Some magic sent by Mike Cotton

Here’s an on-going story. Cameraman Doug Watson appeared long ago on the Paul Daniels show in a trick in which his camera disappeared, and recently (2003) it was repeated on Channel 4.

Here’s what happened.

Paul explains about how people think he cheats and uses camera tricks

Pick a camera, any camera…

Doug takes his camera into the box

Goodbye, Doug’s camera.

Picked up by fork lift, camera still cabled and working (bottom left)

abracadabra, or similar – camera picture fails

Box sides open to reveal no camera.

…only a mystified Doug

I was impressed then, and I’m still impressed now. People are rude about Paul Daniels, but he’s a superb illusionist, and I have no idea how he did that one, or the disappearing elephant in the field. Doug says there were no editing tricks, and only one pickup, because he couldn’t get the camera into the box.

So how was it done? I have no idea, but Doug does, and he was never sworn to silence, and never got a repeat fee…

 

Postscript

In September 2025 a video of the Paul Daniels “Disappearing Camera” trick surfaced on the internet. The complete performance of this trick is contained in the available video segment – although it was actually part of a longer piece of business. The video fills in the gaps in Mike Cotton’s picture sequence above. The available source was of poor quality – low definition and blurry – and the manipulation to load it into the BBC Tech Ops website (file capture, conversion and compression) has not helped! It is certainly worth watching, however: please click on “Play Video” below to see it.

         

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