Paul Daniels: How the entertainer took magic out of the theatre and transported it to our televisions

The public liked him a great deal and, when his appeal was its peak, his shows achieved audiences of 20 million

For much of the 1970s and 1980s he bestrode Saturday night television with a profile similar to that now enjoyed by Ant & Dec. (John Curtis/REX/Shutterstock)

Paul Daniels’s greatest trick was to take the art of magic out of the theatre and to transport it, with no hint of sleight of hand, to the mass medium of television.

The entertainer has passed away at the age of 77 after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. His ebullient presence in prime-time TV as host of 15 series of The Paul Daniels Magic Show paved the way for popular modern performers such as Dynamo and Derren Brown.

“You’ll like this, not a lot but you’ll like it”, was his signature expression in an era when every TV performer needed a catchphrase. The public liked him a great deal and, when his appeal was its peak, his shows achieved audiences of 20 million.

For much of the 1970s and 1980s he bestrode Saturday night television with a profile similar to that now enjoyed by Ant & Dec, who also owe a debt to the chatty and vertically-challenged North-Easterner.

Born in Middlesbrough, he began practising magic at the age of 11 but later trained as an accountant and worked as a grocer. Like other TV stars of his era, including Lena Zaveroni and Pam Ayres, Daniels got his big break in 1970 on the talent show Opportunity Knocks, a less-flamboyant 20^th Century forerunner of The X Factor.

That led to him being given a slot on Granada TV’s The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, which emulated the working mens’ club entertainment scene where he built his early fame. The first series of The Paul Daniels Magic Show went on air in 1979.

Daniels died with his wife, Debbie McGee, alongside him, just as she had been on stage and in front of the cameras for much of his career. Gary Daniels, one of the entertainer’s three sons with his first wife Jacqueline, spoke on social media of his “incredible sadness” at the loss of his father, posting an image of a weeping rabbit standing in a magician’s topper.

Another son, Martin, followed Daniels into becoming a magician and appeared with him on television.

News of the entertainer’s passing brought an outpouring of tributes, including one from Dynamo. “Paul was truly a giant of the entertainment world who really defined magic for over 20 years,” he said. “As a working-class magician from the North, he was personally a huge inspiration for me and I know that he has inspired countless magicians around the world and will forever be known as one of the all-time greats.”

As a household name, Daniels was invited to host a series of game shows, including Every Second Counts and Odd One Out. But during the mid-1990s, BBC management decided he had lost his sparkle. His magic show was dropped in 1994 and he was given the American format Wipeout, which he hosted for three years until being replaced by Bob Monkhouse.

Daniels was an outspoken supporter of the Conservative party and latterly became a target for comedians who saw him as outdated. He tried to go along with the joke by appearing on Sacha Baron Cohen’s Da Ali G Show dressed in the host’s distinctive lurid sportswear. The comedian Mrs Merton (Caroline Aherne) asked McGee, who was a dancer when with the Iranian National Ballet when she met her future husband: “What was it that first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?”

But when in 2001 the couple agreed to be the subjects of an observational documentary by the often sardonic Louis Theroux, the couple were candid in allowing the audience to observe their relationship close up. Their popularity soared as a result. It was a rare moment when the magician lifted his veil.