“Dynamo Is Dead!” - The Heartbreaking True Story Of Why Dynamo The Magician Vanished For Years! (Exclusive)

He’s walked on water, flown and now buried himself alive, but could the greatest magic trick of Dynamo life be his escaping from his demons? Dynamo is a British magician who first entered the spotlight in 2004. His TV series ‘Dynamo: Magician Impossible’ attracted over 250 million viewers and ran from 2011 to 2014, earning him the Best Entertainment Programme award in 2012 and 2013. He became the first magician to headline arenas such as the London O2 and Sydney’s Rod Laver arena. In 2013, he stepped away from the limelight to recover from serious health issues. You can watch Dynamo’s 2 hour special, ‘Dynamo is Dead’, on December 14th, this will be aired live at 9pm on Sky Max and streaming service NOW Dynamo is back! But not as you have known him before… 'Dynamo is Dead' On Sky Max: http://bit.ly/3RHqSWC Follow Dynamo: Instagram: https://bit.ly/4agid4C Twitter: https://bit.ly/3uTAKDH Sonic rest therapy: https://edcanhelp.io/ The Conversation Cards: https://bit.ly/4amtNew Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now: https://smarturl.it/DOACbook Follow me: Instagram: http://bit.ly/3nIkGAZ Twitter: http://bit.ly/3ztHuHm Linkedin: https://bit.ly/41Fl95Q Telegram: http://bit.ly/3nJYxST Sponsors: Huel: https://try.huel.com/steven-bartlett WHOOP: https://join.whoop.com/en-uk/CEO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I can't turn off the noise. And if I saw myself in a mirror, I'd slam my head into the mirror and just keep slamming it to make it go away. That's why I disappeared.

• 0:08Steven Bartlett?

  But it's not the only reason why you disappeared.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Magic couldn't fix me.

• 0:14Speaker 02

  Dynamo, illusionist magician extraordinaire.

• 0:18Steven Bartlett?

  Are you watching closely? Was there a moment you look back on and say that was my rock bottom?

• 0:23Speaker 00

  The 6th of November 2020. Because that was the day when I tried to kill myself.

• 0:28Steven Bartlett?

  Your wife found you unconscious?

• 0:30Speaker 00

  In the dog bed.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  Magic's always been the thing that has given me hope, that I've used to overcome the bullying, overcome the racist abuse and the lack of belief. And it made me stand out in a different way.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  Dynamo! Shout out to my homeboy Dynamo.

• 0:43Steven Bartlett?

  Everything you touch is turned into gold and you become this sensation. And then in 2017, you stopped suddenly.

• 0:49Speaker 00

  I got really sick. I couldn't hold the cards anymore. My body was deteriorating.

• 0:53Steven Bartlett?

  And then at that same time, your grandmother had passed away, who was your biggest supporter. I'd also heard that you'd had a legal dispute, which meant that you could no longer use the name Dynamo.

• 1:03Speaker 00

  I had so many problems that I couldn't figure out how to even solve one of them. I felt if I'm not here, then everybody else might be happier. I realised then that Dynamo as we know it needed to die. And I'm finally feeling it again. Now, I just need to get magic back in my life.

• 1:21Steven Bartlett?

  Dynamo, or should I say Steven, is there some magic you can show me right now? What?

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Oh my god!

• 1:31Steven Bartlett?

  I've never shared this before, but three years ago, Dynamo walked up to me when I was at a Christmas party. I'd never met him before, and he whispered something in my ear that quite frankly stopped me in my tracks that I could not believe. I knew Dynamo as this incredible online magician, and what he said to me that day, I was unable to forget. He was in a dark, dark place. He was engaged in a legal battle and he'd just lost the rights to use his own name. He could no longer call himself Dynamo. He was no longer able or allowed to do magic. And this stranger that had walked over to me at that Christmas party was suffering in a way that I've never seen before. And just a week ago, Dynamo texted me and said,

• 2:16Steven Bartlett?

  "It's finally time to tell my story." And that is what you're going to hear today. The story he whispered in my ear at that Christmas party all those years ago. Where has Dynamo been? What happened? And what happens next?

• 2:39Steven Bartlett?

  Dynamo? Or should I say Stephen?

• 2:43Speaker 00

  We're friends, you can come wherever you like.

• 2:46Steven Bartlett?

  Stephen, in researching your story, I've been surprised, inspired, shocked. But in many ways, it's given me the context, I think, that was missing as to how a man like you committed their life to magic. For people that don't know your story, your earliest years and the context back there in Bradford in 1982,

• 3:10Steven Bartlett?

  what is the context that we need to understand in order to understand you?

• 3:14Speaker 00

  I think ultimately,

• 3:19Speaker 00

  it's the ethos that

• 3:22Speaker 00

  sometimes magic is found in the most unlikely places. And I was a kid in a council estate with no hopes, no kind of, not much family around me, no real direction.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  And if anything, I should never have amounted to anything.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  So for me, just trying to not be confined by my environment, by my circumstances, is the magic I've been searching for all my life. And hopefully, I can use the magic I've now found to inspire others who might find themselves trapped in a similar position.

• 4:02Steven Bartlett?

  Bradford, 1982, you, you said you didn't have a lot of family around you. What family did you have and not have around you?

• 4:11Speaker 00

  I mean, I was, I'd just born, so, you know, I can't remember exactly everything from literally 82. But from, say, 80, from 86, I believe that was when my dad went to jail. So.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  He wasn't around any longer. Um, my mum was there, but she, she had me really young, but she will have been about, she'll have been about twenty then. So a young mum, um, losing, you know, losing her, her partner who would have been raising me with her.

• 4:46Steven Bartlett?

  So your mum had you at sixteen?

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, she was, she was pregnant at sixteen.

• 4:49Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. Was there racial issues in your childhood? Cause I think you, are you biracial?

• 4:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. My father's Patan, my mum's English.

• 4:58Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, Patan, I'm not familiar.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a, it's a tribe. Um, it's, there's parts of it in Afghanistan, parts of it in Pakistan, it's kind of scattered around the world.

• 5:09Steven Bartlett?

  You must have been, what, four years old when he went to prison?

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:12Steven Bartlett?

  Did you understand what that meant?

• 5:15Speaker 00

  No, no, not all. I, uh, I remember him going out and then just never coming back. It wasn't until I was older that I kind of understood that he'd gone away and why he'd gone away and, you know, and I kind of. It's weird.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Like, I was young enough that not having him around became a normal thing, like not having a father, you know, I was on a council estate where other people didn't have fathers around. Or mothers or, you know, a lot of broken families. So for me, it became just a normal way of life. I think if I'd have been a bit older. And had more chance to understand more and miss more, then it would have maybe been harder.

• 6:02Steven Bartlett?

  Did you resent him at that age when you started to realise what you had lost in a father?

• 6:08Speaker 00

  I think if I'm honest, I resented him more as an adult, as I got older, like I resented him more. When I first met him properly after, you know, like when I'm, I'm, he.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  He came to a revolution wine bar in Bradford. And this was when I was nineteen years old. And I'd started to make a little bit of a name for myself with my magic back then, you know, I'd, um. I'd, I think I would apply for like Prince's Trust, Start Up Loan and all that sorts of, you know, I was, I was basically, you know, starting to. Go somewhere that was positive in my life. And I got called by the manager of Revolution saying, oh, there's a gentleman that says he's your dad. Has come to see you, he said, oh, I'm Dynamo's dad. And I'm like, that's weird because like, I don't really feel like I've got a dad. So I'm like, okay, this is strange. And then

• 7:09Speaker 00

  I said, oh, well, just tell him I'm busy right now, but if he wants to come in in a couple of days' time when I'm not working. Cause I was getting ready to do a set at the bar. I perform magic basically in Revolution Bar. And he came back a few days later.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  And I mean, he kind of looked like me, so I kind of knew it was true. You know, I asked my mum about it and she explained, you know, but yeah, he's, he's not in jail anymore. And he's been out and he's been asking about you. I think he tried to call my mum a few times. He'd call my nana's phone as well. And they'd always just kind of, you know, they, they saw that I was getting on with my life and I'd got used to a life without him in it. So they felt that it was best for me to not have him in my life. And then when I met him,

• 7:57Speaker 00

  it was so strange because he basically said that you've, you've got a, you know, you'll see you've got a little crew around you. Do any of your, your friends want to help shift some stuff for me? And when I say stuff, I'm not talking about legal stuff. And at that point I was just like, wow, you know, he's, he's clearly not been reformed and I don't feel like he's the sort of person I need in my life right now. Cause I've spent a lot of my life trying to avoid this type of environment.

• 8:27Steven Bartlett?

  How long had it been since you'd seen him at that moment?

• 8:31Speaker 00

  This was when I was nineteen, so from, say, four years old.

• 8:37Steven Bartlett?

  So you hadn't seen him for like fifteen years and the first time he sees you, he offers to, he asks you to help him shift some drugs?

