About the Author

barry Barry not Stuart. Often seen standing on the left hand side.

Marley Fish

As some of you already know from our Twitter account, sadly the real Marley Fish who inspired me to create his own comic series, was found dead last Monday. He was adopted two years ago from Wood Green Animal Shelter after surviving being dumped when he was very small and living as a stray.

He was intelligent, strong and full of character. He could make me laugh even when I was very stressed out so you can imagine that I was, and still am, very upset about his tragic departure. I even miss Marley waiting for me to walk past him and pounce on my ankles.

I was tempted not to draw any more comics about him but have since decided that as a cat has nine lives he shall live on! As of next week I shall continue doing the Marley Monday strips. Eventually I hope to gather them into a book with all profits going to the animal shelter where he came from.

The day he was found I had to go to Sheffield to film for “The Magicians.” I had a quick moment in the evening to draw this on the back of a box of soap found in the hotel room.

Marley Fish: Scratching Post

Sad news: the real Marley Fish is currently missing. We hope that he is surviving the snow

The MagiciansS2E04: Behind the Scenes

This episode saw us teaming up with our only female celebrity of the series, Tina Hobley.

The tranportation box trick is something that had existed in our notebooks for quite a while and we’d always wanted to try it. It is one of those tricks that is scary to perform in case the people involved on stage catch us out. Not half as scary, however, as the grammar of the Art Department when they first delivered the box…

We also did what is probably the most elaborate stunt for us for the whole series. We convinced ghost believers that we were genuine ghost hunters and the spirit that we were trying to communicate with was actually Santa Claus!

We fimed it in December before the second series had begun airing but unfortunately our first lot of ghost believers recognised us and knew that we were magicians so we had to work hard at fooling our other small group of people. Tina’s little girl said to her after the show “Why are they running away from Santa mummy?”

We were up against it once again as another item was dropped for being too extreme. This was a shame as it was already replaced for something less extreme anyway. So, last minute we had to re-write and rehearse something totally different. It ended up being the drawing routine and our roles were switched so that I ended up getting the ‘mouth to mouth’ at the end.

Below: Even if we did Skele-Ball it would be “too dark and weird!”

Next episode we cook up some magic with John and Gregg from Masterchef, and things are heating up already backstage.

Marley Fish vs Laser Pen

The MagiciansS2e03: Behind the Scenes

This week we were paired with heavyweight boxer David Haye and instead of doing a whole range of evil, nasty, bloody tricks, we attempted to be nice. It’s surprising what a man who punches people for a living can bring out in us!

Something nice… turning water into wine. This is a favourite of ours and an idea that we have played around with for 6 years. We’ve experimented with every concept you could think of to come up with the secret behind this trick and guess what? You can find out exactly how we did this trick as part of our “Show and Tell” UK tour when we will be revealing the secret behind our version of this miracle.

Something sexy… magic whilst wearing nothing more than a pair of socks and pants. If you had told the 14 year-old version of me about it, he would never have believed it. I was the the boy who hated stripping down to even just his PE kit. What an event it was! A combination of prop malfunction and human error on the night could have resulted in the death of a person on live TV!

Something light… when we first showed David the trick during which we make somebody appear from nowhere he was absolutely floored. He was aching to find out the secret and when we taught it to him he thought it was the best trick he had ever seen. I think that the girl on the night appreciated it even more! You wouldn’t believe the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to make something like this work and it really is one of those things that if one person makes a mistake the whole thing is blown.

Something nasty… we couldn’t help ourselves, we just had to ruin it by giving that guy a tattoo of his ex-girlfriend. To be honest though, what was he going to do? Try and beat us up whilst we had David Haye as our bodyguard?

Next episode we team up with Tina Hobley… we hope to do one of the most horrific things we can probably get away with on a BBC1 tea-time slot. We promise to keep our clothes on though!

Marley Fish: Evolution

And in honour of “The Magicians” at the weekend…

Marley Fish: Food Pouches

I’d love to see a wild cat hunt and kill a fully grown cow.

Marley has a Twitter account @marleyfish. #marleymonday

There is also a Tumblr for those of you who like to tumble: marleyfishcakes.tumblr.com

MagiciansS2e01: Behind the Scenes

The brand new series of “The Magicians” began on Saturday and what a show it was! We literally made history as a full magic show hasn’t been performed LIVE on TV for decades. Pete Firman, Latimer and ourselves either have balls of steel or we’re really dumb!

Working with Daniel Roche and Tyger Drew-Honey, the brothers from “Outnumbered”, was really great. They were both really professional and very keen to learn magic. They perfomed our “Ghost Illusion” flawlessly so we were proud of our little protégés.

Funnily enough, Tyger isn’t too keen on creepy crawlies so doing our coffee trick was a challenge for him. Daniel however, loved chasing after people with handfuls of locusts, worms and other nasties!

We had our close-up trick pulled literally less than 24 hours before we went live as it was deemed “too violent” (what else would you expect from us) so we very quickly came up with the first ever Facebook and Twitter trick. Over 7000 people sent us the names of playing cards online and both the show and that trick were the top trending topics on Twitter as a result!

For our “Subliminal CD” trick we displayed the classic album “Jeer” by Old Mercy. The more alert viewers out there may have noticed that it is infact an angram of “Joe McElderry.” I bet Old Mercy sales would have sky-rocketed if they actually did exist.

To round off the evening we were declared the victors in this episode much to Tyger’s joy and Daniel’s disappointment. He really wanted to have a go at eating fire… he’d have to be careful of that hair though!

Next episode we team with Strictly’s Craig Revel Horwood and do what was genuinely the most ambitious stunt we have ever attempted.

Marley Fish: Deep Thinker

Marley Fish: Psychic Cat

The first Marley Fish strip! I’ll aim to post them every Monday.

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