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At the end of a beautiful summer's day what could be more enjoyable than seeing first class magic being performed live. A good audience of around 200 attended "Peter's Friends" at Newbury Corn Exchange on Thursday evening, to see Peter Clifford and Pete Wardell.

Peter opened the show by writing down single digital numbers called out by the audience, and when he totalled these up, they added up to 3610. He showed a prediction on which was written the word "Today". He then reminded us that the date today was 3/6/10. Very clever and fooled many magicians in the audience. A running feature of Peter's set was an effect with envelopes in which were coins, these were opened on request from chosen audience members, and the coin in the envelope matched a gift box on view on the stage throughout.

The audience member was then given the contents of the gift box. The effect had a surprising and strong ending which I will not spoil for a future show is due later this month in Oxford. Peter also did a billet effect with his Uncle Jake's Spirit Box, managing to identify what 3 spectators had written on the billets, as a gift, a film, and a wish for the future. Peter's final effect was a book test, using 3 books and 3 spectators. A very strong mental effect, performed extremely well. Overall an excellent performance by Peter. He clearly had given a great deal of thought into linking each of the effects throughout his set, and this paid off well.

After a short 15 minute interval, the second half of the show was Pete Wardell. Pete's opener used 3 balloons, and finished with the production of a bottle. A strong and funny routine. A borrowed banknote with 2 envelopes featured in the next routine, ending with the banknote in a kiwi. In the middle of this routine Pete demonstrated a wonderful Egg Bag routine. Pete set up his final routine of Cups and Balls by demonstrating what Houdini may have done as he developed from being the "KIng of Cards" to the famous escapologist.

This was a wonderfully funny routine during which he constantly managed to show his hands free and then immediately tied up again, whilst trying to find a selected card in a bag held by 2 specators, one of them being our own David Chaudoir. The final piece was Pete's famous Cups and Balls routine. I have seen many such routines over the years, but without doubt Pete's is one of the very best. The fact that Pete has performed this routine on numerous occasions during his street magic days showed.

Well honed, fast moving, very funny, and expertly executed. A fitting end to a wonderful night of magic