Sunday 21 March 2021

The Prestooge!

Mac Ronay (
source)
 
  I knew nothing about Mac Ronay until the video below popped up in my recommendations yesterday, and if my youtube algorithms are going to keep bringing me gold like this, I couldn't be prouder of them. Like bubble magician Tom Noddy, Ronay seems to have fashioned one unique, perfect ten-minute set that's lasted his whole career. Tommy Cooper is the most obvious comparison – which isn't bad – but the joke's not quite the same. Ronay doesn't perform tricks badly. He performs bad tricks. And he shambles where Cooper swivels. Enjoy.
 
 
 The '61 set ends with a good trick, it's true – the egg gag made famous in Airplane – but apart from that no magical skill is required, which is the joke, which requires skill. When Ronay plays The Bob Monkhouse Show twenty-five years later – to a glowing introduction from a man who really knows his onions (although, personally, I wouldn't describe the act as "heart-rending") – the egg trick's gone, and the most baffling trick Ronay pulls off in its place, eight and a half minutes in, is immediately explained, because it would be breaking the terms of the contract now to do anything so soullessly impressive as magic; the punchline is the prestige. I immediately want to apologise to anyone with an actual skill for suggesting magic is "soulless". If I'd been at all aware of Mac Ronay before now, I would be copying him.
 

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