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, not just drugs, but yeah.

• 8:48Steven Bartlett?

  Trying to figure out what else it could be, if it's not. Okay.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  He was into stuff, lots of stuff, you know, um. And.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  You know, that's, that's the life some people choose, you know what I mean? Like, um, I didn't know him enough to, to, to have a, to be able to say whether he was a good man or a bad man, because, you know, end of the day, just because you do that sort of stuff doesn't necessarily ultimately make you a bad person. It can be the circumstances that lead you into that world. Um, but at the time in my life, you know, I'd been getting some incredible support from MAPPA Youth Centre in Bradford. I basically was surrounded by, for the first time in my life, positive role models from, uh, uh, you know, positive male role models.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  And part of me hoped that when I saw my dad, that he could be one of those. But. I think I was too far gone in the other direction and he was going in a different direction and it just wasn't meant to be. And, you know, like I.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  I think then I just became indifferent. I just thought, well, you know what? I've gone this far without a father.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  So I don't really need one now.

• 10:13Steven Bartlett?

  Resentment. Was that because you were still holding out hope that he was someone else or? Where, where did the resentment come from in that moment? You said that's when you resented him the most.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Because I think he, they, he had in front of him an opportunity to connect with me. And he saw a different opportunity in that moment.

• 10:33Steven Bartlett?

  He cared more about using you as a vehicle to sell drugs?

• 10:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:40Steven Bartlett?

  Are you still holding on to Payne?

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, 100%.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  There's gonna be parts of that, but it'll never be closed off because sadly, he's not alive anymore.

• 10:51Steven Bartlett?

  People often say to me, when I speak to them on this podcast about parents that they've lost, that when we lose someone, it often changes our perspective on them and the situation. And often the issue that held us apart. When your mum came to you and told you that he had now passed away, is there anything you look back on and go with that new perspective now that he's gone and go, do you know what? This would have been a probably a different or a better way of handling the situation. Is there any regrets there at all?

• 11:21Speaker 00

  I can't really have regrets personally because the circumstance I was in was not of my making. You know, I was told by my grandma and my auntie as well, Auntie Mel, they both would tell me passionately how much my mum and dad loved each other. But there was also an element that they said, it's a good job that he went away. Because if he'd have not gone away, it's highly likely that my mum and me would have been dead. Because he was apparently very abusive. And.

• 11:58Steven Bartlett?

  To your mother?

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:01Steven Bartlett?

  Did you ever know this? Did you ever see this?

• 12:03Speaker 00

  No, I was like, I wasn't really, I think it was more before I was born and then, you know, I think, yeah, I was too young to really understand it. Like, my mum has told me about stuff more recently. And, you know, my auntie, as I've been like, you know, uncovering things about myself, like, I've asked more questions.

• 12:27Steven Bartlett?

  What have you been trying to figure out about yourself?

• 12:30Speaker 00

  A lot of things. The last few years, the point in my existence, all in it.

• 12:39Steven Bartlett?

  If we go back to the rest of the context there, from those early years, what were you like socially in school? And were you a, did you like school?

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  I like learning. I like trying to understand things.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  But did I like school? I was scared of school.

• 13:05Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Just because I used to get beat up all the time.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  Like it was, school for me was painful. But it wasn't the learning aspect of it. It was getting to and from the lessons, you know, surviving the playground. Like, that for me was difficult because I went to a school that was predominantly, you know, a more white school, so let's say, and, you know, I was getting to an age where my complexion started to show. So it was obvious that I wasn't full English. So it was a lot harder to hide because I was told when I lived on the estate, you know, I was recommended by everybody, you know, by my mum, by my nan,

• 13:52Speaker 00

  by just anybody who was was close to my family at the time. If anybody asks, just say you're white. You know, it was kind of ingrained in where we lived to hate anything that is different.

• 14:08Steven Bartlett?

  I read about a story where someone threw you into a river.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, the dam. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was, um, so one of the estates I lived on, I lived on quite a few council estates in Bradford, depending on where my mum's boyfriends lived or girlfriends at the time. So, so I remember, there's Delphal Estate and then there's Woodside Estate and separating them is a big massive field. And then in the middle of the field is a dam. And it was where like all the cool kids would kind of go to hang out. And I wasn't one of the cool kids. But like one time I got invited down there. So I thought, oh, amazing, you know, I'm finally being accepted. And when I got there, they only invited me down there to kind of throw me in the dam. They knew I couldn't swim.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  Like I didn't, I didn't have a, an adult to teach me how to swim till, I didn't learn to swim till I was like, you know, fourteen, fifteen. So they threw me in the dam and it was one of the most traumatized experiences I'd felt at that time. Thankfully, there was one guy on the estate, Wayne Jarwick, um, who basically dived in and helped me out. And, you know, he was a really good swimmer. He could, he could um, get me to safety. And, yeah, like, stuff that happened all the time, though. It wasn't like, you know, I can remember that because I couldn't swim. And if you've ever experienced that panic that you get when you, you know, when you feel like you're drowning, that'll stay with you.

• 15:37Speaker 00

  Um, you know, I don't like going, you know, I don't like going into the sea and stuff like that, you know. I like getting into water in general is not my favorite thing.

• 15:47Steven Bartlett?

  You and me both. I can't swim either. So I remember the first time I nearly drowned. And I remember the person that jumped in and saved me when I was a kid as well. Remember it like it was yesterday. So.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. So like, that experience happened, you know, it happened on the way to school, it happened after school, you know. So for me, the, the thought of going to school was always like a daunting notion.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  There were certain teachers like Mrs. Wilcox, you know, like, uh, she was my English teacher and she was really nice. And she was really nurturing. And I didn't feel stupid in front of her. Because in a lot of the classes, when, you know, when the teacher's asking you to get involved, I was so nervous of other people's opinions in the class that if I spoke up, if I, if I had put my hand up to answer a question and it was wrong, then that just was going to lead to more getting beaten up harder after school or, you know, more ridicule. So I kind of kept myself to myself, but at the same time, I was just like this, this like sad loner kid

• 16:58Speaker 00

  who would take the long way home. So I didn't get beat up.

• 17:01Steven Bartlett?

  I remember speaking to Israel Adesanya, who was the UFC world champion. And him telling me a very similar story about taking the long way around school so that he would avoid the bullies on the playground and all of those things. Again, in his situation, it was heavily racially motivated. He was this kid that had flown to New Zealand from Africa. He was the black kid. And so he was, he ultimately turns to fighting as a way to help him survive.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, he's, he's very good at it. I've seen him. He's, he's amazing.

• 17:34Steven Bartlett?

  Well, I, I think about your story and I go, in a way, didn't, did you turn to magic as a way to help you to survive?

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Ultimately, that's where it ended up, but I didn't turn to magic. Magic kind of found me, because it was never something I was into initially. It was something that my grandpa used to do. He'd do tricks here and there, you know, like the sort of things you see a guy doing in a pub, you know, nothing like super amazing. But to me, he was like, kind of the main male role model in my life. And he was always the life of the party, you know, and he seemed to have an answer to every single problem.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  And one day, when he was picking up from school, like he saw the sort of things that was happening to me. And I never knew he'd saw this, but you know, he'd always get to the school playground early. So, you know, so he didn't want to be late for picking me up. And often I'd walk out the door and straight away I'd kind of get in a fight or get, you know, get caught up in something. And he'd kind of stayed back and never really got involved, but he saw it kind of be quite bad one day. And when I was walking home, he's telling me he's gonna like show me some things, you know, that might help me. And I'm thinking, oh, yeah, it's gonna be like Karate Kid, you know, Mr. Miyagi, you know, like, but it wasn't any of that stuff.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  He, he's, he showed me magic and he says, you know, these things, they get me positive attention when I'm out and about when I share these things. So maybe, maybe try these. And I was scared at school about trying them because I'm like thinking, well, I'm already seen as this weird or this outcast. Like how is now, you know, is, is sharing magic with people? Because magic wasn't like a cool thing. Thankfully, it made me stand out in a different way and it deflected attention from me. And there was definitely some people that, you know, shunned it, didn't like it.

• 19:41Speaker 00

  But there was enough people that thought it was interesting and, you know.

• 19:46Speaker 00

  Kind of, kind of cool that it got people on my back. That was really where the magic began properly. That's before that point.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  It was, you know, it was something that I was using to deflect attention from the other areas of my life that I was trying to hide.

• 20:09Steven Bartlett?

  It's um, it's quite remarkable how many times I've heard similar stories about someone finding a way to belong through a craft or through singing or through acting, whatever it might be. And then them committing their life to that. It's almost like they become addicted to it in some way. And it, I guess the issue is when you ask yourself the question, what am I now without it? Do I therefore not belong if I don't do magic?

• 20:38Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Yep. I know that feeling all too well.

• 20:42Steven Bartlett?

