in a way that it didn't work for almost anyone else, from Adrian Charles onwards. Yeah.

He's jumped ship. Yeah. He did at Desmond linem, years before Desmond lined him. Druckenet ever got mentioned in the contract negotiations. That's when Des was going from the BBC to ITV. And his age was like, well, you know, it's a tricky one. It often doesn't end well. and Des is like, remember Sutty, there is a precedent.

I've got a genuine question. When Sutty is moved across and he's signing his contract with the BBC or whatever, yeah. Is Sutty signing the contract? Is the hand-in city and is Citie holding a tiny pen and signing the contract as Sutty joins the BBC? Or is Sutty just lying dead on a desk, you know, like this on the desk next to them? And the guy is just going, well, I'll obviously just sign it. Yeah, it's very disappointing. The idea of him just taking Suttie off,

checking it on the desk. The lack of ceremony, signing it and then putting Suti back on. Sicking him on the hat stand. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and then you see Matthew Cawbert in the car park after just lozzing Suti into the boot. Yeah. Now the deal is done. I'm now imagining a situation where they've signed their contract.

It's a big celebration night out, and Suti is in the VIP area at some cool bar near the BBC. and the other guy is just beyond the red rope with his arm underneath there and having to watch Sutty sort of dance and all these attractive people and have a great night. Sutty having a conversation with David Bowie in the BBC book club while. I think I'd love to be in there. Or it's like his massive pisser,

and call bits in the back of a car, but he's like, oh fuck, I forgot Sutty in the clubroom, shit. We need to go back to the Groucho. I'm going to put my money on the fact that he would have been, that just for the performance of it and the fun of it, that Souti would have signed it. The Souti would have been holding a little pen. Oh, for the press release.

That's the shot, isn't it? That's how you announce he's transferred to ITV. Do you know, the history of Souti is amazing, which I didn't realise. So Harry Corbett, Matthew Corbett's dad, had bought the puppet in 1948 in Blackpool, reportedly on the North Pier, just as a toy to entertain his children, which obviously included Matthew Corbett,

who would let it take over. Oh, they didn't design it then? after Harry retired in 1976. Yeah, so imagine that. Like, doing some sort of entertainment for your kid that is so brilliant and good. Like, you're like, actually, there's a TV show in this. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. The puppet that Harry Corbett originally bought was all yellow. And so they added the black paws in the years later because they showed up better on the grainy black and white televisions of the time. Oh. Yeah. Harry Corbett's big break came in 1952 when he and Sutty won a BBC talent competition in Manchester. that led to an appearance on Saturday special, a children's program where Souti played

a ship's mascot alongside characters like Humpty Dumpty and Mr Merlin, the ship's engineer. The show was hosted by Peter Butterworth, who would go on to star in the carry-on film, was an appearing Doctor Who as the meddling monk. By 1953, Soutty had his own regular slot. Suti introduces, and a stage presence, too, appearing at Butler's holiday camps and on the BBC's Whirley gig, and the groundwork was laid for the full launch. when the Suti show arrived in January 1955. He and Suti won a talent show.

Once again, if I'm my hand in Sitty, I'd be saying, no, Suti and I didn't win a... I won the talent show and he's just a thing on my hand. Souttie hasn't won this. I've obviously... I won the talent show.

In about 40 years, there'll be another British entertainer and his catchphrase is, It's a puppy! And that's spot. on, okay? It works because it's true. Exactly. If I take

shitty off and put him on the front seat of my car, the show ends, okay? Shows on. Navigating family matters can be tough. At learners, we understand the challenges you face. Whether you need help drafting a pre-up, filing for divorce, or making support

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The thing about Souti not speaking now is that it makes me realize that the Suti Act is basically a ventriloquist act but the puppet isn't talking. Is it not a cop-out? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, let's not redo the BBC Talent Competition of 1952 or whenever it was.

Um, magic had been a part of Souti's act from the beginning. The tricks soon expanded beyond the screen. You get Suti magic sets in the shop, card packs, annuals, novelty records. If you were a child in the 60s or 70s, the chances were that you had a Souti magic box stashed under the bed or under the Christmas tree. Wow. But Souti wasn't the first magician for children on BBC TV. That honour belongs to Eric Cardi, born in Abereriswit. I never been able to pronounce this, Al U. Abereriswiff. Thank you. In 1913, he was a conjurer on the BBC's Children's Hour in the 1930s, and later appeared on For the Children, which launched just after the war in 1946, well before the BBC even had a proper children's department. Eric Cardi, L? He was from Aberystwyth?

