"I learned this trick from an ordinary bourgeois magician," explains Ian Saville, socialist conjuror, before meaningfully turning a blue handkerchief into a red one. Saville is not an especially gifted magician, but excels as a patter merchant, combining disarming personal diffidence with articulate left-wing beliefs. "Ten years ago, people said a magic act was the last place they'd expect to hear socialist theory," he recounts. "And now they're right – it is the last place you can hear it." Ideologically sound and magnificently bonkers.
Written for The Independent.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.
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