  I'm sure we're going to come to that. Um, about thirteen years old in ninety five, you're diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which is very young, I believe, to be diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which is a lifelong disease. Um, it's like a severe inflammation related to irritable bowel syndrome, from what I understand.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:00Steven Bartlett?

  And it can be life threatening as well.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Um, I've had a few moments where I've had life, like life threatening operations.

• 21:08Steven Bartlett?

  How does that change the picture at thirteen years old with that diagnosis? And what led up to that diagnosis?

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Well, before the diagnosis,

• 21:19Speaker 00

  I'd got to, you know, my teenage years where you, you know, you kind of start to have changes, right? You're going through puberty and I was definitely like a bit of a slow start. I was still, you know, all the kids at school were getting bigger and I was getting smaller. Or I wasn't getting smaller, but they, they were getting bigger and I just basically wasn't really kind of

• 21:40Steven Bartlett?

  Growing.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  growing at the same rate. And my mum started to take me to the hospital to get tests done to try and figure out, you know, what was up with me, which.

• 21:54Speaker 00

  I understand why my mum would do that. But at the same time, for a kid who feels like they don't belong, to then be taken to hospital to have tests done on me to figure out what's wrong with me. Like, suddenly I'm like, whoa, all right, I don't belong and I've got something wrong with me. I mean, this is, you know, like, what is the point in me, you know? Am I broken? Do you know what I mean? So, I mean, there clearly, there clearly was issues. And they found that I had Crohn's disease.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  And I guess now I feel that's quite, it's an incredibly good thing to have done. The problem was back then, there wasn't enough known about Crohn's as there is now.

• 22:49Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  The doctors understand it a lot more. They understand how to treat it. And people are a lot more open to, you know, to it. You know, essentially, it's an illness that affects your bowels, which ultimately affects, you know, shit and, and how your body digests things. And that's not the sort of topics that, you know, are that easy to talk about. Especially when you're, you know, a teenager going through your formative years, you know.

• 23:21Steven Bartlett?

  Is there a lot of pain associated with Crohn's disease?

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stomach cramps, you know, I mean, if I don't take my medication, I'm on at the moment, I can struggle to walk or to even get out of bed.

• 23:34Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 23:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's like having a, a wound inside your tummy. And it's like an open wound. And every time you eat, you're essentially, it's like rubbing dirt into that open wound. So it's never going to heal. It's going to constantly keep getting infected and it's going to constantly keep being inflamed. And because it's inside you, like, you know, your gut affects every part of your body, you know? So, and then.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  It has side effects, which one of the side effects is reactive arthritis, which is what I suffer from, where if my Crohn's flares up, which can be brought on from simple things like just everyday stress, you don't have to just eat something for it to be bad. You can have a stressful day and it can give you a stomach ache, which then can ultimately spread to the rest of your body and make you feel debilitated. And that, if you've got reactive arthritis, it means that all your joints start to seize up and ache, hence why sometimes I struggle to walk and kind of function. And you kind of need your mobility to be a good magician. So for me, when that happens,

• 24:48Speaker 00

  it stops me from being able to perform the way that I've kind of gone to love.

• 24:54Steven Bartlett?

  And that will then have knock-on effects to the psychological?

• 24:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. And every case of Crohn's is different. It affects people in different ways, but ultimately, yeah, imagining having stomach ache just all the time and being scared to eat because you don't want to eat something and it wipes you out for the rest of the day.

• 25:17Steven Bartlett?

  So you go to this new sixth form college, you end up dropping out of college because you decide you want to pursue magic full time. And then you go off to America, where you stayed with your grandmother in America. By the age of 17 years old, you have that operation for your Crohn's, which removes part of your stomach. And then at 20 years old, you end up back in London. And that's when you started to gain a following for your performances online. I think most of us saw that chapter of your life, I believe, most of us, through videos on social media, stuff on TV and all of that. And from there on, it really looks like your career starts to take off.

• 26:00Steven Bartlett?

  Because I was looking through your biography and at 22 years old, you receive an invitation to perform at the United States Super Bowl. By 29 years old, you have your own TV show called Dynamo Magician Impossible. And then that show's a smash hit, wins all these awards, best entertainment programme. Is that really in your view where things started to take off? You're 29 years old, 30 years old, everything you touch has turned into gold and you become this kind of sensation?

• 26:29Speaker 00

  I guess that depends on what you class as like, what is success, right? Because for me,

• 26:39Speaker 00

  the beginning of success, where things started to take off, was when I got my Prince's Trust business style blown. You were what, when you were 16 or something? No, I was a bit older. It was 2002. So you're 20. Mm-hmm. Like before that point,

• 26:57Speaker 00

  I thought one day I'm gonna have to grow up, or one day I'm gonna have to get, you know, like... A real job. Yeah, yeah. People say, right? Yeah, yeah, you know, I think right up until, you know, right up until like, my grandpa died and my nana passed, you know, I think they were still thinking that I might get, come home one day and say, "Oh, I've got a proper job, man." When was that? My grandpa died in 2012, right? And he died in the middle of my second series of Magician Impossible. So he got to see some of his, like, the way he nurtured me and helped me and shared that magic.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  He got to see some of that magic get brought to life on screen. So that's probably one of my proudest moments. But then my nana, sadly, she passed in the last couple of years. I don't think, I don't think anybody really knows about my nana passing, outside of, you know, my family and my friends.

• 28:01Speaker 00

  And

• 28:03Speaker 00

  for me, like, my nana was my biggest supporter for everything. But I know that she was always worried about me because she always thought that this magic thing wouldn't work out and she wanted me to have something to fall back on. You know, when I dropped out of college to pursue magic as, you know, as that's just all I wanted to do, you know, she was very worried. She was, she was the one trying to tell me that I should not fall out. I need to get, you know, get an education. And in many respects, you know, the advice she was giving was, you know, was good advice. But...

• 28:40Speaker 00

  Luckily, things kind of turned out all right for the, in the magic.

• 28:47Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, it turned out all right is quite an understatement. You were magician of the year multiple times. The TV show Magician Impossible then won the TV Choice Awards as best entertainment show. You ended that Dynamo's Magician Impossible show after its fourth season, season, I believe. And then you barked on your first live tour called Seeing is Believing. And then when you're thirty five years old in two thousand seventeen, you stopped that tour suddenly.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the the tour kind of ran its course. We we do it. We we did over like, you know, we we did a lot of countries and a lot of tickets and it was amazing. You know, I'm I like trying pushing the envelope with magic and with everything I do. And I felt like that time on the road gave me time to have a lot of new ideas. And I felt like I wanted to try and bring some of those ideas to life. But some of those ideas had to get put on hold because it was shortly after that that I got really sick with my Crohn's.

• 29:48Steven Bartlett?

  What happened?

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Just got food poisoning and that gave me a campy little bacteria food poisoning, which basically is like probably the worst type of food poisoning you can get. And that combined with my Crohn's was a recipe for disaster. So basically, I was in hospital. I I just remember

• 30:12Speaker 00

  it was like ten o'clock and I was getting ready to go to bed and I went to the bathroom. And I had this like horrible feeling in my stomach, but I've got Crohn's. So like I'm used to kind of having to numb these these feelings. You know, I'm used to just thinking, oh, okay, it's going to be uncomfortable for like half an hour and it'll pass, right?

• 30:33Speaker 00

  And it wasn't going away and then suddenly like blood was coming out of my mouth. I was vomiting, I was, blood was coming out of both sides, right? That's, yeah, uh, and I didn't know what to do. Like it wa- it wouldn't stop. I was in so much pain, um, I was screaming my wife, like, and literally I got rushed to hospital. And they gave me, you know, they gave me all the medication to try, you know, they put me on the drip and the morphine, everything and nothing was getting rid of the pain. I never felt a pain like it and I just did not understand what it was like. And what, because of that, it caused my Crohn's to kind of,

• 31:16Speaker 00

  even I had so much of my Crohn's cut out already in the previous operations. It caused it to spread into a different part of my bowel. And from that came the reactive arthritis. Because in the part of the bowel that it moved to had different side effects that I'd never had before. Like, I remember like just getting these sensations where like, you know, I'd got kind of over the, you know, a few months later, I'm, I'm over the like food poisoning element of it, you know, I'm, I'm out of hospital, I'm kind of, you know, trying to get on with my life. But I'd be holding my cards, you know, I'd be doing, you know,

• 32:01Speaker 00

  magic, like things that, you know, stuff that I do in my sleep, right? But suddenly I was getting like shooting pains in my joints and I was, it was like electric shocks. I was like, I couldn't hold the cards anymore. I was struggling to move, you know, like I'd be in a seat and I wouldn't be able to get up because like my knees would be like, like stuck. And I'd never had that experience before and I.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  I suddenly felt like Mr. Burns, you know, from The Simpsons.

