An Earby star tricks his way on to our screens!

WHETHER he's baring his behind on the freezing Blackpool promenade, or divining the bra sizes of passing girls in Glasgow, Paul Zenon, above, performs the kind of tricks that are hard to ignore.

Filmed on city streets at around the time the pubs close down and the clubs gear up, Paul's one-hour Channel Four Easter Monday special - Paul Zenon Turning Tricks - was as cheeky as it was astonishing.

"We've never met before have we Claire?" Paul asked a passing Glasgow redhead. "But I would say (pause) your breasts are (longer pause), 38C."

Claire's squeal of surprise preceded her admission that Paul was exactly right. All the other girls accosted did likewise. It may have been magic, but not as we know it, Jim.

As for the bottom baring, Paul persuaded a dozen groups of girls to interrupt their night out and choose a card. He pretended to name their choice. They said he was wrong - their card was the Queen of Hearts.

"Queen of Hearts my a***" Paul retorted, dropping his trousers to reveal a picture of a card on his left cheek - the Queen of Hearts. It was a brave stunt to pull, especially at midnight, in March, with a sea breeze blowing.

"It was so cold," says Paul, who is from Earby.

"Doing that 12 times in a row on the sea front you suddenly think 'maybe I would be better off doing a cruise or doing cabaret in Las Vegas'."

But the whole show has been a bit of a shock. Paul has been turning tricks since he was an eight-year-old lad in Earby, but he has never had a one-hour TV special before. A month ago, Paul expected to be working in the warmth of Australia right now. Then TV company Channel X asked him to make the special. It took him two weeks to write it, followed by one week filming and another week editing before it was immediately shoehorned into last night's schedule.

"I hope the magic ends up kind of incidental, so you don't come away thinking 'that was a fantastic mystery.' You come away thinking 'that was a good laugh'," says Paul.

And you do. In Glasgow, for example, he went round with a little machine which, he told gobsmacked shop assistants, was the convenient new way to carry cash. It takes 'blanks' and prints tenners before your very eyes. It was not seeing the trick that surprised, it was seeing the staff accept the money!

"I was amazed - there's no way I would accept it," Paul admits. "And they didn't know they were on camera, so it wasn't because it was a TV thing. I think we used about five of them in the programme and we probably did it ten times. Not one of them refused the cash."

Paul, 34, started his career as a street entertainer so he's used to the whiff of danger that goes with performing in unpredictable situations, and having to ad-lib his way out of trouble.

Even so, things got a bit hairy at times. "We were in the middle of a bottle fight in Glasgow - not directly involving us but going on around us - which was a bit worrying with a £15,000 camera."

The cameraman was punched in Manchester by a drug dealer who wanted them to film elsewhere, and the producer was pelted with pizza by a junkie in London.

The up side to this the chance to meet all kinds of street life, from a grizzled and sozzled pair of Glasgow pub philosophers to a bunch of hysterical Japanese girl students. What they had in common is their reaction to Paul's baffling skills. "I think the docusoap style of TV is a great way to capture the intimacy of close-up magic," he says.

David Copperfield might make the Statue of Liberty vanish, but when Paul got a pub drinker to cover the mouth of an empty bottle with a coin and makes a cigarette pass through it, to universal amazement, it was just as impressive.

"On the TV screen, the cigarette is the same size as the Statue of Liberty - three inches tall."

Back to the bra sizes. How does he manage to be so accurate? "Oh, just dedication, basically," laughs Paul. "It's just having an intense interest, and practising."

And there are perks. One elegant blonde - correctly judged a 34C - was asked (off camera) to put her phone number on a playing card. "I explained that it wasn't for a trick, and that I'd call her the week after. I think it's the only job where you can do that without getting punched."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.