David Nixon

David Porter Nixon (29 December 1919 – 1 December 1978) was an English magician and television personality. At the height of his career, Nixon was among the best-known magicians in the UK.

Early life Born in Muswell Hill, London, In 1938 he joined The Magic Circle. He also became an accomplished double bass player and performed with a local band. and he was joined on stage by the actor and comedian Norman Wisdom, who wreaked havoc with his act. The partnership was a success and the two men subsequently appeared at the London Casino in September 1948.

In addition to his magic act, Nixon sang, danced and worked front of house. In 1947, he married a singer named Margaret Burton.

Nixon was in demand for private society parties and frequently performed at the soirees of Mayfair hostess, Dorothy Hartman, owner of Lendrum & Hartman Limited, in Berkeley House, Hay Hill in the 1950s. His magic shows included Trix n Nixon (1962) Tonight with David Nixon (1969), David Nixon's Magic Box (1970-71) and The David Nixon Show (1972-77) as well as David Nixon's Christmas Magic (1974) that featured a classic magic trick where Lynsey de Paul appeared to disappear from a glass casket while leaving behind a still warm dress. He also appeared as a panelist in the BBC radio comedy panel game, Many a Slip.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1973 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the Magic Circle Headquarters in London. He then presented an episode of the programme the following year, in which the subject was the series' regular British host, Eamonn Andrews. A keen chess player, Nixon presented Checkmate, an ATV series teaching the basics of the game.

Alongside his skills as a magician, Nixon liked to use television technology for humour and entertainment. In the 1970s, when the technology of colour separation overlay became available, he developed a way to interact with a recording of himself apparently on the other side of a mirror. Not only was the conversation perfectly coordinated, he also used sleight-of-hand to appear to pass objects back and forth to himself.

David Nixon has been recognised as an influence on future UK magicians as diverse as Wayne Dobson and Jerry Sadowitz.

Nixon was a narrator in the show Emil and the Detectives, at the Mermaid Theatre, London.

David Nixon made his final television appearances posthumously, as a guest on Basil Brush's Magical Christmas, broadcast on BBC1 on 23 December 1978, Celebrity Squares, broadcast on ITV on 24 February 1979 and on Give Us a Clue, also broadcast on ITV on 27 March 1979.

Mellotron Among Nixon's lesser known activities was his involvement in backing the development and manufacture of the Mellotron, an electro-mechanical musical instrument, and the company Mellotronics. He appeared in a 1965 Pathé News newsreel feature to demonstrate the instrument.

Death

Nixon died of lung cancer in Surrey in 1978. Later the same year, Nixon married his second wife, Paula Marshall (Pauline E. Youngs), who worked with him in his act. Paula died aged 28 in a car crash in 1956, the year after the birth of their son. Nixon remarried in 1961 to Vivienne Nichols, the step-daughter of the bandleader Eric Robinson. The couple had a daughter in 1961.

Selected filmography The Spider's Web (1960)