Yes. And I don't know about him. I see that as a personal failure. I cannot believe that this guy slipped through the net. Yeah, it feels like that's big. That's big. That's big for me. Oh, God. My head's gone now. Yeah.

And we've got to be quiet for the rest of the podcast. Cardi came to television via the variety theatres and birthday parties of London. I just love this, like, variety theatre tradition of, like, 60 stars and 70 stars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They all, like, went through these hard, like, basically academies of, like, entertainment. Cardi is a good name as well for a magician, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Assuming you do card tricks.

I mean that's the only I don't mean in reference to like having a buttered up top I mean And that's why Cardi B is such a great pop stock And you've got the magic Yeah

Plus the songs Yeah exactly Yeah it's like an English said to halfbeat Call like Tony Header Exactly yeah Freddy Longball Completely Do you reckon it was nomit to terminism

What would they call it You know There's no way of getting away from it Yeah When BBC television first aired in 1936 he was part of its earliest attempts to bring stage acts to the small screen programs like cabaret which tried to mimic the feel of holiday camps and seaside peers and Eric had a signature style much like Suti he didn't speak he was known as the silent conjurer

look at Elle clearly googling Eric Cardi right now I am so sad that I don't know about this guy and I want to blame my parents why were you not telling me Cardi performed his allusions to music, letting the tricks speak for themselves. But Cardi also had a touch of Houdini and him. He was an escapologist. At his wedding, his best man handcuffed him to his bride and shouted, Get out of that one! Which he didn't.

Sorry, that really made me laugh. He got it. He got out of it. Of course, he got out of it. According to one report, Cardi once freed himself from a locked and strapped box in five seconds flat. Wow. He was known for tricks like... conjuring cigarettes or flowers out of thin air, pickpocketing volunteers and using a so-called magic teapot. Still, it was his Welshness that surprised some London audiences. A Welsh magician,

it challenged stereotypes. Magic, they thought, belonged in music halls, not chapels. But put all these threads together, Eric Cardi, Harry Corbett, Souty, and what you get is a glimpse into Britain's long love affair between magic and children's entertainment made possible not by radio where light of hand made no sense but by the visual wonder of television because magic needs to be seen to be believed. Wow. And in the world of children's TV, few ever cast a spell quite like Souty. Loves it.

Oh my God. What's so frustrated is that I'm trying my best to find him online. I'm getting cardy-be and I'm also getting card factory in Aberystwyth, which is a shop where you can buy like greetings cards. It doesn't seem to be a huge amount of money. him online. The bit that stuck out for me there was the fact he was conjuring cigarettes from thin air which makes me feel like maybe he promised his family he was giving up. I'm sorry I'm trying but I keep

oh no it's another cigarette oh well it's here now isn't it so I might as well I wonder if it's a stage name because it's spelled CIRDI and Cardi is the nickname for people from Keratigion which is where Abra Strith is. Oh. Well, Eric Cardi does have an IMDB if you want to inspect that. I think either way, Elle, you should have known about him. Either way, you're a disgrace. You've let your country down, Elle. It's absolutely devastated me.

Good, with good reason. Like, I'm a mess now. This is my thing. I'm interested in popular culture, and in particular Welsh public culture, and I didn't know about Eric Cardi, the magician from my breast with. Who would have thought? Eric Cardi's greatest trip would be to absolutely buckle L self-confidence from beyond the grave. He died in 1971 and he's just performed his greatest trick.

Exactly, yeah, fair play too. Fifty years in the making. Fifty-five. Fair play, fair play. I mean, I'm googled it. I'm getting some of the search engine stuff. I'm getting things Eric B. Rakeem, the American hip-hip-dop duo.

What has happened to Eric? Cardi, apart from his IMDB. This is absolutely insane, isn't it? He seemed to have a Wikipedia page. Oh, poor man. Fair play to him. Okay, now, no discussion of magic and magic tricks

can possibly avoid mentioning this next person. If you were to name five magicians. Who would you name? David Blaine? Yeah. Dynamo.

