Magician Steve Truglia is to show how his career as a record-breaking James Bond stuntman helps explain the mysteries of card tricks and gambling cons.
The daredevil from east London has created a show, The Card Shark, which will give audiences a glimpse into how gamblers and card cheats have operated from the Middle Ages through Wild West saloons to the modern day.
He said the best operators relied on the same kind of sleight of hand and eye used in stunts he performed for the Bond films Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough.
“It’s very much about pretending you’re something you’re not,” said Truglia, 50.
He also said that he drew on his experiences serving with the reserve SAS and SBS regiments to show how the psychological operations used by the Army to influence emotions and behaviour parallel the work of the trickster.
But the root of the show is Truglia’s life-long fascination with magic —although as a member of The Magic Circle, he cannot entirely give the game away or he would be expelled.
“What I am doing is quite deliberately different from any other magic show. It’s the historical story of gambling cheating, mainly with cards. There are so many colourful characters,” he said.
Many of the moves used in card tricks for entertaining children or corporate dinners “originated in the darker places of the dangerous gambling dens,” he added.
Truglia, who holds a Guinness World Record for fast-abseiling and another for a loop-the-loop driving stunt performed on Channel 5’s Fifth Gear, will use an eight-metre screen for the audience to see his card magic close-up.
The Card Shark will run at The Mayfair Hotel from December 15.
