THE GEM Newspaper Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Life’s an illusion for student Tom

A Vale student, who dreams of becoming a professional ‘mind illusionist’, begins a journey across the globe in August – which he hopes will launch his career

Tom DeVoe (20) from Aberthin will begin his globe-trotting trip on August 13, his 21st birthday, and plans to return exactly a year later.
He said: “It is called the ‘Without Borders World Trip’ and officially it starts in London.
“I’ll travel to India, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, the Cook Islands and the USA, performing every step of the way.
“The idea is for everything to be spontaneous, so once in a city I’ll be in touch with newspapers to publicise what I’m doing, and hotels and other venues where I can perform.
“Among many seldom-seen feats, I will work out the PIN number of an American policeman, predict the headline of an Australian newspaper one week in advance, and describe in detail objects from an audience when I’ve got coins on my eyelids and I’m blindfolded.
“To travel the world doing what I love, performing for people across the globe, is the most challenging, exciting venture I could ever have imagined.
“It will be a huge test of my abilities, but I love an adventure and can’t wait to begin the trip of a lifetime.”
Tom, a former pupil at Cowbridge Comprehensive School, is coming to the end of a course in sociology and social policy at Leeds University.
Despite his youth and the audacity of his act, Tom is sure he can make a success of the trip.
“The things I’m attempting are ambitious, but that’s what makes it more impressive. I’m confident because I’ve been developing my skills for seven years”.
Tom uses psychology, suggestion and what he describes mischievously as “more devious methods” to read minds and baffle his audience.
He started performing in the Vale at charity events and has honed his act while in Leeds.
Following a guest appearance on the LSRfm Breakfast Show in Yorkshire, Tom was given a regular slot on the programme, and began his popular weekly feature, Midweek Mindgames, where each week he read the minds of the people in and out of the studio.
Tom hopes that during the year away he will have accumulated lots of material which can be used in the future.
“By the time I return, a year later, at the age of 22, I hope I’ll have lots of videos and stories for my website which will enable me to market myself professionally.”
Like any good illusionist, Tom has one final surprise, and that’s where his unusual name springs from.
“My real name is Tom Evans, but for performing I wanted to think up something new and fresh.
“It was only when I googled it that I found out that the surname actually exists”

Tom’s adventure can be followed on tomdevoeworldtrip.blogspot.com

Here is a copy of a full-page interview in LS2 magazine in Leeds Student written before the trip was booked, and complete with a great out-of-context comments about girls.

Unmasking Magicians
Mystery and intrigue are the cornerstones of a successful magician. In an irreverent attempt to uncover the illusion, Leeds Student tracked down Tom DeVoe, an up-and-coming star, and Paul Daniels, a superstar from the 80s and 90s, to grill them about the art of showmanship…

Third year sociology student and part time mind illusionist Tom DeVoe is about to embark on a year long world tour. Before he goes, Leeds Student jumped at the opportunity to meet a real life Derren Brown-alike for a quick brain boggling…
It’s not as hard as you may think to convene with a world-travelling stage performer, and a few days after signing up to do the interview I was meeting Tom himself. It wasn’t in a darkened corner of an olde worlde public house as I had first imagined, but amidst milling students on a Friday afternoon in the Terrace. As excited as I was to question someone who I thought would be able to answer everything I had ever wondered about magic, I was also slightly scared that I might wake up in the middle of the night humping the washing machine (thankfully there have been no signs of this yet).

Tom has been intrigued by mind illusion since he was young and has been performing on stage and at parties for 6 years now, but surprisingly he only ‘came out’ to his friends about a year ago. He said that from an early age he’d “always be thinking about what others are thinking, and not necessarily in a caring way but that I simply couldn’t help it”.
He decided he could either try and suppress these feelings, which would drive him mad, or he could use them as a form of entertainment for others. This in no way means that Tom thinks he has a gift, or any special psychic ability which makes him different from anyone else. Instead, he describes his talent by saying, “anyone can learn to play the piano but not everyone is going to be Mozart”.

This characterises the witty, charismatic and slightly quirky responses Tom gave throughout my two hours with him and thankfully his strong sense of morals also shone through, especially by his emphatic “no” when asked if he used his powers to get girls – or on second thoughts, was that just part of his game?!

When I asked him why he’d kept his passion such a secret for so long he replied, “there is too much of a stigma attached to being ‘magic boy’ and I don’t like being the centre of attention”.
This seemed slightly strange to me considering he’s planning a world tour, but who was I to argue? Now that his friends do know about his hobby they think it’s really exciting, and a much more assuring explanation for why he’d been sneaking out the house late at night than what they’d come up with. Although, there is a down side to Tom’s unveiling as rather annoyingly for him they now refuse to play him at poker!

His stage show and close-up tricks are similar to the type of illusions Derren Brown does, which involves a mixture of suggestion, showmanship and psychology. He has consciously stayed away from ‘magic tricks’ as he finds creating a connection between people “more entertaining and exciting”.

Tom spends his spare time writing new material and comes up with ideas by either reading through obscure books which reveal the secrets of illusions or working out how the old masters did the tricks and modernising them. Sadly for me, Tom wouldn’t reveal the mystery behind any of his tricks but he did say that most of them involve real concentration, practice and the ability to read people, rather than underhand trickery.

There are also certain perks which come with the territory: “After shows I often have overly friendly girls approach me with their phone numbers”, he says. However, he’s never 100% certain about how the act is going to go and things do go wrong. His first experience of this was when he was in Prague aged 16 and was trying to impress a couple of girls. He got one to close her eyes and be aware of any sensations she felt and then tapped her friend twice on her right shoulder. When he asked the first girl if she could feel anything she described the exact motion he’d performed on her friend and was so scared when Tom told her that he hadn’t actually touched her at all she burst into tears.

This reaction has put him off performing the trick again but usually when things go wrong it doesn’t phase him. Once when he was telling members of the audience what object they were holding whilst wearing a blindfold with coins taped over his eyes he guessed it was a false leg when in fact it was a big Goth’s boot! He says that members of the audience reacted well and found it funny and that they forgot about the small difference as it made the illusion all the more real and believable.

Taking these tricks around the world may be a whole different challenge though as although he hasn’t yet finalised any stops on his year long trip the culture difference and possible language barrier will make his performance all the more tough to execute. He leaves on 13th August 2009, his 21st birthday, and will start performing street shows and using the press from this to attract bigger audiences and secure venues. It’s not all about the illusions though, as like most students he sees it as an opportunity to travel, broaden his horizons and discover more about himself.

You can follow his travels at tomdevoeworldtrip.blogspot.com or join the Facebook group ‘Without Borders World Trip’ as he will update each of these with videos and stories from his performances as he goes. When he returns he hopes to pursue illusion as a full time job, although he claims modestly that he’s “not interesting enough to be famous”.

He finishes the interview by astounding me with a few tricks, the best being when he wrote down the exact time of day I was thinking of whilst getting our photographer to change the time on his watch to the exact time in my mind as well – all be simply looking deep into my eyes. That finished off a pretty spectacular meeting with a very intriguing guy, and I can’t wait to see how his world tour goes.

Words/ Sarah Blower