Good choice. Dynamo's a great shout. Okay. Paul Daniels. Yeah, Paul Daniels. Yeah, Paul Daniels. I would say Paul Daniels as well. Yeah. Houdini.

Houdini, of course. I do say Tommy Cooper as well for me. That would be my... David Copperfield. Yeah, Copperfield is a good shout, but Houdini's been dead for 100 years. Yeah. Now, Houdini was the stage name of

Eric Weitz, 1874 to 1926, who was born in Budapest, and he emigrated to the US with his family in 1878, right? So he was only a little kid, arriving New York in the 3rd of July. As often happened, the family gained a new spelling on Ellis Island. And so Erich became Eric and Weitz turned into Weiss, this gaining in German what was lost in New Yiddish, because his dad was a rabbi by profession. So the Weiss family soon settled in Appleton, Wisconsin, where Rabbi Weiss was to serve as minister for the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation. Now, in 1882, he lost his post in Appleton, so the family moved to Milwaukee

before severe poverty, compelled to return to New York City to help support the family and to bolster his dad's income. He began to perform. Okay, imagine this, right? You're nine years of age, and your dad is skint. Right. Okay.

What do you do, Chris? What do you do, Tom, to bolster your parents' income? Nine years of age. Paper round? Paperone. Very reasonable answer. Very, very reasonable answer, Chris. What year is it? It would be the 1880s. 1880s. Invent Facebook? Yeah, next.

And they say, when they come up with the internet, this is really going to pay off. No, Eric began to perform as a trapeze artist, Eric the Prince of the Air. He was nine years of age. Wow. Wow. That is one of the most, I mean, we've been doing this podcast for quite a while now. That's one of the most staggering sentences I've ever had to read out, I think. Yeah, yeah. That's remarkable. To help support the family

and to bolster his father's income, Eric began to perform as a trapeze artist, Eric, the Prince of the Air. He was nine years of age. Now, a few years later, by now he's a teenager. Eric was a member of the

pastime athletic club and an enthusiastic long-distance runner. One of his coaches at the club was Joseph Rinn. Prince of the track, he was now, then. Yeah, you'd think he'd do

like the Polvert. A native New Yorker and a fervent opponent of the psychic medium but who's otherwise a member of the Society of American Magicians and so he taught the future Houdini some of the rudiments of magic tricks. So Eric was himself to become a member of the society and as Houdini serves as its president. So he would similarly

take, I didn't know this, he would take up Rind's crusade against the falsehood of mediums. You really disagreed with it. Oh really? A crusade which would ruin Houdini's friendship with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Wow. So was Conan Doyle really into mediums? was he in? Yeah, he was a prominent advocate of spiritualism and seances. How interesting. And believed that Houdini was possessed of a powerful psychic aura.

So Houdini's like, mate, it's nonsense. And Sir Arthur Conan Toz, like, let me believe in it. So other influences on the young man at this time included a travelling conjurer called Dr. Lynne and his first-age partner, Jacob Hyman. Dr. Lynn needs tweaking, I would say, as a start name. Dr. Lynn sounds a bit like Eileen Drury, who, like the spiritualist that Glenn Hoddle took with him to the World Cup. That's what I'm imagining. The pair worked together at Richter's Neckware Factory in Broadway in Manhattan, where Eric was employed between 1889 and 1891.

It's funny to think of someone who became so famous as a conjure at having quite a normal job. Yeah, absolutely. Now the transformative moment was when Eric read Gene Eugenie Robert Hoodin's memoir, who talked. was talking about in part one in 1890 and set about becoming a professional magician. The stage name Houdini was coined apparently by Hyman and the pair discussed Robert Houdin's book in recognition and honour of the Frenchman

and the pair began performing together as the Brothers Houdini. It's such a like a trope of these kind of stage performers that they swap it round. You just call yourself the Houdini brothers but it just sounds a bit more sort of appealing as a stage act, the Brothers Houdini. Absolutely, yeah. Now, for the purposes of the act, Eric, became Harry Houdini,

Harry being an approximation of Erie, the diminutive nickname used by his family and Jacob was known as J.H. H. Houdini. So over time, both men would depart from the act, and so it contained various combinations, not only of Eric and Jacob, but also of Eric's brother, Ferenk, aka Dash, and Hyman's younger brother Joe. All of them took Houdini as a sort of, you know, as a name. Joe Hyman, incidentally, were going to be a high-profile comedian

and had the world's first comedy record to sell a million copies, Cohen on the telephone, 1913. Now, I would love to know if any of that stuff stands up. Or it is all topical stuff, like Archduke Franz Ferdinand. So how many copies did he sell? He sold a million copies. Wow.

