WITH their gory sketches, irreverent routines and white-knuckle trickery, Barry Jones and Stuart MacLeod have never been run-of-the-mill magicians.

Now the pair, who starred on BBC1’s the Magicians, are breaking the biggest taboo in the business, by revealing the secrets behind their illusions in their new show, which comes to the Palace Theatre this week.

Stuart says: “We’ve been working together for about ten years and we think a high percentage of people enjoy a magic show because they’re thinking ‘how’s that done?’ and often what’s happening behind the scenes is fascinating.

“Lots of magicians get the question all the time ‘how does it work?’ and the answer ‘it’s magic’ just feels so lame.”

The maverick duo have come under fire from fellow magicians, but it doesn’t bother them. Barry admits: “Magicians don’t like it. Traditionally, you’re not meant to reveal your secrets. If you do, you get kicked out of the Magic Circle, which is ok for us, because we’re not members. “Magicians certainly have been angry, they’ve said some horrible things about what we’re doing, but the public is really fascinated by it.”

Barry and Stuart allow their audience to make up their own minds whether they want to find out the secrets, with the first half of their show showcasing their talents, and the second half revealing the mechanisms behind them. Those who’d prefer to just enjoy the magic can leave at the interval.

“You get to make the choice,” says Barry. “Because once you know, there’s no going back.

“You can leave the theatre with that joy in your heart at having enjoyed the magic, or you can come back and have it all spoiled.

“You really have to think about the decision. It’s a little bit like when your friends tell you the twist at the end of a movie, it changes everything when you watch it.”

Barry and Stuart are familiar faces to many after their stint on the Magicians, which saw them pair up with celebrities and compete against other celeb/magician teams to win votes in categories including grand illusion, street magic and the celebrity’s choice.

“It was fun to work with those celebrities,” says Barry.

“Craig Revel Horwood, the judge on Strictly, was really game for pretty extreme stuff. We did a thing with him where we had a car go off a 100ft cliff and it completely exploded with him in the boot. He ended up in the helicopter which was filming the whole thing.

“The trick was how he got up there, and Craig was such a great sport, he was actually hanging out of the helicopter. He was really up for anything.”

The daring trick, which saw Craig tied up, blindfolded, handcuffed and bundled into the boot of the car, before it rolled off the cliff and burst into flames had the live audience aghast and TV watchers boggled.

It wasn’t the first time the pair had toed a dangerous line. They marked themselves out as boundary pushers when they became the first magicians to recreate the miracles of the Bible in a one-hour TV special, the Magic of Jesus, in 2005.

Barry says: “It was quite controversial, but it was fun because magicians have been trying to do that forever. Houdini said he wanted to do a show that only involved miracles from the Bible, but until we did it, no magicians ever had.”

They recreated miracles including turning water into wine, walking on water, causing a virgin to be apparently pregnant and appearing to raise someone from the dead. Barry adds: “I don’t think anyone had done it before because it was controversial. It’s because it’s difficult. It was one of the hardest things we’d done, and a lot of the miracles don’t translate very effectively into magic tricks.

“Putting a coin in the belly of a fish was the hardest thing in the world.”

The two took inspiration from a story in the Book of Exodus that cites two court conjurers. Barry says: “There’s an account of them in the Bible. We went to Egypt to film by the Nile.”

The pair have a reputation for gory scenarios and dark themes to their work, which goes back to their days as teenagers when they first met as members of a magic club in Scotland.

Stuart says: “We met when we were about 14 at a club for magicians, we were the youngest people there, and we didn’t like each other very much to begin with.

“We were the only young people and we saw each other as major competition in a tiny corner of Scotland. It took us a few years before we started to trust each other and work together. The first things we did were not live shows, but short films with magic in them, with characters and stories.

“The characters did magic as part of the story. They got picked up by Channel 4 as a pilot and we did our first TV show back in 2002.”

Barry and Stuart Show and Tell Palace Theatre London Road, Westcliff Saturday, 8pm, £11 to £15 01702 351135