Steven Frayne was born in December 1982 in Bradford, West Yorkshire. He was given his stage name, Dynamo, while performing at Houdini’s centenary celebrations in 2001. Two years later, he won a grant from the Prince’s Trust, which he used to buy video equipment to create the first-ever ‘magic mix-tape’ – his videos went viral and led to the TV series Dynamo: Magician Impossible, which reached more than 250 million viewers across 193 territories.
He became the first magician in history to headline venues such as the O2 in London (three nights) and Manchester’s MEN arena. His 2015 live show Seeing is Believing grew from a 10-date run into a three-year tour, selling in excess of 750,000 tickets and filling arenas across the UK, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. His books Dynamo – The Book of Secrets and Nothing is Impossible – made him a Sunday Times Bestselling Author.
Last year’s Sky special Dynamo is Dead saw Frayne explaining his time away from the spotlight and ‘killing off’ his alter ego. This year, he’s back with Miracles, a show which takes him back to his street magic roots and features a death-defying finale: the miracle to end all miracles.
Speaking to the Big Issue for his Letter to My Younger Self, Frayne looks back to the roots of his magical thinking, how Chris Martin’s mum helped him break through and saying goodbye to Dynamo.
When I was 16 my dad was in jail, so I didn’t really see him. My mum got pregnant when she was 16, and had me when she was 17. So she was always a really, really young mum. She was an older sister type. She was still growing and becoming a young adult herself. I remember she set up her first hairdressers and when I was a kid I spent loads of time in the hairdresser showing my magic to all the customers.
At school I was getting beaten up every day by these two guys. I was a very skinny kid, I probably weighed about five stone when wet, so the bigger kids could just throw me around. My grandpa used to pick me up from school on Friday nights. One day, he got there early and saw me get beaten up.
When we were walking, he said, “I want to show you some things to stop that from happening to you.” I’m thinking, is he going to teach me karate? But he started showing me these magic techniques. He said, “You do these and they won’t be able to push you around. You’ll be able to make yourself really heavy, an immovable force.”
2007: Doing tricks at a summer party in Kensington, London. Image: Allstar Picture Library Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
My grandpa was the wisest man I knew, so I listened to him. I tried it when I was at school, and it actually worked. But though it stopped me getting beat up on that day, the boys didn’t want it to look like I had one over on them, so they just spread rumours that I was a weirdo, and that alienated me more. But it did get people off my back. And my grandpa started teaching me different kinds of magic.
I felt very isolated and insecure at school. From age four till about 10, my reading level was really high, but I couldn’t speak clearly. Even to this day I struggle to pronounce my Rs, so I was always self conscious. I just got lost in books. It was almost like I needed a way to channel the imagination and the creativity that was stuck inside of me because I didn’t feel confident speaking. But once my grandpa put a pack of cards in my hand, it gave me a way to speak to people that I never could have imagined. So magic is really how I communicate. And it’s magic that has helped me bring people together.
When I was doing my art design course, the teachers kept asking me to do magic for college events. It got to the point where I was doing so many bookings, I started to get noticed. Then people started booking me for corporate events outside of college, to the point where I was too busy to keep up with my college work. I ended up dropping out after a year.
2011: Walking on the water of the River Thames outside the Houses of Parliament. Image: Shutterstock
For my 18th birthday, my nana and grandad who lived in Memphis got me an eight-month visa for America. In the evenings my nana would take me to the local magic club, the American equivalent of the magic circle. I got to see where the original street magicians performed. We went to Vegas, and I met David Copperfield. Suddenly I was meeting magicians who were treating it like a real career. So I came back from America with a kind of business plan.
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Life can come and kick you in the ass and it did me when I got back from America. I ended up with an abscess on my bowel, and I was in hospital for six months. They had to cut through my nervous system, so I had to learn to walk again in hospital. So my grand plan to take over the world with magic got put on hold. My nana wanted me to go back to college, but I knew when I was lying in hospital that I was going to try to make it as a magician.
When I got out of hospital, I went to banks to try and get money, but they just laughed me out the door. I started going to the local youth club and through various contacts I got an audition for a Prince’s Trust award. And I walked in – it was a cross between Dragons’ Den and Britain’s Got Talent. I remember performing my little heart out.
My friend Tony came out after my audition and said, “They don’t normally let you know on the day, but they’re giving you the money. They don’t really understand what your business is all about, but they loved your enthusiasm, and they loved the magic. You’ll get £2,000 to start your business.”
I was quite clever about getting backstage at gigs. Coldplay were having a launch party for their X&Y album [in 2005] in Camden and somehow I managed to get a ticket. I got into the VIP area and I started doing magic to this lovely older lady. She said, “My boy would love your magic.” So of course, her son was Chris Martin. At first, he was a bit dismissive, like he was appeasing his mum. But when he saw my first trick he got very excited. He went to get [his then-wife] Gwyneth Paltrow and everyone started filming me. It was surreal.
After that I got booked to perform at Coldplay’s Crystal Palace Stadium aftershow [later that same year]. I got to do magic to Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and Snoop Dogg. Every time I did one show, I got booked to do another.
2016: Towering over London traffic as part of his Everyday Illusions project. Image: Jim Marks/Samsung/Shutterstock
There are two types of people in our industry, and I fall into the second category. There are natural showmen, who are built for this. They’re meant to be on stage. Then there’s people like me who were never meant to get off the council estate. I’m an introvert with autistic tendencies. It’s very weird for me as a performer – I can’t do my job without having people stare at me. But it’s OK because when I’m performing, I kind of zone out. I’m in the midst of the magic. But when I got very successful and started doing all these television shows and being told, do this, do that, I suddenly was no longer performing for me any more. I was performing for these people who had all this expectation of me.
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The stress of working in TV and always being Dynamo began to show. I started to shut down. I was out of action for years and heavily medicated. My wife got me into the Priory. I lost the ability to even hold cards because of the arthritis. I thought I was never going to do magic again. Even when I started to get my dexterity back, all I could think was I could never meet the expectations of Dynamo. I was scared of performing. I completely lost myself. I felt like I was a let down to people around me and to myself. I tried to commit suicide in the sense of self harming.
It took the death of my nana and my two dogs – they all passed in the same weekend – that made me sit up and take note. My grandpa passed in 2012 and my nana just died. They were the reasons I got into magic in the first place. I thought, I have to do magic, because that’s the best way to keep my nana’s legacy alive.
I realised that the problem was, I’d been given a name. I had been Dynamo longer than I’ve been Steven and I didn’t know where Steven ended and Dynamo began. I thought, I can’t keep hiding behind Dynamo. I just need to be what I am. So now I’m enjoying magic like it’s for the first time again. I’m seeing it through fresh eyes, I have the hunger I had when I was 17. This new TV show is the first thing I’ve made from a place of joy.
Steven Frayne’s new show Miracles will air this Christmas on Sky Max and streaming service NOW.
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