• 32:30Steven Bartlett?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  You know, like, he seems really, like, frail and weak. And I felt like I was, you know, I was, I wasn't old, I was like, I felt like I should be in my prime. You know what I mean? And I couldn't understand it. I felt like my body was deteriorating around me. And so I went basically on medical trials for the next few years. Um, and the thing is with medical trials is that when you try a new medicine, you have to try it for three months before the doctors will write that off as not working and try on a new medication.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  But there was times when I knew within the first two weeks it wasn't working. But I had to go the full three months. And in those three months, you know, my symptoms weren't getting better. If anything, they'd get worse. And it, you know, it wasn't till we got to the ninth month where I started this medication called infliximab, where you have to go to the hospital every few weeks and you get put on a drip. And you stay there for like eight hours and they basically put this medicine inside you. And that really had an incredible effect. Like, that gave me a new lease of life. I felt stronger. I probably felt stronger than I'd felt before I was on it.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  But then Covid happened. Um, it stopped my infliximab from working.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  So suddenly, I mean, two thousand and twenty, and I'm on medical trials again.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  And I tried, um, you know, I tried so many different medications. And it was, it wasn't till like.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  The beginning of twenty twenty one, where I really got one that was really working properly. Um, and even now I'm on that, but it's still, I still have like, I have three days a week where I'm really bad. Where my joints just don't really work that well, um, and my crones, my stomach feels bad. But yeah, that, that was a big part of the reason why I, uh, kind of, I guess disappeared for a while.

• 34:53Steven Bartlett?

  But it's not the only reason why he disappeared for a while.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, um.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Everything that. My body was going through, everything that I was going through, the pressures of, you know.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  Trying, you know, like wanting to do magic and the pressures of trying to sustain a career and live up to people's expectations. Um, was almost an impossible task to do whilst I was trying to fix my body. And ultimately, it, you know.

• 35:29Speaker 00

  I ended up in a situation where.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  Without magic, without being able to do what I loved, not knowing if I was ever going to be able to get it back.

• 35:42Speaker 00

  Made me think, what's the point in my existence and. I think.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  My body was kind of imploding and so was my mind.

• 35:57Steven Bartlett?

  What was going on in your mind?

• 36:00Speaker 00

  I didn't know what to do with my life, didn't know what to do with myself. Um, there's a lot of things that I don't wanna fully go into, so, but I'll try and, you know, be as, give you as much as I can. It was just so much noise in my head and.

• 36:18Speaker 00

  I hated myself for feeling how I felt. I hated the way my body felt because of, you know, because of everything I was dealing with. If I saw myself in a mirror in my house, I hated what was looking back at me. I hated it so much that I'd slam my head into the mirror and just keep slamming it to try and just either, you know, make it go away.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  And.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know, I didn't, I didn't wanna be alive because I didn't feel like the life I had.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Take away all the, the success and, you know, that side of things.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  I wasn't.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  I wasn't living because I wasn't able to do the thing I loved the most, which was magic. And.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  It was.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  It was a time in my life where.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  I felt that magic couldn't fix me.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  But magic's always been the thing that has given me hope. That I've kind of used to overcome the bullying, overcome the self doubt and the lack of belief from others and in my, and in my own self. And suddenly, I'm in a position where. I don't know what to do with myself and magic isn't gonna fix it. And I can't, I can't, until I'm fixed, I can't do the thing that gives me a reason and gives me a purpose. In performing magic, I can't do that because I'm not mentally or physically capable.

• 38:11Steven Bartlett?

  How long did that?

• 38:14Steven Bartlett?

  That last?

• 38:15Speaker 00

  I'm still dealing with it now, to be honest. Like, it, it's difficult because.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  I'm a magician, right? And to everybody else looking at me as a magician.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  I'm someone who does the impossible. I'm someone who kind of should be able to do anything.

• 38:43Speaker 00

  But.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  I'm a magician who felt like, you know, back then and, you know, and still at times now, I'm a magician who feels like I can't do the first thing that a magician needs to do, perform magic.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  So then I'm just an imposter. I can't live up to the expectations that

• 39:23Speaker 00

  people have of me. And it's not that I, I'm not the sort of person who like searches for validation from other people, you know, like, I mean, you know, magic is not an art form that is seen as the coolest thing ever. Do you know what I mean? It's, you know, I'd have set myself up to fail if, if, you know, by, by following through with magic. If I'd have been naive to that point, do you know what I mean? And I know that magic's never been cool, right? And, you know, I hope that in some small way I've helped to make it feel a bit cooler than maybe what it was perceived as. But magic's the only thing that I'm good at.

• 40:03Speaker 00

  And

• 40:06Speaker 00

  I think

• 40:10Speaker 00

  the way that I can manipulate my body and, you know, kind of handle cards and do the things is a big part of what's made my magic unique and feel special.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  And not being able to do that kills me.

• 40:27Steven Bartlett?

  Am I right in thinking that at that same time, your grandmother had passed away? Who was your biggest supporter? Your body was breaking down because of Crohn's and your illness around that time as well. And I'd also heard that you'd had a legal dispute with your management, which meant that you could no longer use your social media channels, the name Dynamo, et cetera, et cetera. And that it all happened in this concentrated period of your life.

• 40:55Speaker 00

  There was, there's a lot of stuff going on and yeah, like, you know, I,

• 41:03Speaker 00

  I think losing my nana ultimately was,

• 41:11Speaker 00

  I think the thing that, I guess the straw that brought the camels back is the expression that you use. Because she's always been the backbone for me. Whenever I felt weak, and there's been a lot of times I felt weak, my nana's always been strong for me.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  And then with a lot of things going on in my life,

• 41:36Speaker 00

  being, with my life being flipped upside down, you know, and then my nana going as well, it was just like, man, like,

• 41:46Speaker 00

  you know,

• 41:49Speaker 00

  the like, it just felt like the world was out to get me. And I kind of wanted the ground to just break up and just swallow me up.

• 41:59Steven Bartlett?

  If I was a fly on the wall in your house at that time, what would I have seen?

• 42:03Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  A lot of stuff that I don't really want, that I wouldn't want anybody to see, like.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  I wasn't very nice to myself.

• 42:21Speaker 00

  There's a lot of pain.

• 42:25Speaker 00

  But also a lot of numbness and I felt that,

• 42:31Speaker 00

  ironically, actually, I didn't feel, like, I felt so numb that

• 42:39Speaker 00

  I'd hurt myself to try and feel something.

• 42:43Steven Bartlett?

  Self-harming?

• 42:44Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 42:50Steven Bartlett?

  Does your, does your partner know what's going on in your life, inside your head during this period?

• 42:57Steven Bartlett?

  Cause I, cause I have a, I have a partner and I, if I was in such a dark place, where I was self harming and doing some of the things you've described, banging my head against a mirror and I was in that sort of so, cycle of self hatred, my partner, I, I think my partner would, would, would know.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  Hmm, yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  She knew. She, she maybe didn't know the extent of it to begin with. And I think also

• 43:33Speaker 00

  the, the loss side of things, you know, she obviously felt that herself. So I think those things, she's dealing with it, dealing with her own grief at the same time. So sometimes when you're dealing with grief, you, it's hard to see outside of your own grief to see other people's. You know what I mean? Um, and we were kind of almost together in those moments, you know, we came together like, you know, but she,

• 44:03Speaker 00

  she was the one who ultimately got me to go to therapy and to get the help and support that I needed really.

• 44:11Steven Bartlett?

  In this chapter, was there, was there a moment you look back on and say, that was, that was my rock bottom?

• 44:18Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Yep. The sixth of November, two thousand and twenty.

• 44:22Steven Bartlett?

  The sixth of November, two thousand and twenty?

• 44:24Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 44:28Steven Bartlett?

  Almost three years ago today. Exactly, almost.

• 44:34Steven Bartlett?

  Why was that the hardest day?

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Cause that was the day that I knew that she knew.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  Cause she found me and I tried to kill myself.

• 44:50Steven Bartlett?

  She found you in the house?

• 44:51Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 44:58Steven Bartlett?

  She found you unconscious?

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Yep, in the dog bed.

• 45:06Steven Bartlett?

  What are you comfortable talking about?

• 45:09Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm not super comfortable at life generally, so, you know, just talking. This is the first time I've kind of done an interview that's not been with a therapist

• 45:26Speaker 00

  since 2020. So, you know, I, I, I trust you. You've, you know, we've, you've been a bit of a, you've been a help for me over the last few years.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  So I guess if you're respectful, then I respect what you'll do with what I say.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  We'll be done in the right way.

• 45:52Steven Bartlett?

  There's two, there's two things, there's two things. I want you to feel comfortable about whatever you say, but also after this conversation, if there's anything you, you, you're not comfortable with having said, you can of course let me know and it won't be, it won't be out there in the world. But I, I want to, um.

• 46:08Steven Bartlett?

