STEVE Faulkner performed at the very first Grin Up North festival in 2005 as a street entertainer – but will be indoors when he makes his return tonight at the Lescar.
Back then he combined escapology, juggling, unicycling and magic tricks but these days specialises in close-up magic.
"I'll be doing a bit of that, some sleight of hand stuff, and talking about the world of magic and its traditions," he says. Bei
ng part of a comedy festival it will naturally be a comedy magic show.
He is familiar to audiences at the Last Laugh Comedy Club in the Memorial Hall, where he has been resident magician performing a session at the start of the evening and sometimes doing the warm-up.
Since coming in out of the cold – "for the last couple of years I've been doing very little street work" – Faulkner mostly does cabarets and corporate work, which has seen him perform as far away as Barbados when he and musical comic Jim Tavare were hired to perform at a party in the garden of Jodie Kidd's parents.
With a four-year-old daughter Gracie the lure of travel is not what it was and for the most part Faulkner tries to stay as close as possible to home, which for the Devonian is now Sheffield where he moved five years ago with teacher wife Mandy.
Is there a bit of a renaissance in magic at the moment? If so, Faulkner doesn't seem that impressed.
"Every time magic comes back it seems to be trying too hard. It's as if the people behind the scenes are telling them they have to make it cool, which means it won't be. You've got David Blaine who tries to be ultra cool and another American, Criss Angel, who is the other extreme. They're still stereotypes."
Faulkner likes to stick to the traditional but has to work against people's perceptions. "They think you are going to turn up with whirring bow-ties and silly braces but it's not about that at all."
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