Bye Bye Blackpool, Hello Shenanigans
Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 12:13PM 
And so another Blackpool convention bites the dust. How was it this year? Different I guess. This was the first year that the FISM European Championships were being run in conjunction with Blackpool. This essentially meant the competitions were all being handled by FISM and the rest of the weekend by The Blackpool Magicians Club. Whether this is a model that worked is open to all sorts of debate that your editor is not going to get into but it did give rise to the another element over the weekend. Controversy.
There were a handful of talking points over the weekend. The elimination of and bringing down the curtain during the spot of stage competition acts that had spent good money and travelled long distances was met with a mix of relief and fury by the audience. There was also controversy during the Saturday night show when the emcee was slow hand-clapped by certain sections of the audience which resulted in him actually walking off stage. He had hitherto insulted most of the nationalities present and his coup de grace was a charming routine comparing gardening to pubic hair maintenance. Wow that is a sentence I never thought I would have to write in a magic blog.
What is never controversial is the social side of Blackpool. Thousands of magicians representing countries from all over the world mixed and mingled and sessioned and drank and hung out and fell over and laughed and cried from laughing well into the wee hours each day. As a result it was one of the best, most fun and inclusive Blackpool's in recent years.
On the domestic front it was great to see so many of us Irish over there enjoying the fun. This is exactly the type of craic you'll all be having at Shenanigans starting the 29 April in Dublin. Shenanigans organisers would love you to help promote their shindig. You can download out flyer here. Please forward it to your friends, post a link to it on facebook or twitter and help get the word out that Shenanigans is the place to be.
