Despite the fact he is associated with Chris Moyles’s Radio 1 breakfast show, there is a great deal to like about Chris “The Magician” Cox, whose show is driven by auto suggestive promptings than blinding illusion.
A slick bit of video introduces our fresh-faced host, who by his own admission looks potentially a decade younger than his 24 years. He immediately gets among his intimate audience to establish the principle of participation.
His device for doing so is the ferret of fate, a cute, cuddly bean-bag creature which gets tossed around the room like a rowing boat in a force-10 gale.
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A swift calculation of how many people are in the audience divided by the number of times this happens reconciles you to the fact that the chances of avoiding getting dragged on stage are minimal – and so it proves.
Up close, Chris still looks terrifyingly young, but commands his stage like an old hand guiding the stooge into the correct position for the illusion. To be honest, it still just feels like being the victim of a very slick school prank.
Altogether more impressive is the show’s finale, where Cox is so certain of subliminally influencing his crowd to say what he wants them to say, it has been recorded on DVD.
What he does is technically very impressive, yet the way he does it would benefit from a little more mystique, a whole lot more showmanship and less rearranging of furniture on stage.