  I think the, the question that I, like, that I think is of most value is understanding how someone gets to that point. I've, I've actually spent quite a long time speaking to Simon Gunning, who's the CEO of Calm, Campaign Against Living Miserably.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:24Steven Bartlett?

  Um, and he's done a really great job of helping me to understand suicidality as a topic. But also when I have a public platform like this, where I speak on this, these subject matters occasionally, about what elements of that are useful for people that are in that mindset now. And

• 46:45Steven Bartlett?

  what he's shared with me is, part of it is people understanding that some, how someone gets there, but also understanding how they go from there and they rise out of that situation.

• 47:01Steven Bartlett?

  What was, what was on your mind?

• 47:06Steven Bartlett?

  When that led you up to that moment?

• 47:10Speaker 00

  I felt

• 47:15Speaker 00

  that

• 47:18Speaker 00

  I had so many

• 47:21Speaker 00

  problems that I couldn't figure out how to even solve one of them.

• 47:30Speaker 00

  And the problems weren't just affecting me. They were affecting my household. They were

• 47:40Speaker 00

  affecting, you know, just my family's life.

• 47:49Speaker 00

  And a big part of me thought

• 47:54Speaker 00

  if I'm dead,

• 47:58Speaker 00

  then my problems will affect these other people in my life and they will be all right.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  Because I felt like ultimately I was the problem.

• 48:16Speaker 00

  It was quite a simple

• 48:19Speaker 00

  kind of, that, that was it. It was like, okay.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  If I'm not here,

• 48:30Speaker 00

  then everybody else might be happier. And they can get on with their lives and,

• 48:36Speaker 00

  you know,

• 48:38Speaker 00

  like, that was it.

• 48:43Steven Bartlett?

  Your wife finds, finds you that day in the dog bed and then she calls an ambulance?

• 48:51Speaker 00

  She called Edward Despot, who's my doctor. He's, he's my, my gastroenterologist, my colon specialist. And then I remember, well, she was on the phone to him when I kind of came round and she was just crying and that's, you asked me a moment where it feels like it was the worst.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  I'd probably hurt myself worse on previous occasions.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  But I'd never been found by the one person in this life whose opinion I genuinely care about.

• 49:36Speaker 00

  And no matter what I do now, in the future, there's nothing I can do that can erase what she saw.

• 49:52Speaker 00

  And that's the thing I'm the most ashamed of because in the moment, I felt like I was trying to maybe do something that would take all the problems I thought I was facing and remove them from everybody else's world.

• 50:11Speaker 00

  But I'd not actually thought about what these people would feel if I wasn't here. Do you know what I mean? So that's the shame that I feel. I don't feel ashamed for feeling the way I did.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  But I feel ashamed that my wife kind of saw that. Like, it's just embarrassing, isn't it?

• 50:48Speaker 00

  She's the person I'm supposed to be strong for. You know, she's the person who relies on me. I'm, you know, I'm the husband. I don't mean that, like, I know we live in a modern world, you know, where, you know, you don't. It's but like, I'm supposed to be there to be strong for her. And I couldn't even be strong for myself.

• 51:10Steven Bartlett?

  Can I ask you a question? In that, when someone is in that situation, as you were psychologically, what do you think those around them can do to support that person?

• 51:26Steven Bartlett?

  Or do you think there's very little those around? I'm trying to re-understand how to support someone, you know, in my life that would be in such a mindset.

• 51:37Speaker 00

  I mean, I guess what my wife did, like, not, not just caught you. Naturally, you would call someone to help, like a doctor or something like that. But, I mean,

• 51:51Speaker 00

  even though I still feel it, and I can't necessarily speak on her behalf, but she

• 52:03Speaker 00

  didn't make me feel ashamed.

• 52:07Steven Bartlett?

  She loves you, doesn't she?

• 52:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:15Steven Bartlett?

  It's one of the greatest gifts, isn't it, to have someone in your life like that, that you know just loves you through thick and thin?

• 52:26Speaker 00

  From the, from the experience and how she's been

• 52:33Speaker 00

  even up till now, you know, how she dealt with it and dealt with me and I think it's the first time

• 52:43Speaker 00

  outside of my nan, or outside of family who, you know, they have to do it, it's unconditional, right? Um, because they're family, they're blood, but it's the first time that I have actually felt the love of somebody else, like, because we'd been married a long time before then. But, you know, you,

• 53:09Speaker 00

  you just never know what someone's gonna act like when shit really hits the fan.

• 53:16Steven Bartlett?

  And they see you naked.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, and

• 53:21Speaker 00

  I was exposed, I was, you can't get any more exposed than, than what I felt.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  And she became the rock. She, she gave me a love that I've never had to, to deal with it and.

• 53:41Speaker 00

  You know, it's, yeah, that is something that I didn't necessarily maybe know I needed in my life until that moment. And that ultimately has kept me alive.

• 53:55Steven Bartlett?

  Around this time, there's a dispute with your management. What are you able to tell me about that? Because I know it's a legal dispute. So there's things that probably can't talk about. But I think it's important context to understand what you're going through in this moment as it relates to your sense of purpose and identity and all those things. What are you able to tell me?

• 54:17Speaker 00

  I think

• 54:22Speaker 00

  I was at a time in my life where

• 54:28Speaker 00

  I felt lost.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  And

• 54:34Speaker 00

  I knew if I,

• 54:39Speaker 00

  you know, stayed doing things exactly the same way that I'd always done them,

• 54:46Speaker 00

  then you're only going to get kind of the same results, right? You know, if I'm,

• 54:54Speaker 00

  if I'm feeling suicidal thoughts and I'm feeling kind of like worthless,

• 55:01Speaker 00

  then the only way to break that cycle is to have a fresh start. Just needed to

• 55:09Speaker 00

  break away from everything. And ultimately, you know, you've started many businesses. And, you know, I'm sure some of those have failed and some of those have, you know, you've had to have, you know, go your separate ways at times. So that happens in business. And I think there was a lot of work needed to be done on myself. And I tried to take time away from that, like,

• 55:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, I can't really uh touch on it too much. I'm trying to be extremely careful what I say.

• 55:48Steven Bartlett?

  It's all good. I'm actually quite interested in the not what happened, but the consequence of what happened. So, because I've noticed you've not been posting on social media in a while, for example. So I assumed that one of the consequences of this separation with your management was you've not you've not been able to use your social media accounts and we've not seen you on the internet as much. Is that a correct assumption?

• 56:19Speaker 00

  I don't feel like I've wanted to kind of post things because

• 56:27Speaker 00

  I felt like my life isn't been worth sharing. So, you know, whilst I've been trying to

• 56:38Speaker 00

  fix myself,

• 56:41Speaker 00

  I didn't feel comfortable kind of sharing in those moments and kind of just let the lawyers do what they do and figure that stuff out because I'm I'm too busy trying to figure out what's going on in my own head, you know, how to kind of just get to a place in this world where

• 57:05Speaker 00

  I can deal with the pressure of life. Ultimately, all I wanted to do, which is, you know, what's led me to here with you today, is get to a place in my life where I could share magic again. And even if my arthritis and my crohn stopped me doing it in the way I used to, I had to find a new way to share it. And there's certain things

• 57:42Speaker 00

  in the past that I've had to go through negative experiences, you know, positive experiences. Ultimately, I've had to go through those things to learn and grow from them and some things I've had to leave behind.

• 58:02Speaker 00

  And I'm

• 58:02Steven Bartlett?

  Speaking of things you've left behind.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  Are you still Dynamo?

• 58:10Speaker 00

  Palm is always Dynamo, yeah, of course, like.

• 58:18Speaker 00

  But the thing is,

• 58:22Speaker 00

  I've battled with knowing who... They almost like has been a battle between me and myself because

• 58:33Speaker 00

  the lines are so blurred, or were so blurred, between, you know, the Steven that you know, and the Dynamo that, you know, the greater world kind of knows. So then,

• 58:50Speaker 00

  like,

• 58:52Speaker 00

  it's just been...

• 58:56Speaker 00

  It's been a lot of confusion, right? In simple terms, it's been a lot of confusion because

• 59:06Speaker 00

  Dynamo is the part of me that feels like it can do anything.

• 59:13Speaker 00

  But Steven's the flawed human being that realises and knows that he can't.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  And it's a conflict. And then when my body's falling apart, my life's falling apart, I'm losing everything in my life outside of magic that I love,

• 59:35Speaker 00

  then

• 59:38Speaker 00

  I'm just an empty shell.

• 59:41Speaker 00

  And

• 59:45Speaker 00

  that's the sort of feeling

• 59:49Speaker 00

  that makes you think like, what is the point? Why am I here? Like, I am worthless to this world

• 1:00:01Speaker 00

  if I can't share the only thing that I feel I'm good at.

• 1:00:08Speaker 00

  People will be sat thinking, why can't you share it?

• 1:00:12Speaker 00

  Because...

• 1:00:17Speaker 00

  Partly

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  for some reasons that, you know, are outside of my control.

