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