Who Puts the fun into funerals?

It’s always been an in joke amongst magicians that we’re thinking about moving into the funeral market so you can imagine my surprise when I was contacted by a lady asking me to perform at the wake of her mother’s funeral. At first I was thinking a magician friend of mine had told someone to wind me up and I was thinking about going down the lines of, So do you want me to:
• Saw the coffin in half
• Do cards from corpse
• Contact the dead
• Etc

But there was something genuine about the girls voice and although laughing she said that they wanted to celebrate her mother’s life and therefore the colour black was banned, there would be music and a party afterwards. So a price was agreed, the gig was booked and I turned up nice and early.

The Wake

So I turn up, walk past the balloons and check with the staff and sure enough I was in the right place. When the guests arrived it met the daughters and both were bubbly, cheery and delightful.
As no one knew who I was or what I did it was time to introduce myself to the first table and there was no other opening I could use other than…”Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. My Name’s Woody and I’m here to put the fun into funeral” It’s just one of those lines that you have to convince yourself that there’s an autobiography in everyone of us and in mine there’s a chapter dedicated to weird gigs and this currently sits at the top of all the unusual events where I’ve performed. Anyhow, the gig went well, people laughed, clapped and I ended up doing about 4 hours. I was even hit on by possibly the campest man in the world which we’ll just say was an experience, performed magic for a girl who knew Dynamo and another girl who is sisters of a guy from magic club – weird.

Overall experience

I’ve always said; when you have a venue and people – you have an event. When you have me at an event, you have a special event that will stay in the minds of everyone forever as – “oh that was the event with the magician”.
With the funeral market it’s basically exactly the same as a corporate or a wedding. People are dressed up, they have a few drinks and they meet people they haven’t seen in a while. Where it can and does go differently is that you can either have a sad funeral or a happy one. We all mourn differently and if by me being there kept everyone upbeat and in happy then I done my job.
Thankfully I made a difference in this girls life and I’m only sorry that I never met her mother as she sounded absolutely amazing. RIP BABS.