• 1:00:27Steven Bartlett?

  Mm hmm. Legal related reasons.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  Some, and yeah, sure. Um.

• 1:00:35Speaker 00

  You know, and then

• 1:00:38Speaker 00

  partly because

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  mentally

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  I wasn't free, like, I need to be free in my head to create material and to create the magic I share.

• 1:00:57Speaker 00

  But

• 1:00:59Speaker 00

  all that was in my head is horrible things. Is things that I can't shut off, I can't turn off the noise. So then there's no space for magic to find its way in. So

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  I, I guess it'd be like the equivalent to writer's block, like magic writer's block, like, I don't know if that's a real thing, but that's the only way I'm trying to simply explain it.

• 1:01:34Steven Bartlett?

  The way that I heard it from what you just said about the noise was I can't write if there's loud music playing with lots of lyrics in it. So when I, when I do writing, I have to turn off loud music with lyrics in it, or else I can't, my brain can't focus on both. So I was almost imagining being in a room with really loud music playing and then me trying to think and write. And I just wouldn't be able to.

• 1:01:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, like,

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  like my body was not allowing me to perform in the physical sense in the way that I want it to, you know. I was, you know, some of the medication was working well and I was doing good, but then, like mentally, like I wasn't in a fit state to do magic, you know. And

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  because of things that was going on behind the scenes, I also, it was really complicated, you know. Um, even getting work.

• 1:02:30Speaker 00

  And then naturally with that, you know, it's gonna come financial pressures, which is the last thing you need when you've also dealing with everything else. So ultimately, I had too many horrible thoughts in my mind to try. I had too many problems to solve to even think about magic.

• 1:02:58Speaker 00

  But then me not thinking about magic, you just then that's a that's a depressing notion. Because that's so much of your purpose and meaning and joy and. Yeah, and it's not just tricks. It's not, you know, I'm not when I talk about magic in this sense, like there's the there's the card tricks, there's the things that people see, right? But for me, magic is a feeling.

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  It's something you experience in your body when you witness something that you can't explain or when you see something that feels impossible, but feels like unobtainable. Right? Putting a smile on someone's face is a magical thing. And that's what I've spent my life doing.

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  But the irony is I was in a position where I couldn't put a smile on my own face. So how am I meant to do that for anybody else if I can't, you know, if I can't do the the simplest thing for myself? And you go to therapy at this point, you said. Yeah, my wife was on the phone when she phoned me to um to Ed Despot, who's my gastroenterologist, right? And then he he um put my wife in touch with with a therapist um called Edward Sim. And I had some sessions with him initially, but this type of therapy can be quite expensive.

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. So like, I got like the first few bills and I was like, I can't sustain this, I need it. But having to pay for therapy was making me more stressed in the process because I just couldn't afford the therapy. But Edward Sim, um.

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  He showed me a kindness that I've kind of been, you know, but I haven't seen in a long time, especially at that time, like.

• 1:05:07Speaker 00

  He contacted my wife um and just said, listen, I wanna help him, um I'll do it for free.

• 1:05:16Speaker 00

  And he's been, he's been looking after me ever since and, you know, like.

• 1:05:22Steven Bartlett?

  For free?

• 1:05:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 1:05:24Speaker 00

  I mean, I've, you know, I've, I've keep offering to pay now, you know, I'm in a slightly better place and, but he refuses, you know, he, um, but you know, I'm think, you know, he's someone who I want in my life forever and, you know, I want, I wanna be able to repay, I'll never be able to repay him for what he's done for me, but like.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:05:51Speaker 00

  He introduced me to so many different things, like stuff that I like, I use this thing called sonic reset therapy, don't know if you know about it. It's this like noise that you listen to, I listen to it twice a day for twenty minutes and it, it's definitely become something that calms me down and helps me sleep at night um and then.

• 1:06:22Steven Bartlett?

  What do you think it's doing? What is it doing for you? It's just kind of resetting your mind in a way or?

• 1:06:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that's, I mean, I think, I guess that's the intention behind it. As, as I listen to it, it tells me to think about negative experiences or think about positive experiences that like, think about goals you wanna achieve or think about things you wanna, you know, get past and just let them come into your mind at the forefront and.

• 1:06:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's really strange, like, it just has a real calming effect.

• 1:06:54Steven Bartlett?

  We'll try and get hold of it, and we'll try and include it in the description below.

• 1:06:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, like, it's been, it's been helping me, you know, I'm sure it will help others. But, you know, there's lots of different things, like, one of the things that he suggested to me, which, at the time when he suggested it, it was such a weird thing, is he, he recommended that I read the Alcoholics Anonymous book. Now, I say it's a strange thing for him to recommend for me, because I've never drank alcohol in my life. I've never done drugs other than what the doctors prescribed for me for my Crohn's. So I've literally been teetotal forever, do you know what I mean? So, like,

• 1:07:44Speaker 00

  I just naively assumed that, you know, this is a book to help someone who is an alcoholic.

• 1:07:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've, I've actually, I've got, I still carry my copy.

• 1:07:56Steven Bartlett?

  That's yours, this is my copy, and in researching your story, I, I realised the significance of this book, so I just bought a copy of it.

• 1:08:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, for people who have never read it, I recommend reading it, you don't have to be, I'm a testament, you don't have to be an alcoholic to read it and gain something from it. You know, essentially, it's broken up into twelve steps, and each chapter, each step, is a lot of people's, like, short stories of how they overcome different phases of addiction or trauma. Ultimately, it's trauma, but it's, in the, in the Alcoholics Anonymous book, obviously, it's specifically kind of aimed at, you know, addiction in that sense. And as you hear all the stories, it's very easy to

• 1:08:51Speaker 00

  Replace the alcoholic side of it in this book and put your own trauma or grief that you're trying to deal with in that place.

• 1:09:03Speaker 00

  And it's like a blueprint, like literally people are telling you how they overcome a certain thing and might not work, everything might not work for you as an individual. But I took so much from this and you know, it's, it can, it's kind of written maybe from like a spiritual perspective, you know, I'm not particularly religious like, um, but ultimately it's about trying to get you to believing something greater than yourself to help you find your purpose. And for me, I've always known what that is, it's, it's been, it's been doing magic, right? But I didn't know how to get back to that place

• 1:09:48Speaker 00

  without dealing with all these things I was dealing with, you know, like, and I've kind of, you know, gone through the 12 step book, but I've kind of gone through my own 12 step kind of recovery. Like going through the different emotional phases that I've been trying to overcome. You know, and some of those involve like, you know,

• 1:10:18Speaker 00

  going back, looking at my past, you know, looking at, you know, the situation with my dad, you know, looking at my mum, you know, like, cause I think if I'm honest, there was definitely, there's definitely been a lot of resentment towards my mum, um, over the years. Um, because when my dad went away, like, you know, as my mum, you know, my mum's, you know, living a different life without him. You know, naturally she's going to get to a stage where she wants a new boyfriend, a new, a new partner. She wants a life of her own, right? But there's quite a few of those men that came into her life that were horrible to me.

• 1:11:00Speaker 00

  You know, a big part of that was because I was a mixed race kid and we lived in a, you know, quite a racist area. So, you know, a lot of the men, you know, didn't want me. They wanted my mum, because my mum was lovely. How did you know they didn't want you? They just tell me. They would tell you? Yeah. It was like, yeah, they'd just tell me or they'd, and they'd, they'd do things that showed me that they didn't want me. I, I, I pretty much moved in with my grandparents when I was fifteen.

• 1:11:39Speaker 00

  Like, because the, the men in my mum's life, just, I wanted my mum to be happy. But that came at the sacrifice of my own happiness. It meant, it meant that she'd be happy because she'd get the love maybe that she thought she needed. But I felt like I lost my mum in the process.

• 1:12:02Speaker 00

  So, there's been resentment. It's not been like surf, on the surface resentment, like, you know. I'd still see my mum at Christmases and stuff like that, but we never really had that, the bond that I thought we should have had. Um, but kind of, one of the things I got from, from the book is. I've had conversations with my mum that I've never, that I've been too scared to have. And I've actually got to understand her better and.

• 1:12:35Speaker 00

  This is, this is the wrong word, but because ultimately she doesn't need forgiveness. Because knowing her story, she hasn't done things wrong in, you know, she hasn't purposely done things wrong for me to go, I forgive you. Right? But there was, knowing what she'd been through, it's, it's in these conversations that I've learnt about. Some of the physical abuse that my dad would do and that also that other partners of hers would give her. And I think she'd been trapped in a cycle of, you know, not necessarily kind of picking the wrong partners and just kind of trying to do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. You know, which, uh, you know, you can't blame someone for, like.

