MAGICIAN Jamie Raven blew the minds of ten million viewers, four celebrity judges and a huge live audience at his audition for ITV's Britain's Got Talent this year.
Jamie himself, however, was feeling something quite different... "It was really something else – a mixture of terror and excitement, mostly," he smiles.
"The first audition ended on May 31 but actually it was something I'd been working on for weeks and weeks, practising every day. When it all came together I was thrilled."
But Raven wasn't practising with a discount magic kit in his bedroom – he's been a gigging magician for more than a decade. "Magic is my career so there was the extra pressure of not ruining my reputation too," he explains. "I've got 11 years of experience so it was more a case of forgetting who the judges were and the power they had.
"It was great to see their reactions because I knew then that I'd pulled it off.
"It never gets old watching people's surprise. A lot of people don't really get the chance to experience live magic."
Week after week he performed his trickery on the popular TV show with not a single 'abracadabra' to be heard.
And he certainly pulled out all the stops for the grand final – even summoning a helicopter out of thin air.
In the end, though, he lost by a hair's breadth – a dog hair's breadth to be more precise, in the form of stunt dog Matisse and his trainer Jules O'Dwyer.
The result was much disputed by the viewing public and Raven still gets the odd consolation from strangers.
"I was doing a gig in Scotland the other day and I was putting my bags through security.
"This guy who was patting me down just said, 'You should've won' and waved me on. Then again he could've confused me for an Olympic bodybuilder or something," he laughs.
Coming second hasn't held Raven back. In fact, he's embarking on his first national tour next year – taking his mind-bending tricks across the country and stopping off in Plymouth in February.
"I'm really looking forward to the tour – magic like mine is best seen in the flesh. It's a hundred times more impressive because you get that crowd reaction from people.
"When you see a trick on TV you can put it down to a camera trick – that's their prerogative but in a live venue, particularly when you're performing a trick with a person, you can see there's no trickery involved.
"The tour will really focus on telling my story – it's my journey. Hopefully it might inspire others to give magic a go."
He says he owes his love for the craft to an anonymous Indian waiter.
"I was 10 or 11 when I became interested in magic. I used to watch people performing tricks but I was never really capable of performing them myself.
"Friends of the family moved to India and we went out there to visit them.
"We were in a restaurant and this guy – I don't remember his name but I can picture his face so vividly. He started doing these magic tricks for us and then he showed us some we could do ourselves.
"Me and my brother and friends learnt them but I was the only one who stuck with it. So I owe my whole career to a man somewhere in India!"
Raven left a degree in Economics behind him to take up magic professionally.
"It became apparent that Economics wasn't what I wanted to do so I started doing tricks for a living and it became my career.
"Someone once told me you should leave this job in a better state than you found it and now I want to make sure we find the next generation of magicians.
"I never expected to be doing this. I got the furthest that any magician from Britain's Got Talent has ever gotten."
Raven's suffered a fair degree of scepticism during the show over his seemingly impossible tricks but he says he's taking it all in his stride.
"The way I see it if you want to believe in magic like I do, then fantastic. If you don't and you just want to enjoy the entertainment that's fine, too, or even if you just want to come specifically to try and figure out how I performed a trick."
Despite our best efforts, Raven insists he'll never give away the secret to summoning helicopters...
"I'll never say yes or no when people ask how a trick was done. This whole business is based on mystery and it's good to keep people guessing!"
Jamie Raven hits Plymouth Pavilions on Tuesday, February 23, 2016.
RACHAEL DODD