Pete Firman tells MARION SAUVEBOIS how he combines offbeat illusions with off-the-wall humour

STUMPED for a larger-than-life vanishing act, Pete Firman ran through his options - the predicable glamorous assistant in her spangly leotard and done-to-death feline - before going back to the drawing board and settling for the woefully overlooked beach donkey.

This case of the disappearing neddy is probably his most mystifying and memorable illusion to date - and has set a bizarre yardstick for his offbeat brand of magical comedy.

"We were doing this programme and they just said, 'Can we do a big spectacular vanish of something?' For years magicians have made elephants disappear, tigers, dangerous exotic animals, and I thought, a donkey would be more my style," chuckles the TV conjurer, painfully aware of the absurdity of the trick's premise.

"I thought, where do you find donkey? At the seaside. So we decided to go to Weymouth. We did it in front of a live audience. It was a lot of fun. My thing is to take a classic premise or a trope and try to make it different and inject some personality into it.

"We found a lady who did donkey rides on the beach and we asked her if we could have her donkey for the afternoon and that was that."

In the bewildering illusion, the beast is boxed in by panels. Some secret hocus-pocus later, they are pulled down and the animal has evaporated. The camera then swivels to the promenade tens of metres away from shore where it is back safely with its owner.

This screwball approach, part stand-up, part magic, is how he ended up pulling a maggot from his eye on the BBC's The Magicians. Well, actually how he first swallowed a maggot (which immediately rolled off his tongue and plummeted to the floor before he picked it up again and gulped it down) and proceeded to snort in front of sea of mildly repulsed spectators until the bait slithered its way up his nasal cavity and out via his eyeball.

"It was an idea I had in my notebook," he adds enigmatically. "I just thought what would be weird and gross," giggles the master trickster, originally from Middlesbrough. "Whenever something pops into my head I make a note of it. The notebook is full of crazy ideas and every now and then I'm able to realise one or two."

Pete has been hailed as the forefather of comedy magic. And yet by his own admission, the 36-year-old who studied theatre at university and harboured dreams of acting, never set out to do either.

"I always loved magic - I got a Fisher Price magic set when I was eight years old," explains the comic, who is preparing to hit the road with his latest live tour, TriX before vying for the title of best conjurer in ITV's upcoming show

The Next Great Magician. "I stuck with it but magic was never my choice of career. But an opportunity presented itself and it snowballed. My little hobby has become my job."

Fresh from his university course, he found out a production company was scouting for magicians for a TV show. He sent an audition tape on the off chance and was promptly cast to appear on Channel 5.

The comedy element was a last-minute addition. Taking his courage with both hands, he decided to hone his performing nous in the capital's comedy clubs. And voila.

"I was never one of those magicians who take themselves too seriously and I always did magic in a light-hearted way. I realised quickly I had to make the tricks as funny as they were magical."

He has thrown himself at the mercy of the ruthless great British public on TV programmes like The Magicians and The John Bishop Show, placed his skill and mind-reading powers under unprecedented scrutiny on the likes of Derren Brown's 3D Magic Spectacular and yet he admits his most daunting challenge to date was recently facing throngs of American spectators - whose sympathy and pathological politeness nearly ruined one of his tricks.

"When you do things for a totally different audience, they react in a different way and you have to rethink certain things," he muses. "There's a bit in my show where I do a trick and for a brief moment it looks like it's gone wrong but everything works out in the end. Over here, at the moment when it goes wrong, we have a bit of fun, laugh at that and the fact that maybe it's part of the trick. But in America they just felt sorry for me. They thought it had gone wrong," recalls Pete, clearly amused. "They'd go, 'It's OK honey, it will be all right.' That was a bit of a weird thing to have to deal with."

This vague snippet about the show is all he will reveal.

Like any magician worth his salt, he keeps his cards close to his chest.

"Magic tricks are like jokes: if you give away the punchline, you've spoilt it."

Pete Firman will be at the Arts Centre on September 21. To book, go to swindontheatres.co.uk or call 01793 524481.