How Did Jamie Raven Do?
In last Sunday's Britain's Got Talent Final, Jamie Raven, the last magician left in the competition, attempted to prove that his close-up approach was worthy of the £250,000 prize and spot on the Royal Variety Show. He began his Final performance with a basic card flourish, then provided Alesha with a wrapped box as an apology for calling her "Sir" in his Semifinal performance. After this set-up, Jamie went to Simon to perform a card trick inspired by his audition performance, where he had correctly predicted Simon's chosen card using a cartoon printed on the cards. He got Simon to name another card, then revealed that his new card, the Seven of Diamonds, was the only facedown card in the deck. Jamie then did a trick with a novelty £250,000 banknote similar to the ones he used in his audition. He got Alesha to sign it on both sides, then changed it into a scrap of paper with his bare hands. The scrap contained an instruction telling Alesha to open her box. She did so and produced a bag which had a lemon inside. Jamie cut open the lemon to reveal the signed banknote. I personally believe that this was Jamie's best routine to date. The central trick is a staple of magic, but the use of the novelty banknote made it unique, and the use of three different containers made it harder to figure out. Furthermore, Jamie did not make any visible mistakes. Although his Final performance, like his Semifinal routine received a lot of criticism on social media sites from television viewers who figured out the secret, it was less of a problem this time around because the evidence they noticed (the size of the hole in the bottom half of the lemon) was not visible until after the routine ended, and does not explain several key elements of the trick, such as how the lemon appeared inside the bag.
The judges loved Jamie's performance, with Amanda saying it was worthy of Las Vegas and Simon saying he was "stunned" by it. In spite of the aforementioned complaints by social media users, the majority of BGT viewers loved Jamie as well. He finished in an impressive second place (behind dog act Jules O'Dwyer and Matisse) with 20.4% of the vote. Overall, I think last year's star magician, Darcy Oake, was better, but Jamie was competent at his field of magic, and it was nice to see a close-up magician do so well. Next year, I hope there will be a wide range of magicians, and I can't wait to see the tricks they will provide for us.
