Egg Bag

Egg Bag – Len Belcher

This idea comes from an old ‘Abra’ – April 1955 to be precise. It was contributed by Len Belcher, one of the most prolific, and certainly one of the very best, contributors to magic magazines, and ‘Abra’ in particular. All I have done below is give the gist of the idea itself. Most of the routine follows the usual pattern.

I’m sure that there are many, many of you who perform the Egg Bag – after all, it’s one of the classics of magic, and the ‘sucker’ bit where you pretend to put the egg under your arm has always played well. But have you ever asked yourself why you perform it? I don’t mean because it fills another 5 minutes in your 45 minute show. I mean, what’s the reason for doing it? Do you just pick up the bag and say, “Here’s a bag, and here’s an egg”?

I know that there isn’t always a lot of logic in magic (!), but it seems to me that there needs to be a bit more needed to link two items which aren’t usually associated, and this is where Len Belcher comes in.

“I wonder if there’s anyone here who keeps hens?” Whatever the answer, you get up a couple of children to show you how to keep hens, or (probably more likely) to learn all about it. “If you keep hens, of course you have to feed them, and that means you need a bag to keep the corn in. At the moment it’s empty. We also need an egg. Has either of you got an egg? Well, really, how can you have a lesson on keeping hens if you haven’t got an egg?” At this point, you can produce an egg from one of your helpers – the same egg which you secured in your hand when you showed the bag to be empty. And you’re off with your pet routine.

The beauty of Len’s idea is that it gives some sort of reason for performing the whole routine.