Deal Or No Deal and Dancing On Ice's Stephen Mulhern: Magic is a ‘universal art form that will never die’

He remembers doing magic shows for his family in the East End of London from a young age, saying: “I’d set up a stage in the living room, and then I’d go buy sweets from the shop and sell them.

“There’d be like a pre-show bit, where they’d have orange juice, and then they would see the show.

"Then when my sister was growing up, I’d do magic shows for my sister, then I started doing magic shows at other people’s parties.”

Mulhern’s stage might be a bit bigger now, presenting shows like Deal Or No Deal and Dancing On Ice, but he hasn’t forgotten his roots.

“I still do magic shows for friends that are in TV,” Mulhern, 47, says. Holly Willoughby and Emma Willis’ kids, for example.

One thing he’s learned from children’s parties?

“They’re the toughest audiences,” London-based Mulhern admits.

“Adults have got this thing that we all learn, where you [know whether] it’s the right time to talk or it’s not the right time to talk. Kids have got no filter, so if they see how a trick is done, they let me know.”

But that being said, Mulhern adds that adults don’t have quite the same sense of wonder as kids. “It’s interesting with adults that they’ll even come up with their own solutions to stuff, going ‘Oh yeah, I could see the strings’. Now listen, I know there are no strings in this trick, but it gives them a bit of peace of mind.”

Mulhern’s career started in magic – performing at a Butlin’s outpost on his childhood family holidays – before presenting children’s TV shows like Finger Tips and Holly & Stephen’s Saturday Showdown.

His childhood experiences as a magician are fictionalised in the children’s series Max Magic, co-written with author Tom Easton. The third instalment, Max Magic: The Incredible Holiday Hideout, sees the protagonist Max (based on Mulhern) head to ‘Bupkins Leisure Park’.

“Bupkins is based on Butlin’s, which is where I spent two years – I was a Redcoat there, one of their in-house entertainers,” Mulhern explains. “I did that for two years, and I learnt a lot from there. I left having a proper magic act and I got my first break there on stage.”

Mulhern is heading back to Butlin’s later this year for the tour of his magic show.

“I’m working on a magic trick at the moment that I’m going to put into my stage show – it’s taken me two years to work on this trick,” he says. I finally mastered it and it’s ready – we do our first show in June. It’s funny I’m going back to Butlin’s – talk about [how] things are quite poetic and go full circle.

"I started my career there, and now, at possibly the height of my career at the moment, I’m going back to the place where it all started.”