The Evening of Deception is a show that I co-organise in a theatre in Cheltenham with Steve Knibbs and Paul Duggan. We ran it for three nights in February and we sold out well in advance, suggesting that live entertainment is certainly not dead! Of particular note was the large number of magicians who came to see the show. It certainly wasn’t expected and was a lovely surprise!

I’m used to performing for magicians and therefore understand their quirks, how they react differently to non-magicians and so on. I’ve also attended enough public magic shows that I know how it feels having the opportunity to watch other performs strut their stuff.

But with each night of this Evening of Deception run, it became clear that that some of the magicians hadn’t had this luxury before as they behaved a little strangely at times. I’ve seen similar behavior at magic conventions and other shows, therefore, would like to make a few suggestions (each one of these is a direct point based on things that happened during our show, or I’ve seen at other people’s shows):

• Don’t take any props with you and definitely don’t perform (or even worse, expose!) tricks at any point before, during or after the show. The performers are there to entertain and you’re there to be entertained.

• If you’re asked to help in the performance, try your absolute best to act like a layperson would. Don’t try to outsmart the magician or show that you’re a magician yourself.

• Don’t whisper to your friends about methods or suggest that you know what the performer is doing. Just let them do their stuff and allow your friends to enjoy the show!

• Don’t ever try to mess up the performer to show that you’re cleverer than them. It’s not smart and denies the rest of the audience the ability to see the planned show.

• During the show, applaud at the right times, act like everyone else … and most importantly, enjoy the show!

This isn’t to brand all magicians as bad spectators; most of the magicians I’ve seen at public shows are courteous, friendly and enjoy the show. In fact, almost every magician that has attended any of my public shows have been incredibly gracious and respectful audience members. Unfortunately, I guess there’s just a few that haven’t learned the ground rules yet!