Jamie Skelton has a few new tricks lined up for Mardis Gras night, but he’s following the old magician’s edict of not revealing his secrets when he divulges what work’s been like since his last Hot Press interview in 2020. However, he does have one new aspect of his act that he can tell us about...

“One thing I’ve been working on is telling someone the PIN code for their phone. That scares a lot of people sometimes when I then hack into their phone, but it’s always in good form and I recommend they change their number afterwards. I’m not too sure it’s a GDPR friendly trick,” he chides. 

Very soon after the last Hot Press Mardis Gras, Covid-19 hit the world in a generation-defining pandemic. Like most professional entertainers, Jamie had to find a new way of being a magician without performing in person.
“Obviously, like anyone in the music or the events industry, my business stopped overnight when the pandemic started, so there was a good few months in 2020 when I was just sitting around doing nothing.

“Then I had the idea towards the end of the year to start doing virtual shows through Zoom and Google Meets, because obviously everybody working from home was using those platforms. I tested that out with a few friends who I did a Zoom party with and I learned how to translate what I do in person with my live magic into video calls, which was quite tricky in the beginning.” 

However, Jamie soon found that virtual shows were a tool he could use effectively. 

“After I did a few paid shows though, it just grew legs and really took off. For the next while, I was doing virtual shows for huge companies like Google, LinkedIn, and Ernst & Young - not only in Ireland, but across the globe.

“2021 was my busiest year ever, funnily enough. I never had to leave the house and I didn’t have to travel, so I could just fit one show in after the other. It was a rough start, but the pandemic definitely helped my business a lot, weirdly. It’s great because I think virtual shows are still here to stay, as well as live events coming back. I’m now doing a bit of both. It’s been challenging, but it is nice to get back to meeting people and performing live.”

Jamie does say though that he sees the benefits of both ways of performing, either through a screen or in-person.

“At the beginning, I would have said the Zoom stuff isn’t for me. But over time, I actually really started to enjoy performing virtually. Getting somebody’s reaction through the screen was amazing and everybody else in the Zoom call could see it too. What’s fun about the virtual shows is that I can be in Ireland performing to somebody based in America or China. To have a complete stranger in a different room - never mind a different country - telling you what you’re thinking of through Zoom, it always garner’s an amazing reaction. It’s like interactive television.

“But I also like performing in the same room to an audience; there’s a certain type of reaction that you just can’t get online that you always get that way - screams, running around the place, laughter. You get a better connection being directly in front of another human being. However, I do like both; there’s pros and cons to both ways of performing.”

Whether it’s via a screen or being in the same room, it’s likely that the Ireland’s Got Talent alumnus will keep surprising audiences in the future.

• Jamie Skelton is available for bookings at jamieskelton.ie</strong>