Every community has its heroes, and in the magic circle, they don’t come bigger than the colossal, charismatic figure of Harry Houdini.

Actually something of a pocket rocket in person, mention of this consummate showman’s name still conjures images of straitjackets and water torture cells decades after his death. But it’s a little-known, fascinating corner of Houdini’s life that Brighton magician Paul Zenon has been exploring between his own performances. Like a part-time Indiana Jones, he’s embarked on a treasure hunt to find the plane in which Houdini – an early aviation pioneer – made the first powered flight in Australia. It’s a journey that’s seen Zenon travel to the other side of the world, and taken in stories of fatally-botched bullet catches and magnificent men in their precarious flying machines.

“After he’d made the flight, Houdini thought it was his aviation he’d be remembered for long after all the escapes were forgotten,” explains, Zenon, who’s lived in Brighton for 23 years.

“He’s such an interesting person, because he was really the first pre-cinema global celebrity.”

Zenon’s quest – which he’s nicknamed Houdini You Think You Are – began when he stumbled across some information that hinted he might be related to one of Houdini’s principal assistants. It turned out to be a dead end, but Zenon’s curiosity became piqued when he found out more about the historic flight the escapologist undertook at the evocatively-named Digger’s Rest outside Melbourne in March 1910.

He began to wonder what had become of this fragment of Houdini history and, after doing some digging of his own, found the last mention of the plane in 1913, when it would already have been rendered obsolete by the frenetic pace of the young aviation industry.

“Houdini signed the plane over to a British guy called Donald Stevenson, who I discovered was actually an aviation engineer who also worked as prop builder to a magician called Chung Ling Soo.

It’s a bizarre twist in the tale because Chung Ling Soo was an extremely famous and wealthy magician who traded on being Chinese but was actually American.”

William Ellsworth Robinson went so far as to sport a pigtail and employ a translator to maintain his Oriental mystique, but was shot and killed performing the so-called “bullet catch” trick. Zenon has come to believe over months of digging into the paperwork that either Stevenson or fellow aviation nut Chung Ling Soo kept Houdini’s plane. Remarkably, it seems Stevenson – an unsung hero of aviation – took his own pioneering aircraft designs to the British Government, but was talked out of patenting them and placing them in the public domain where other nations in a tumultuous Europe could take advantage of them.

Zenon’s now perilously close to finding the potential resting place of the aircraft, which he think ultimately stayed with Stevenson but he’s wary of jinxing his efforts by giving too much away. He’s visibly excited about the journey so far, which recently included a trip to Digger’s Rest to help mark the centenary of Houdini’s flight. He visited the field where it had taken place, and spoke to local aviation enthusiasts in the hope of finding out more, recording interviews for the radio documentary he’ll make on the quest.

“There’s still the possibility of creaking open a barn door, Indiana Jones-style, and finding chickens roosting in the cockpit,” he says.

“But at the end of the day, it’s unlikely it still exists, partly because this was so soon before the First World War, when all civilian flights would’ve been grounded and something made of out so much wood and canvas would probably have been re-used. I was talking to a guy in Australia who’d been looking for an historical biplane for ages before he realised it had been staring him in the face all the time because someone had turned it into a garden shed. But I’m still hopeful I’ll find a propeller nailed to a pub wall somewhere.”

Zenon has long been fascinated with Houdini and the world of stagecraft he represents. As a kid in Lancashire he got a job working at a joke and magic shop in nearby Blackpool, and he says these formative years among “card tricks and plastic dog poo” cast a long shadow over a career that would later see him combine elements of stand-up and magic. His formative influences were comics rather than illusionists.

“I think even when I was a kid I was aware the image of magic was quite cheesy and old-fashioned – it was generally people in tail-coats and velvet bow ties.”

Zenon made his own steps into television at the tender age of 15, and has since clocked up more than 300 appearances on magic shows, documentaries, and for the past five years, spots in the fabled dictionary corner on Channel 4’s Countdown. But don’t they just Google all the answers nowadays?

“When I first went on the show I presumed there’d be loads of computer programs and stuff, but they really do it for real,” he laughs.

“There’s a producer there who’s like a genius in his own right who usually beats the contestants. I love doing the show. It’s got quite a family feel to it, like a cottage industry, whereas TV as a whole can be very cut-throat.”

Much of Zenon’s time in recent years – while he’s not been chasing whispers of Houdini around the globe – is spent on his own live shows, one of which he’s brought to this year’s Brighton Festival Fringe.

“It’s a bit of a departure for me,” he says of Cabinet Of Curiosities.

“I think I’m normally seen more as a stand-up type magician, but this is going to be a lot more of a storytelling vibe. It’s like a Grimm’s Fairy Tales for grown-ups, illustrated with magic.”

The show will also feature artwork from city artist Paul Garner and commissioned music from local songwriter Pete Howells. Performing in his hometown has furnished Zenon with an opportunity to make the most of the weird and wonderful props he’s collected over the course of his career.

“Normally I have to get a one-hour show into a single suitcase, but this time I’ll be able to get all the bigger things into the show. It’s going to be fun, because my garage looks like I’d imagine Terry Gilliam’s loft would.”

* Paul Zenon’s Cabinet Of Curiosities will be at The Brunswick, Holland Road, Hove, May 22 (2.30pm), and on May 29, 30 and 31. Call 01273 782276.