• 1:13:18Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, I've come to learn from doing this podcast and speaking to a lot of psychologists that specialize on love, that we often seek out the form of love that we grew up on. And sometimes that's an abusive form of love. So many psychologists that I've spoken to have alluded to this, but few have said this quite directly, that if you were at a very young age, had a sort of a toxic attachment with a, maybe a figure in your life, that there's a chance that you'll then grow up and seek out toxic attachments in the cycle that you've described. We, we tend to think that, well, you know, we tend to think that if we've been in a

• 1:13:59Steven Bartlett?

  toxic situation when we were younger, for example, that we'll then seek out really, really healthy situations because we know what bad looks like. But in fact, I've been told that it's often the opposite, that we go back to the cycle of love that we were familiar with.

• 1:14:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:14Steven Bartlett?

  Familiarity is, seems to be the key word.

• 1:14:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, people find safety in familiarity.

• 1:14:18Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:19Speaker 00

  Even if that familiarity isn't actually safe.

• 1:14:21Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:22Speaker 00

  I, yeah, I, I can feel that.

• 1:14:26Steven Bartlett?

  This book, this very small book, there's something about this, these ideas that seem to reach people when they're in their toughest moments. Step number one, we admitted we were powerless, that our lives had become unmanageable. Step two, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Have you had to admit you were powerless? And have you started to believe in a power greater than yourself?

• 1:14:58Speaker 00

  Oh, definitely. Um, I mean, I've felt powerless for years. Like, I know that I'm not in control, like, my illness has debilitating me for so long. But just when, it always seemed to kind of pop up, you know, when, when I'm kind of flying high, when I feel like untouchable, then suddenly I get a little reminder that, you know, I'm fallible, I've got weaknesses, you know, and can't get above my station, so to speak. But, but yeah, I think.

• 1:15:36Speaker 00

  I think that I've always looked for

• 1:15:45Speaker 00

  the magic in the wrong place. And what I mean by that is that I've always looked

• 1:15:55Speaker 00

  for the magic in me to help me out of whatever situation I was in. And what this book opened up my mind to the idea of

• 1:16:10Speaker 00

  is the magic in other people.

• 1:16:11Steven Bartlett?

  You have a TV show coming out tonight, which is really your grand return to the public stage. And that TV show is called Dynamo is Dead and it's appearing on Sky tonight, which is very, very exciting. And I guess this links to what you just said about finding the magic in others, right?

• 1:16:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:30Steven Bartlett?

  Why are you doing this? What is it?

• 1:16:34Speaker 00

  I just need to get magic back in my life. Because that's the thing that I live for.

• 1:16:41Speaker 00

  And over the last few years, when I've been working on myself,

• 1:16:48Speaker 00

  seeing a different type of magic,

• 1:16:53Speaker 00

  seeing the magic in other people is what's given me that spark back.

• 1:17:02Speaker 00

  And

• 1:17:05Speaker 00

  the magic I've been seeing, it's not dynamo magic.

• 1:17:09Speaker 00

  You know, it's something different. It's something that I'm feeling and I'm finally feeling it again. In fact, I feel like I'm feeling it for the first time.

• 1:17:18Speaker 00

  Like,

• 1:17:22Speaker 00

  Edward Sim, my therapist.

• 1:17:26Speaker 00

  He's a very successful therapist. He doesn't need to offer me therapy for free.

• 1:17:32Speaker 00

  But he wanted to share some of his magic and

• 1:17:37Speaker 00

  that started to rewire my mind to realise, whoa, like there's some amazing people out there who can, you know, who, they can change lives, they're changing mine. You know, when I saw you three years ago and we shared a candid conversation, you know, about some of the things I was feeling at the time.

• 1:18:04Speaker 00

  You first off listened to me. And there was no cameras around. It wasn't like this, you know, it was just, you were, you were present in the room with me.

• 1:18:16Speaker 00

  And then not only did you listen, but you you kind of helped in a small way.

• 1:18:27Speaker 00

  And that was magic, you know. I don't know if anybody knows who's watching this, but you are part of my new show. Don't know if you've told anybody yet. So you can also see you on the show tonight in a different way than maybe they're used to seeing you. But like your story, you know, like, I think

• 1:18:48Speaker 00

  one of the things I realised for a lot of people from places like where I'm from.

• 1:18:57Speaker 00

  Speaking to a therapist seems like the last thing you would feel comfortable doing. You know, I'm from a council state, we're working class, we're like, you know, you're told if you've got a problem, suck it up. You know, be a man. You can't talk about your problems, you know, like you've just got to get on with it, you know. What's that expression, that keep calm and carry on, you know, that's, it was like, it's kind of like instilled in us. I wanted to show people from where I'm from

• 1:19:33Speaker 00

  that

• 1:19:35Speaker 00

  It's okay to ask for help. It's okay to be broken. It's okay to not know the answers.

• 1:19:44Speaker 00

  And I'm not too proud to go out there and search for the answers for people, you know, like.

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  And I've gone around the world using the, you know, the platform that I have, you know, I've, obviously as Dynamo, the name opens doors, so. But opening doors just for myself is pointless because it's only feeding my own ego. But I realised that if I could use that platform

• 1:20:28Speaker 00

  to speak to individuals candidly about dealing with any type of trauma, dealing with not feeling good enough, dealing with all the things that I felt that made me not want to be alive anymore,

• 1:20:46Speaker 00

  then maybe that can save someone else's life. And I know it's a grand, grandiose mission statement. I don't take it lightly. I don't, you know, I, like, I can, I'm barely saving my own life at the minute to, you know. So I don't want to like fall it so loosely that, you know, that like I can save someone else's life.

• 1:21:12Steven Bartlett?

  No, but that's exactly what it does. That is exactly what it does. And they're lives that you never really get to see. But just even in sharing how you felt and how you've risen from that. This is exactly what Simon Gunning told me. It does save people's lives.

• 1:21:28Steven Bartlett?

  And in this new chapter of your life, following this show tonight called Dynamo is Dead on Sky, you're going to continue to do that. And if there was ever a time, and I think this is why when you, when you came up to me at that event many a year ago and started telling me a little bit about your story, I think I probably said it to you then, but I'm not sure. If there's ever a time when people need that, when they need a little bit of joy and they need a little bit of escapism, and they need a little bit of wonder and they need their imagination to be stretched into what is real and what is possible and what is impossible, it is now. And you know that. You know that's what people need now. And that means we need you now.

• 1:22:08Speaker 00

  I had the idea obviously to make this show when we first started speaking.

• 1:22:15Speaker 00

  But when my nan died,

• 1:22:19Speaker 00

  I

• 1:22:22Speaker 00

  I realised then

• 1:22:25Speaker 00

  that

• 1:22:28Speaker 00

  the dynamo as we know it needed to die with her.

• 1:22:33Speaker 00

  And that

• 1:22:36Speaker 00

  the only way to fully have closure on that part of my life

• 1:22:42Speaker 00

  was

• 1:22:44Speaker 00

  if I actually bury myself alive.

• 1:22:49Speaker 00

  And tonight, after the show plays out live on Sky, I'm going to be doing that.

• 1:22:59Steven Bartlett?

  You're going to bury yourself alive?

• 1:23:00Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:23:02Steven Bartlett?

  In order to kill off the dynamo identity?

• 1:23:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. And yeah, I mean, I haven't, I haven't put myself in that hole yet.

• 1:23:10Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 1:23:11Speaker 00

  So,

• 1:23:13Speaker 00

  you know,

• 1:23:17Speaker 00

  what will happen after that point

• 1:23:22Speaker 00

  is hard to really kind of summarise because

• 1:23:27Speaker 00

  there's only been a few times in my life where I've done like crazy, like, you know, endurance feats like this and something in you changes when you do them.

• 1:23:38Speaker 00

  You know, it's a incredibly scary thought.

• 1:23:46Speaker 00

  But

• 1:23:48Speaker 00

  since I've thought about it, you know, since the 7th of May.

• 1:23:58Speaker 00

  2021.

• 1:24:01Speaker 00

  I thought it's the only way to move forward in my life.

• 1:24:07Speaker 00

  And.

• 1:24:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, tonight.

• 1:24:12Speaker 00

  After the show finishes.

• 1:24:15Speaker 00

  You'll be able to see it live. But it's not for me, it's not like a stunt, it's not, it's not about escaping.

• 1:24:27Speaker 00

  It's a cleansing for me.

• 1:24:33Speaker 00

  And.

• 1:24:36Speaker 00

  I feel like it will be one of the most.

• 1:24:40Speaker 00

  Incredible. Scary things I've ever done, but the thing I've learnt over the last few years is that. I've got to stop being scared and just start living my life.

• 1:24:54Steven Bartlett?

  I'm, I'm both terrified and excited in equal measure to watch the show tonight. I had no idea you were burying yourself alive, so that's terrifying, but I understand your rationale.

• 1:25:07Steven Bartlett?

  And I'm very excited to see what happens.

• 1:25:11Steven Bartlett?

  Stephen.

• 1:25:14Steven Bartlett?

  I would like to see some magic.