So it was the world's first comedy record to sell a million copies, Cohen on the telephone. That's amazing. Now, another of Eric's stage, partners in this early period was the Prussian born, and that area is now part of Poland. Strongman. Emil Javosinski, aka Emil Jaro.

They performed together in a tent on Coney Island for throw money. That is money thrown into a hat passed around at the end of the performance. It's a bit like, I suppose, in Edinburgh at the end of the festival, when you have free fringe, when you have bucket collections at the end of the show. Now, Jaro, as it happens, and recently he arrived in New York from Europe,

where he'd been a strong man in Buffalo, travelling wild west show. Now, in contrast to his later escapology and strongman feats, Houdini's early performances relied on card tricks, a more typical conjuring, because he was very good at that, the sort of material that came from Robert Houdin's earlier magic. Now, over the next few years, Eric worked the vaudeville,

county fair circuit, often on the breadline, but he got his big break in 1890 when he met the stage manager, Martin Beck, who suggested that Houdini focuses act on the thrill of escapology, rather than the more run-of-the-mill conjuring tricks. And so Houdini, the Houdini that made him so famous, was born. It's interesting how there seems to be these steps in magic, as with the chap that I talked about,

where people decide to do something a bit different to separate themselves from the crowd, and then that's what thrusts them to fame. You can see that with, for instance, Blaine in the 90s, how the stuff he was doing was so strongly different to the type of magic that had come recently before that. And the thing with David Blaine as well, there was always an element of risk.

Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. completely. And also I think with David Blaine, he always seemed to be genuinely suffering. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Such a good point. So you're watching, you think, oh my God, this guy's in agony. And this is the thing about Blaine that I find so intriguing is that some of the things he does are not tricks that, like the needle in the arm. Have you seen that trick? No, what's that? Where he basically, I think it was in his last special, where he actually created a tunnel through his arm, like by sticking needles in again and again. and scar tissue would form. So he basically had like a tube through his arm through which he would insert.

Oh, wow. Like a long sewing needle. Oh, well, well. It's not a trick. He's just done it. And like the same thing when he's buried underground and all this. These feats are just bizarre. But I suppose that is a trick, though, isn't it?

Because you're concealing the truth. The trick is by very nature consuming the truth as to how something is happening. So I suppose it is a trick as much as a car trick. But like, he held his breath for 17 minutes. I remember that. You can't fake that. just like, you're watching it, you're thinking, this, this isn't card tricks at a wedding. This guy's an absolute maniac.

Yeah. And the thing with escapology is that if it goes wrong, they're in really, really big trouble. So it must have been absolutely thrilling. Yeah, yeah, completely. So he was constantly innovating, constantly pushing himself towards even, you know, greater feet of escape from packing crates nailed down and submerged in rivers. and also early on he recognised the possibilities of cinema. So from 1906 till 1923, he wrote directed and starred in several films.

Films like The Man from Beyond, Straight Jacket Escape, and a 15-part series, The Master Mystery. Now, early on, these were highlights reels shown to audiences. He could leave a WhatsApp group without you noticing as well. That was his other big thing. He could leave a WhatsApp group without people instantly going, all right, that was wrong with him?

About three weeks later, you go, wait a second, Where's Harry? Where, yeah, he hasn't posted any gifts for a while. Now, early on, there were highlights reels. They were shown to audiences on the road, but they were turned into genuine acting gig. So at one point, Houdini was even cast as Captain Nemo. Sadly, in a film that remained unmade,

it was a film version of 20,000 leagues into the sea. So he embraced cinema. And because he embraced very sort of early forms of recording technology, it allows us to hear Houdini speaking. So there's a clip that we can play of his voice. You know, you can't hear a lot of people who were around at the time, because they weren't being recorded, but he was recorded. Ladies and gentlemen, I take great pleasure in introducing my latest invention, the Watter-Torpecial. Although there is nothing supernatural about it, I am willing to make a profit-stance.

