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Rachel
Graciously Provided Us With Her Biography:
http://www.wildcolombini.com/ I first became interested in magic a little bit later in life than most people. I was about 17 years old and a little boy of about 8 did a silk vanish with a thumb tip and baffled me and I tormented the life out of him until he told me how he did it!!! I began to play around with
the basics of magic for a few years and was later working for a large
corporation in the UK when I decided to pursue my hobby a little bit
further and made an application to join the magic club in Manchester (THE
ORDER of THE MAGI). I recall doing a simple card effect, a dice matrix and
a color changing deck; I think and then holding my breathe outside for 20
mins whilst they made up their minds if I should be admitted or not. I
recall that one of the interviewers was Derek Lever the organizer of the
famous Blackpool Convention in England (over 3000 attendees). Thankfully
they accepted me and I spent the next few years attending lectures and
conventions and acquiring a more in-depth knowledge of the art.
I had risen through the ranks at the company I worked for and had a nice prestigious position when the company asked for people to volunteer for downsizing, my bosses were not happy to let me go but as the company was controlled by the unions back then everyone had the right to apply and also to receive a tax free golden handshake. I had been performing close-up magic at parties and events during these years as a sideline but knew that that was not necessarily the direction I wanted to travel in. I had
secret grand plans in mind. I decided this was the one chance I would
probably have in life to make a huge gamble and that's exactly what I did.
My plan was to open a magic shop but things were not about to be that
simple. I lived in the small market town of Stockport (buildings and
streets still in the same way they were when it was established in the
year 1200). Nice piece of trivia here, the church and the old cobbled
streets are featured in the 1979 movie Yanks starring Richard Gere.
However when I applied to
open a shop in the market place I was told that first I would have to ply
my trade on the outside market and establish a clientele before I could
apply for an indoor store. so my grand dreams equated into me pitching
svengali decks outside on a small market stall in the dead of winter
freezing my #@**% off !
Anyhow
after a year or so I had increased the number of effects I was pitching
and had a great clientele and they gave me the option to open an indoor
store. I was over the moon, 2 inches shorter from huddling in the cold and
a face frozen from the ice and snow so that I looked like I had had too
much Botox!
I had
realized after seeing many lectures by Americans that there was very
little American magic in the UK at that time and so I started to travel
over to the US to buy American magic to sell over in the UK.
After
travelling to the US a number of times I began to apply to do some US
conventions as by this time I had starting manufacturing my own line of
handcrafted wood products that were selling extremely well in the
shop.
In 1998
I made another huge decision to move to the US permanently and establish
myself there as I loved the mentality that the Americans have toward
magic; they really are the best audiences in the world.
I
established Wild Magic in 1999 in the US (Wild was my maiden name) and
began dealing at numerous conventions all over America and all over the
world. After a couple of years I got back into close-up performing as well
as dealing and then began lecturing on the art of magic.
Another big change occurred
in 2006 when I and a gentleman I had known since the very early 90's
decided to tell each other how we had felt about one another for a number
of years. In December 2006 Aldo Colombini and I were married in Italy and
finally ended a very long wait that we had had to be together and that is
when the real magic in my life began. Now we share our lives, our love and
our own personal magic together bringing magic to those we perform
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