• 1:25:18Steven Bartlett?

  If possible. Is there some magic you can show me right now?

• 1:25:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, do you want to get some of your friends in as well?

• 1:25:25Steven Bartlett?

  My team?

• 1:25:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:26Steven Bartlett?

  My team are upstairs. Um. Jack, could you bring the team downstairs? What do you guys do here at DOAC?

• 1:25:32Speaker 03

  I am a video editor.

• 1:25:34Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 1:25:35Speaker 04

  I'm head of trailers for the podcast.

• 1:25:38Speaker 00

  There's some good trailers as well.

• 1:25:41Speaker 03

  Uh, I'm head of the bookings.

• 1:25:54Speaker 00

  Do you wanna mix them? You go for it.

• 1:25:56Speaker 03

  Go on, you go.

• 1:25:57Speaker 00

  You want as well, so we'll split them, you can both pick.

• 1:26:00Speaker 03

  Is this the best shuffling you've ever seen?

• 1:26:02Speaker 00

  I mean, it's not bad. It's not the worst.

• 1:26:07Steven Bartlett?

  Usually it's when you're from all on the table and you just do all that. Standard edition, yeah.

• 1:26:11Speaker 00

  And mix these over as well, mix these in. So I'll mix these all together, yeah? Yeah. So let's just have everybody pick one, we'll just try this. So take one out, Stephen.

• 1:26:20Steven Bartlett?

  There we go.

• 1:26:22Speaker 00

  Come on, there we go. Thank you.

• 1:26:27Speaker 00

  Don't let me see, I'll look down so I can't see them, just remember them and maybe show them to the cameras so that the people at home can remember them too. Yeah.

• 1:26:38Speaker 00

  Cool, I'm gonna look up now. Yeah. I'll take this one first.

• 1:26:45Speaker 00

  It's one.

• 1:26:47Speaker 00

  Two.

• 1:26:49Speaker 00

  Three.

• 1:26:51Speaker 00

  Four.

• 1:26:54Speaker 00

  I'll give them a...

• 1:26:57Speaker 00

  Give them a shuffle.

• 1:27:00Speaker 00

  I'll do one of those for you, yeah?

• 1:27:05Speaker 03

  That is so cool. Oh my god.

• 1:27:08Speaker 00

  So, the first card then. That's one, King of Diamonds. That's mine! That's your card. I'm not ping up! If I, uh, name your card out loud.

• 1:27:19Steven Bartlett?

  Four of Spades.

• 1:27:20Speaker 00

  Four of Spades, if I just take this and just give it a little snap like that, we get the Four of Spades. Yeah? So, um...

• 1:27:28Speaker 00

  Same two, I think. And we've got...

• 1:27:34Speaker 00

  And then, for Stephen, instead of finding it, I'll just, I'll make all the other cards disappear. Give them.

• 1:27:42Steven Bartlett?

  What?

• 1:27:44Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 1:27:45Speaker 00

  Where's they gone?

• 1:27:45Steven Bartlett?

  Where's they gone?

• 1:27:46Speaker 00

  When you look under your pillow tonight. Yeah.

• 1:27:49Steven Bartlett?

  Oh my god!

• 1:27:52Steven Bartlett?

  Wow, that is unreal.

• 1:27:54Speaker 00

  That's a nigger!

• 1:27:57Speaker 03

  Shit!

• 1:27:59Speaker 00

  Don't worry, I did bring a spare card, just in case, yeah. How many packs of cards do you have? Uh, I mean, I'm... I'm trying to click down to two packs a day. Oh yeah, that's the... Yeah. Take one. Thank you. And then, um, Stephen, have you got a pen?

• 1:28:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yep.

• 1:28:20Speaker 00

  Can you write your name on the face of the card?

• 1:28:22Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:28:23Speaker 00

  On this side, yeah, on the other side. And in fact, pass it around so all of you can sign it, yeah?

• 1:28:29Speaker 03

  Oh my god, these ones. I've seen these on telly.

• 1:28:44Speaker 00

  Getting a few things I'm gonna need. Perfect, have you signed it as well?

• 1:28:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yep.

• 1:28:49Speaker 00

  Great. Place it. Right there, face down, yeah. Did you show the camera?

• 1:28:55Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:28:55Speaker 00

  Maybe show the camera real quick, yeah?

• 1:29:02Speaker 00

  Perfect.

• 1:29:07Speaker 00

  So it's about halfway down. I've got a pound coin. Do you wanna check it out?

• 1:29:14Speaker 03

  I can confirm it's a real pound coin.

• 1:29:18Speaker 00

  And I've got a little piece of paper. I'm gonna... Place it like this. In fact, you can see clearly that the card, it's in the middle where you place it. That's not the card.

• 1:29:28Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:29:29Speaker 00

  Not on the top.

• 1:29:40Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 1:29:47Speaker 03

  That's gonna be it, isn't it? The bottom.

• 1:29:52Speaker 00

  See the coin burns through the pack?

• 1:29:57Speaker 00

  Like through?

• 1:30:05Speaker 00

  But it didn't go all the way through the pack. You see, it stopped on one card.

• 1:30:11Speaker 00

  Take a look.

• 1:30:12Steven Bartlett?

  You take a look.

• 1:30:14Speaker 03

  You do!

• 1:30:18Speaker 03

  No! Oh my days! My hands are shaking.

• 1:30:32Speaker 00

  Gem.

• 1:30:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:34Speaker 00

  Have you ever had a time in your life where you feel people have got close to you, but then they've almost like loaded you into a false sense of security so that they can almost like manipulate you and like pull at your heartstrings? Do you know what I mean? Have you ever had that?

• 1:30:51Speaker 03

  Ooh, uh, didn't realise this was a diary scenario. No, um, yeah, I guess I could say maybe.

• 1:30:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:31:00Speaker 03

  Someone.

• 1:31:01Speaker 00

  Okay, cool. Not to be a person, I think, but just like a time where you've experienced that way.

• 1:31:05Speaker 03

  Manipulation.

• 1:31:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, put your hand on my chest.

• 1:31:12Speaker 00

  And I want you to start to describe the types of emotions you'd feel when you went through that sort of thing.

• 1:31:21Speaker 03

  Insecurity. Lack of confidence.

• 1:31:29Speaker 03

  Stupid.

• 1:31:30Speaker 00

  Stupid, okay. And then I just want you to name a colour.

• 1:31:39Speaker 03

  Red.

• 1:31:40Speaker 00

  Red, okay. So, imagine these feelings were attached to a heartstring. A heartstring would be red, right? You can, you can feel that pressure, right?

• 1:31:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:56Speaker 00

  Sorry, I'm just gonna pull down my top where your hand is.

• 1:32:02Speaker 03

  Oh, red string! What?

• 1:32:04Speaker 00

  See that?

• 1:32:05Speaker 03

  Oh my god!

• 1:32:07Speaker 00

  Can you see that, right?

• 1:32:08Speaker 03

  It's coming out of your chest!

• 1:32:12Speaker 03

  Oh my days! Shall I touch it?

• 1:32:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can check it. It's my, it's my, it's, it's coming out of my chest, like, you can feel it on my chest, yeah?

• 1:32:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:22Speaker 00

  Take it.

• 1:32:23Speaker 03

  Oh god!

• 1:32:27Speaker 03

  What, take, pull it?

• 1:32:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, slowly pull it out of my chest.

• 1:32:32Speaker 03

  Oh, it's a bit tight.

• 1:32:36Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:32:40Speaker 03

  He's pulling on his heartstrings. Can you feel this?

• 1:32:43Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:43Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:32:46Speaker 03

  Oh, sorry. More?

• 1:32:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49Speaker 03

  Is it gonna come out?

• 1:32:50Speaker 00

  Pull it all the way, yeah.

• 1:32:53Speaker 03

  Oh. Oh, my god.

• 1:32:57Speaker 03

  Oh my god, this is freaking me out. More? How long is this heartstring? Like, long. Oh.

• 1:33:06Steven Bartlett?

  That's yours to keep.

• 1:33:11Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 1:33:20Speaker 00

  For me, magic is about taking something that

• 1:33:28Speaker 00

  kind of doesn't exist, like a, like a little, a little spark in your mind, yeah? And then somehow being able to bring it to life.

• 1:33:40Speaker 00

  I spent the last few years not feeling like I had the magic in me that I really wanted to share, but there was always that fire somewhere deep inside of me, dying to get out.

• 1:33:56Speaker 00

  So, can you take the lighter?

• 1:34:01Speaker 00

  And can you put your hands together like this for me?

• 1:34:06Speaker 00

  Light the lighter.

• 1:34:09Speaker 00

  Cause I'm gonna take fire.

• 1:34:14Speaker 00

  And from fire, get ice.

• 1:34:18Speaker 03

  Oh my god, what?

• 1:34:23Speaker 03

  Stop!

• 1:34:33Speaker 03

  Oh, that's actual ice.