| |
 |
Roy Charles Comedy Magician
How did he get here?
Where does he come from?
What does he do?
Find out all this and more below. |
|
Roy Charles started entertaining at at early age, telling jokes and performing magic shows for his family and friends.
Through the coming years Roy (the class clown) continually worked on his act and by the time he had left school at 16 he had 45 minutes of material.
Roy aged 6 (He's the one on the right)
He auditioned tirelessly for agents working for free sometimes just to get them to see his act, and soon the work started to come in. He started working the cabaret circuits around the South of England and supporting named acts like Roger DeCoursey, Frank Carson, and Mike Reid. |
Hungry to gain more experience, Roy decided to take the advice of a fellow act and became a Butlins Redcoat. This was the best apprenticeship that he could have wished for, as he was on stage every night, entertaining thousands of people that were on holiday each week.
Roy volunteered for every show and worked the very long hours asked of him knowing that this would help his future career in the business. He learnt things that would have taken him years to pick up, elsewhere, like microphone technique, stagecraft and handling audiences (good and bad.) |
 |
|
Roy the Redcoat (2nd Right) |
 Whilst there, Roy put a bit more time into his first love comedy and started writing gags and routines.
As anyone in comedy knows, you have to get out there and try your material on people and it couldn’t have been better as being at Butlins, he could try out his new gags on the ever changing audiences, as Butlins were getting around 14,000 day visitors let alone the people staying there.
Experience and a red coat, weren’t the only things Roy gained from Butlins, as he met (his wife) Susan there. Together they worked on a double act (magic with a bit of comedy) and after two successful seasons, they felt that the time had come to leave and get back out there, on the circuit.
For 8 years Roy and Susan worked all over the country and abroad successfully and even performed on TV twice. In this time Roy had started putting more of his comedy into the act. Which was going down really well with the audiences. |
|
 After years of entertaining and travelling Roy and Susan decided that the time had come to start a family. So for around a year Roy put together a solo magic act, and started out on his own again.
 Roy was in a dilemma at this point because he wanted to add even more comedy into the show but didn’t know if he had the nerve to class himself as a comedy act, after everyone had known him as a magician for the past 12 years. So he decided to add a few new comedy routines anyway, just to see how it would pan out.
Two heads are better than one.
|
|
After adding the new routines he seemed to be getting more work and the audiences seemed to love his new approach.
But the turning point for Roy came whilst he was performing at a club in Kent one night, a comedian took him to one side and told him that he should really concentrate on the comedy side of his act more, as he thought Roy really had something special to offer.
So after hearing this it seemed to make Roy’s mind up for him. He got straight to work writing new routines and totally changing around his old act making it more up to date and fresh, by mixing his original material with a few crazy magic props and one-liners.
And the rest as they say is history.... |
 |
|
|
The sit down comedian |
|
|
|