It’s a kind of magic

Married to his glamorous assistant “The Lovely”

Debbie McGee for more than 20 years – and more than open about their healthy sex life – the 73-year-old magician is an easy figure to ridicule. And that’s before one gets to his outbursts on current affairs, which recently included “water cannons filled with bright, non-removable marker paint” as a solution to the UK riots in August.

But it’s Daniels who seems to be having the last laugh. His 1980s TV shows paid for sports cars and a country house, and he still loves his work three decades later.

When we speak, he’s just returned from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where his show won praise from even the most cynical of comedy critics. Hang on – when did he become a comedian? “I’ve always been a comedian. Even when I did the working men’s clubs, I did comedy. But the BBC, in their wisdom, would say, ‘Oh no, you’re a magician – you have to baffle them.’ They missed the whole point.”

He scooped the Worst Joke of the Fringe prize for: “Is there a B&Q in Henley? No, but there’s an H-E-N-L-E-Y.” Did that dissuade him? Did it heck. Daniels maintains it’s a cracker. “The major media were saying, ‘Oh dear’ but all the other acts said, ‘Congratulations Paul, well done.’ The one that won has been on the internet for five years! I don’t know who decided that was the best joke of the Fringe.”

He, McGee and Daniels’ son Martin, one of three from his first marriage, are currently touring the show around the UK – “We go Premier,” he reveals, perhaps angling to replace Lenny Henry in the hotel chain’s ad campaigns. “Because we arrive very late and leave early to get to the next date, there’s no point staying anywhere posh.” Admittedly, the endorsement might need a little work. The rabbits – to be pulled from the hat – have their own accommodation. “I have this large carrier for the two of them. People would comment on it when I was walking around Edinburgh and I’d say, ‘Yes, one’s in the show and the other’s its writer.’”

Such old-fashioned tricks (and humour) are still at the heart of Daniels’ act, although he tends to take umbrage at the suggestion his style might be dated. “The fact is, pick a card is pick a card,” he told one reporter. “What else can you do with that? The only thing that can change in that routine is the fashion of the clothing.”

He’s keen to emphasise the spontaneity of his shows, however, which he claims was inspired in part by Rat Pack performer Sammy Davis Jr. “You never knew what he was going to do next. He had secret codes with his musical director and you’d see the musicians scrabbling to find the next piece of music. That’s the philosophy I put into performing magic.” Also, he adds, he didn’t want a repeat of a summer season he once did in Great Yarmouth when he went through the motions so often, he would reach the end of a trick with no recollection of performing it. “I like to keep myself on my toes now. It amuses me when people say I’m so lucky to be doing this job. I work like hell at it.”

Is it not rather stressful touring with your family?

In addition to Martin, also a magician and “king of the cruise ships”, according to his father, they are joined by Martin’s girlfriend Andi Mac, a Radio Merseyside presenter. The ever chipper Daniels claims it’s fine. “Debbie and I have been together for 31 years now and I know people who say they couldn’t work with their partner, but actually you can. You become more of a unit and understand each other better. It’s been very helpful to my marriage – that and separate bathrooms.”

The couple have often been mocked for their 20-year age gap and soppiness towards one another but again, Daniels is unfazed. Or at least, that’s the impression he wants to give – he admits later he is bothered by “personal attacks” in the press, the sort of thing that upsets his or McGee’s relatives.

But in 2009, they thumbed their noses to the critics by stripping to recreate a famous Posh-and-Becks shoot for a national magazine. “There’s that clichéd song, The Wind Beneath My Wings, but when I’m working, Debbie really is, and when she’s working, I am,”

he says. Theirs is an old- fashioned sort of marriage, as those who saw the pair on Channel 4 reality TV show Wife Swap a few years back will know. Daniels has never cooked a meal in his life and McGee buys clothes for both of them. On stage however, he says they are “more or less equals”.

They sound happy anyway. “Well, neither of us expects anything,” Daniels says, “So everything’s a bonus.”

He says he gets more publicity now than in his TV heyday. He sees to that with his Twitter feed and blog – The Life and Times of Paul Daniels, Magician, Bodybuilder and International Sex Symbol – on which he posts about everything from how the rabbits are doing to activity at his magic shop in Wigan, run by eldest son Paul Daniels Jnr.

“Fans like to know about your life,” he says. And Daniels is happy to share – as long as he’s in control. He’s never kept his distaste for journalists quiet. For a long while, he’d joked that for his final trick he’d like to make The Sun disappear. He must have been delighted when the News Of The World folded. “I made a joke in the show about tearing up a newspaper and putting it back together again. I said how last week I tore up a newspaper and it vanished altogether,” he says, adding impatiently, “It was relevant at the time, it’s gone now.”

The nationals don’t understand “the game”, he says. “If they knock people’s heroes – whether that’s me or Jedward – those fans stop reading the paper. Papers used to build up the Hollywood dream when I was growing up. It was always a happy read. That’s gone now and it’s a bit sad because newspapers are losing readers and I’m not sure it’s just because you can pick up news elsewhere.”

So he thinks it’s to do with papers being less reverent towards public figures? “I think it’s a lot to do with the approach, yes.” He boasts of suing five newspapers simultaneously when he was last at the Fringe eight years ago.

“I found out something marvellous too – when you get money off newspapers, it’s tax-free! What shall we make up for you to publish?”

I hastily change the subject with a question about his son, Martin. How did he feel when he said he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps? “Oh yes, I was very happy. I told my three lads, ‘Whatever you want to do, do it, or you’ll regret it the rest of your life. I wanted to be a professional magician when I was 15 and my parents said I had to get a proper job [Daniels worked in local government and then as a grocer]. I’m not saying they were wrong but I didn’t want a proper job. It took me until I was 30 to stop living as society says you should live.” It appears he’s never looked back since.

* Paul Daniels’ Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow is at the Corn Exchange in Church Street, Brighton, on Thursday as part of the Brighton Comedy Festival. For tickets, call 01273 709709. He performs at Worthing Pavilion Theatre on Friday. Call 01903 206206.