I add $1,000 to anyone who can prove that it is possible to obtain air inside of the process when I'm locked up in it. So like all great artists, Houdini was a difficult character. He made enemies easily. He wasn't one to let go of slights or insults, however minor these slights were, or however they occurred. so he established his own magazine Canjurs Monthly in 1906 which amazingly used its pages as a sort of venue for his irritations

so like an angry blogger but in the sort of early 1900s so unsurprisingly the magazine was short-lived closing to 1908 and able to compete with more established magic magazines like The Sphinx so readers wanted guides to tricks and insights into his celebrity

rather than running battles in print, which is what he was using the magazine for. Amazing. And then there was the matter of his book, the unmasking of Robert Houdin, which appeared in 1908 and sort of proved that Houdini's former idol was a fraud. So this caused

up drawing magic circles. Not that it really mattered to Houdini, he just loved the fuss of it all. Because it was his way of saying, and I am the greatest. But when I think of Houdini, I think of his death. Yeah. Because that is the thing. Like he got... Was it trapped in

barrel or something under water. No, he got punched in the stomach. What? This is another thing he used to do. He used to challenge people, strong men, to punch him in the stomach. Yeah. And someone punched him in the stomach and just basically exploded something. This is my face. He ended up with appendicitis. Yeah. Oh, wow. Peritonitis, he had a swelling in the abdomen, which was possibly related to appendicitis, and possibly related to punches to his abdomen he'd received about a week and a half earlier. Now, Donald obviously wrote about his life. He didn't write about his death. But I remember the death. I was told about it. So this, I will admit, we don't usually use Wikipedia, but this is such a crazy paragraph. I'm going to read it out anyway, okay? So I'm

going to break a rule of this podcast. So the account of the witnesses, students named Jacques Prince and Sam Smilovitz generally corroborated each other. Price said that Whitehead, who was just a bloke had gone into his dressing room, asked Houdini if he believed in the miracles of the Bible and whether it was true that punches in the stomach did not hurt him. Houdini offered a casual reply that his stomach could endure a lot. Whitehead then delivered some very hammer-like blows below the belt. Now Houdini was reclining on a couch at the time, having broken his ankle. Are you kidding? So he's just sitting on a living sofa with his ankle strapped up. This guy starts punching him in the stomach. So he'd broken his

uncle performing a few days earlier. So Price at the Houdini wins to each blow and stopped White Dead suddenly in the midst of a punch gesturing he'd add enough and adding he had no opportunity to prepare himself against the blows. And he did not expect White had to strike him so suddenly and forcefully. He had his ankle not been broken. He would have risen from the couch into a better position

to brace himself. So then he was in a lot of pain. He had insomnia. He was in pain for the next couple of days and then he saw a doctor. He had a fever. He carried on performing, often with a temperature of 104, which is 40 degrees Celsius. And, you know, he took the stage, he passed out during the show, revived, continued, and then he was hospitalized, and he died a couple of days later on 31st of October, age 52.

So it's unknown if the blunt trauma he sustained contributed to his death because although it's rare appendicitis, which follows direct abdominal trauma has been observed, but one theory suggests that Houdini was unaware he was suffering from abendicitis. and then he might have taken his abdominal pain more seriously had he not coincidentally received blows to the abdomen. I don't want to sort of speak ill of the dead, but whitehead sounds like a twat.

Doesn't he? Like, what a bella? Yeah. That is just what are you doing? What a mad thing to do, yeah. What a mad thing to do? Because he did, he did used to sort of, from what I understand, he did used to sort of brace himself and you could punch him and he could take it.

But yeah. I don't know he's got a broken leg in line back on a sofa. If I had broken my uncle and I was sitting on a sofa in my living room and one of you two started punching me in the stomach, it would challenge our friendship. You still working with Chris Skull? No, I'm not actually, because he's absolutely mental. Leathered me.

He punched me till I got appendicitis. That's it for this week. That is magic. Thank you so much for listening. get, if you're, right now you're thinking to yourself, I want even more, oh, what a time. I need some more in my life. Well, guess what that's possible? Two subscriber bonus episodes every month. Some of the things we've covered include Citizens by Simon Sharma. Where else we got? I did an episode on the gory details of mummification

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