Jerry Jerry good indeed

**

Jerry Sadowitz is chiefly known as a foul-mouthed and very funny comedian but, like John Lennon, his asperity has always been balanced by a strain of innocence and humility. One aspect of this flipside of the Sadowitz character is the man's affection for magic, which seems to provide him with a release from the demons that drive his comedy.

In magician mode, Sadowitz is almost mellow - almost, but not quite - so when he gently says, "I hope you can all see at the back there," he can't resist adding, "There's f*** all I can do if you can't." There follows an hour of brilliant coin and card tricks, in which the quickness of the Sadowitz hand relentlessly deceives the eye, although he also advises us to keep an eye on his shoes, "because I do sleight of feet too".

As he apparently makes coins and cards materialise and dematerialise, occasionally saying, in a theatrical tone, "Excrement!" - which is Sadowitz's jaundiced reworking of the glitzy magician's catchphrase, "Excellent!" - he tells a stream of good jokes, many at the expense of the air-brushed megastar of magic, David Copperfield. "Go and see Copperfield," he says, "you'll believe a man can be suspended by wires."

Sadowitz, who performs in an Oxfam suit using props kept in a slumped holdall, hates the show-off element in magicianship, but a little more projection on his part might not be out of place. He's rated as among the top six close-up magicians in the country, but he performs his tricks so casually that you begin to take his brilliance for granted; or maybe Sadowitz is just too funny to be given the credit he deserves as a magician.

This show comes highly recommended in any case.

An Evening with Jerry Sadowitz