(Update: that video has since been taken down, but here's some from 2019)
I say "almost" because he now uses a tiny smoke machine instead of
a cigarette, but the patter's identical, charming enough to have spanned
four decades, and counting. This wasn't a comeback either. Noddy's just never stopped, never gone out of fashion: Las Vegas, Letterman, The Paul Daniels' Magic show, Bubblefest, Experimentarium, forty years performing the perfect act using nothing but soap, smoke and straws. Here's his very first television appearance in 1980, in which host Charles Kuralt
describes him as a "wandering minstrel", as "transient as his bubbles". Well, yes and no. I love Tom Noddy.
"I've never blown an ugly bubble."
Yay for Tom Noddy. I can't get my head around what it must be like to perform EXACTLY the same gig for so long with the same patter and everything. And I'm amazed I remember so much of it from the Paul Daniels Magic Show - I guess it must have been repeated as clips loads of times. "If you want love, you have to overcome surface tension."
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness, that's the best thing I've seen in weeks. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI think "reverse bubble" might be my favourite "trick", just because of the reaction it gets. The act's not just beautifully ephemeral, it's precision-tooled slightness.
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