Chats magic! Oliver Tabor and Michael Vadini to cast spell over Clapton venue

Oliver Tabor, who will be appearing at Chats Palace as part of the magic event

Award-winning Oliver Tabor specialises in classical magic shows combining theatre, mime, comedy and audience participation.

He can swallow sharp razor blades, make a cage of birds transform into a white cello and will be performing a brand new trick that has taken him four years to create and perfect.

He is inspired by the showmanship of old-school magicians such as escapologist Harry Houdini and the bullet-catching Chung Ling Soo.

“Magic can be an extremely beautiful and visual thing to watch,” he says. “The greatest part of my job is seeing the expressions and reactions from the people I perform to. It’s such a great feeling to give people something a little different to what they experience every day.”

Michael Vadini is the other performer of the day. A popular magician in France, he has performed for a bevy of celebrities: from Jacques Chirac to Johnny Hallyday in France, and from Sean Connery to HRH Prince Charles in the UK.

It isn’t hard to see why he’s popular: he can make fire and smoke appear from his fingers, fashions soap bubbles filled with objects out of thin air, and when he drinks champagne, it never ceases to flow.

But such tricks are not easy to learn: it takes Vadini from three to five months to learn a new one.

“Magic exists and you could see it everywhere and every day,” he says, “but you just have to find it.”

Tellingly, his idols are not stage illusionists at all, but artists like Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini and Frederic Chopin, “because their work and art is, for me, completely magical.”

Oliver Tabor and Michael Vadini will perform at Chats Palace, 42-44 Brooksby’s Walk, E9 6DF, on Saturday 8 June.

Tickets £5. Buy them at Hop Toy Shop on Chatsworth Road; email info@jasminesmagicparties.co.uk or call 07870 215675.