www.tacticalmagic.co.uk

Although he has been a professional magician for almost 20 years, Malcolm was a relatively late convert to magic. He was actually supposed to be a musician! His grandmother was a pianist for silent movies, his mother is a singer and he had many years of piano lessons and built his first guitar during the 1960s!

He did particularly badly at his 'A' levels and spent 4 years playing in various rock bands and touring Europe. As a song-writer, he was offered a job at a theatre in his home town (Lowestoft) through which he got involved in productions as a performer. 

Later on, while at drama college in Devon, he learned a couple of simple tricks to put in a children's Christmas show. Then , while working with a community arts team in the North East in 1978, he caught a very bad case of bronchitis.  Malcolm's wife bought him a small paperback book on magic to occupy him while recovering and so began the 'Royal Road'.

He got hooked on the magic and managed to include it in some of the the team's shows.  That's when he joined his first magic club - the Middlesbrough Circle of Magicians).  Moving back to Devon to manage a touring contemporary dance company, Malcolm worked as a musician in the evenings and kept up magic as a hobby - joining the Exonian Magic Society in Exeter.  In 1983, he moved to Stafford with his growing family, which now including three small children, as an officer for the regional arts council.  Having a young family, contact with other parents through playgroups and schools lead to him being asked to perform some of his magic at childrens' parties. One thing lead to another, the word spread and he found himself much in demand for parties and other functions.

He joined the WCM in 1984 and, in 1989, decided to take the plunge and go "full time" as a professional magician.  Together with Lorry, his wife, he established Tactical Magic which grew to include not only his own work as a magician but a promotional entertainment agency, an international mail order service for face painters and an event planning and management service.
Under his stage name, "Malcolm Malan" specialises in light-hearted, family and close-quarter, stand up magic.  He is well known as a balloon modeller and has had many of his creations published in magicians' magazines.  He is the author of "The Random Ramblings of a Self-Confessed Balloon-atic" (available from Albion Magic!).  He was a featured performer at Cadbury World in Birmingham for 13 years and frequently worked at Alton Towers and continues to work across the UK at private and corporate events.  His acting background encourages him to develop "magical" characters which include a Maverick style Wild West card shark, a Victorian street entertainer, a crazy explorer and, more recently, a wizard.

He became President of the WCM in 1999/2000 and is also a full member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, The Magic Circle and Equity. He was the winner of the WCM Tom Laws Plate for close up magic in 2001 which he holds as one of his proudest moments in magic.  He has served on the WCM council for many years and, while no longer a council member, Malcolm is the editor of The WCM Journal.

He still loves magic above all but his other abiding interests are music, especially jazz, 'progressive' rock and 'world' music and painting (art not decorating!).

After 24 years in Stafford, Malcolm and Lorry have recently moved up to the Fylde coast so that Lorry can return to university to study ceramics.  Now that Kate, his oldest daughter, has taken on the running of the business, he is aiming to spend a bit more time painting and, while continuing to work as a jobbing self-employed magician, to create a new one-man show combining storytelling, magic and puppetry based on the story of The Sorcerer's Apprentice