A couple have come up with a magic cure for sick children, proving laughter really is the best medicine.

Max the Magician and his sidekick Millie, real names Paul and Sue Leacy, often pop into hospitals in Brighton to perform their tricks and raise a few smiles.

Full-time magician Paul, 46, had been performing card tricks in hospitals for the last two years and his wife Sue, 45, a senior nurse, sometimes does them to distract children while they have blood tests and injections.

Paul, of Vernon Terrace, Brighton, said: "It really gives the children a boost. You see them lying in their hospital beds feeling sorry for themselves and the difference it makes is astounding.

"I think it's a privilege to be able to perform for them. Time is very precious to some of the children because you don't know what their final outcome will be.

"They do say laughter is the best medicine and that's what it is all about really. I try and make them smile."

Paul described how Sue used to do a quick trick for frightened children before going on to do her procedures.

He said: "Normally in a hospital, they will have someone to administer the needle and someone to distract and Sue just found magic was the best way to distract.

"She still does it a little bit but obviously her priority is always the care of the patients."

Paul first began experimenting with magic when he bought a magic box after watching his cousin perform.

He practised his tricks and then took them out on to the streets of Birmingham, although he was not initially successful and almost gave up.

He said: "It was a great place to learn because when I started no one would watch because I wasn't doing it right and just at the point when I thought maybe I wasn't cut out for this, someone came over and said: 'Do you do card tricks?'.

"I realise now my strength is in doing close up magic and before I knew it, a crowd had gathered and it just seemed to work. I gained confidence.

"There is a lot of dedication involved. One of the card tricks I do I have been performing for more than 25 years and I still try to improve it.

"It takes a lot of performing to get the confidence so if things go wrong or people are difficult you know how to deal with it.

"The real secret is to set yourself six tricks and practise them so you can do them with your eyes shut."

Paul, who gave up his job as a civil servant in September last year to concentrate on magic, met Sue at a magic convention in Eastbourne in 1996.

"I reached a point where I realised magic was more important to me than a steady office job and I'm glad I quit. Sue is great and supports me 100 per cent.

"I met her because she was interested in magic. We met in a coffee bar and by sheer chance I asked her what tricks she did.

"She showed me and I was very impressed. With that I decided to move down here, then we got married.

"It was really the magic that brought us together. If it wasn't for the magic we would never have met. It's a shared interest."

One of Paul's favourite tricks is the three cups and a ball because it uses almost every technique in a magician's repertoire, making the balls miraculously jump from cup to cup or disappear.

He said being a magician was what he always really wanted to do and he never intends to stop.

"I will perform until I drop - I will never retire.

"I have always wanted to do it and I will perform the magic for whoever wants to watch."

For information about Paul's and Sue's shows, call 07715 056556.