THERE was a touch of magic at the Anvil today as Anvil Arts officially launched its Autumn brochure. 

To mark the occasion The Gazette was invited down to the Basingstoke theatre to see up close one of the acts which will be coming to the town in the Autumn. 

Officially launching Anvil Arts Autumn season was Britain’s Got Talent finalist Jamie Raven. 

The magician was on hand to showcase some of his latest tricks ahead of his upcoming tour, which will stop off at the Haymarket on Tuesday, 16 October. 

The lovable magician, who headlined the West End box office smash The Illusionists, will take his audience on a journey through the magical world in which he operates in his new show. 

After meeting the magician it was right down to business displaying why the nation fell in love with him on the ITV show. 

After seeing Raven seamlessly bend a fork by just waving it in the air, I was invited to play a bit of a card game with the magician. 

Having picked my card (the two of hearts) by the time it was back in the deck Raven had already guessed what my card was before even looking for the card that I had just signed. 

Raven isn’t just a one trick pony, using his skills to display a bit of mind reading buy guessing what number on a dice we had picked three times and all three times he guessed correctly. 

For his finale Rave produced a stack of cards with names on them – all names you’d associate with famous people. 

He said that by picking one of the cards there would be a picture of the famous person it related to inside a sealed envelope. By what I thought was complete random choice I picked the card with the name Leonardo on it and low and behold in the envelope was a picture of Leonardo Dicaprio. 

If that wasn’t impressive enough a member of the Anvil staff picked a number between 1-100 which related to an item on a shopping list on his phone, which would indicate something we’d be doing with Mr Dicaprio. 

The item was beer and then Raven revealed a tweet that he posted a full two hours before I met him which read: “Today feels like a Leonardo Di Caprio drinking beer sort of day.” 

Seeing Raven up close was incredible and I could no believe what I was seeing. A great entertainer and someone who is worth seeing. 

For more information of raven’s show at the Haymarket as well as the rest of the Autumn season visit anvilarts.org.uk.