BLACKPOOL, England, April 11, 2026 — James Phelan walked onto the Britain’s Got Talent stage on Saturday night and into a story ten years in the making.
The 33-year-old magician from Cobham, Surrey, is the nephew of the late Paul Daniels — the beloved British conjuror whose BBC series, The Paul Daniels Magic Show, ran from 1979 to 1994 and made him one of the most recognizable figures in the history of the art. Daniels died on March 17, 2016, at the age of 77, from a brain tumor. He was weeks past a BGT audition Phelan had filmed for Series 10 — footage that was never broadcast.
“It’s been 10 years now, almost to the day,” Phelan said. “It feels like now’s the time.” He was referring to a previous BGT audition he had filmed a decade ago — one that never aired. Daniels passed away just days after filming wrapped, and the footage was quietly set aside.
The audition was staged at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool, a venue where Daniels often performed. Phelan felt it. “I walk in today and I see his name on the wall,” he told the judges, “and I stand on the same stage that he spent years of his life.”
The performance earned him four unanimous yes votes from a panel of Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden, and Alesha Dixon — returning judges all — joined this series by KSI, who came aboard as a permanent fourth judge for season 19 replacing Bruno Tonioli.
Alesha Dixon verified a handful of sewing needles as genuine before Phelan swallowed them along with a length of thread. After allowing a thorough examination of his mouth, he drew out the strand with the needles neatly threaded on it.
He then borrowed one of Holden’s rings, made it vanish, and directed KSI to hold up a wine glass he had been given before the trick began. The ring had reappeared around the stem. KSI’s reaction — and the room’s — said everything.
His closing sequence had been engineered before anyone entered the building. Every audience member had received a numbered envelope — one through one thousand — each containing a glow stick. When Holden named her favorite color (green) and called out page 97 from an imaginary book, Phelan asked anyone holding envelope 97 to stand. An audience member named Sammy raised his hand. When Sammy cracked his glow stick, it glowed green. Every other envelope in the room contained a stick that glowed yellow.
Cowell delivered the verdict that landed hardest. Standing as someone related to one of the most celebrated magicians in British history, he said, comes with enormous pressure — and what Phelan put on that stage offered “no other explanation other than magic.”
The advice that shaped him
Phelan has been deliberate about standing apart from his uncle’s legacy rather than leaning on it. Daniels, by all accounts, wanted exactly that.
While Daniels readily performed at the dinner table, he taught James only one trick — a simple color-changing card trick. His message was direct: “Don’t be me, be you, because you’re the best one of you there is.”
The rest Phelan learned from old VHS recordings of The Paul Daniels Magic Show. He recalls his uncle saying, “It’s in one of those books over there. Read those books and you’ll find out how it’s done.”
Daniels’ inspiration and example eventually led Phelan to quit a successful marketing career to pursue magic full-time. What he built on his own terms is considerable. He is the first magician to sell out a two-week solo run at The Magic Circle in London. He is currently touring the United Kingdom with his show The Man Who Was Magic.
Daniels left a long shadow worth stepping out of — and into. He was the first magician from outside the United States to receive the Academy of Magical Arts’ Magician of the Year Award, in 1982. He held the Inner Magic Circle’s highest distinction — Member with Gold Star — and received The Maskelyne from The Magic Circle in 1988 for services to British magic. He has been widely credited as an inspiration to a generation of professional conjurors on both sides of the Atlantic. Debbie McGee, Daniels’ widow, continues to support Phelan’s career.
A decade-delayed debut
Phelan’s 2016 BGT audition impressed the judges and advanced him to the next round, but was never televised. Daniels died shortly after filming, and the audition was quietly set aside.
Ten years later, on the same Blackpool stage his uncle called his own, James Phelan finally got his broadcast moment. And what a moment it proved to be.
Responses