When a book is half a centimetre thick, you open it hoping its few pages are going to be packed cover to cover. However, upon opening this book, the first thing you’ll notice is the truly giant, retirement home print and its overuse of large pics that have little do do with anything other than royalty free page filling. Add that to the fact it tries to shamelessly distract you from this by having no page numbers, you can’t help feeling a little put out by its $99 price tag. The ‘book’ starts with an effect Alexander openly admits is with a prop that is no longer available and then has a 3/4 page copy of an ad for it from the 20’s. And as for the list of jokes at the back, please don’t use these. Part of why many do not like magicians is because of cheesy, tired gags like this that magicians think are public property. Do yourself a favour, take a comedy writing course. Every city has them and there are many online ones. This will teach you how to write your own, original material and not grind down an audience with hack, done to death, unoriginal patter.

If you’ve never MC’d a show then this is a decent enough introduction to the job and what it entails for a US audience (I say US audiences because outside the US the long, elaborate intros discussed at length in the ‘book’ aren’t as popular), but it’s price tag is frankly in excess of its content. If you have done previous MC work, on the other hand, you’re just going to feel a little embarrassed at having spent $99 dollars on this.

When a book is half a centimetre thick, you open it hoping its few pages are going to be packed cover to cover. However, upon opening this book, the first thing you’ll notice is the truly giant, retirement home print and its overuse of large pics that have little do do with anything other than royalty free page filling. Add that to the fact it tries to shamelessly distract you from this by having no page numbers, you can’t help feeling a little put out by its $99 price tag. The ‘book’ starts with an effect Alexander openly admits is with a prop that is no longer available and then has a 3/4 page copy of an ad for it from the 20’s. And as for the list of jokes at the back, please don’t use these. Part of why many do not like magicians is because of cheesy, tired gags like this that magicians think are public property. Do yourself a favour, take a comedy writing course. Every city has them and there are many online ones. This will teach you how to write your own, original material and not grind down an audience with hack, done to death, unoriginal patter.

If you’ve never MC’d a show then this is a decent enough introduction to the job and what it entails for a US audience (I say US audiences because outside the US the long, elaborate intros discussed at length in the ‘book’ aren’t as popular), but it’s price tag is frankly in excess of its content. If you have done previous MC work, on the other hand, you’re just going to feel a little embarrassed at having spent $99 dollars on this.