Bringing the magic back

Britain's Got Talent finalists and Mind Reading Duo, DNA, taking live UK tour We Know What You're Thinking to Galashiels, Stirling, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stornoway, Ullapool, Inverness, Aberdeen and Dunkeld in February and March

We want to try something. Think of a single digit number in your mind. Take that number, and now multiply it by nine.

Hopefully, you’re left with a two-digit number – add those digits together and remember your new number! Subtract five from your new number – this leaves you with your final number. Don’t forget it.

You now need to change that number into a letter. A=1, B=2, C=3 etc. Think of a country beginning with your letter. Remember that country.

Now, finally, think of an animal that starts with the last letter in your country. Got it? Don’t forget your answers! We’ll come back to that in a few minutes…

Having our very own UK tour in February and March 2019 is a dream come true. We are genuinely excited to see our audiences and to spend the evening with them, keeping them entertained and, hopefully, enthralled.

However, it hasn’t been an easy journey to get here – and it’s that difficult route that no-one really sees . A route that has involved highs and lows, plenty of disagreements and almost giving up along the way.

We both performed as professional magicians. Having spent years performing and honing our crafts, we met at an event and very quickly hit it off as friends. Then became enemies. Then friends again. And so the cycle repeats itself in to eternity.

All jokes aside, our strong bond and years of intense involvement in each other’s lives allowed us to realise our dream of creating an act that was totally different to what other magic acts were doing.

We wanted to be a telepathic mind-reading double act – however, we quickly realised how difficult and time-consuming this would be. Our sheer dedication, hard work and investment of thousands of hours would finally result in us as DNA, creating our unique telepathic mind reading which we call “The Gift”, along with routines that would showcase our abilities.

We tried for years to establish ourselves as a double act. We spent a minimum of three nights a week practising and performing in London hotspots, would try to get gigs together, as well as splitting anything we’d get in individually.

We have always done things fairly, 50/50 with everything. Every discussion, meeting, exciting moment or argument – we always were there together, experiencing things equally. We had a bit of a difficult time explaining to people what we did. We knew we had to do something that a lot of people could see at the same time, and would understand exactly what we can do without having to try and explain it anymore.

We finally decided to audition for the biggest talent show in the world, Britain’s Got Talent. We had a plan in mind… we knew in addition to performing our style of mind reading that we had to do something that people would talk about long after they’d seen us. That’s when we decided to perform something for the audience in the theatre and the viewers at home. We changed our T-shirts half-way through our audition without anyone noticing!

We knew that we would only have a few minutes to impress the judges. Attempting to change our T-shirts in front of almost 3,000 people at the London Palladium without anyone realising was a real adrenalin rush. In all honesty, we weren’t sure if we could get away with it – but there is a part in both of our characters that make us just go for something even if the result isn’t guaranteed.

In truth, the very nature of mind reading doesn’t guarantee 100 per cent accuracy all of the time – however, you learn to live with that risk because the pay off when it all goes well is worth way more than the stress and risk of it going wrong.

The audition went as well as we could have ever have hoped for. A standing ovation and four yeses from the judges left us on a real high. When our audition aired in April 2017, the response was just incredible. Our audition video trended number one on YouTube for two days and we racked up millions of views within the first week.

The pressure was on to deliver something equally memorable for the semi-final.

We already knew what we were going to do for the semi-final performance and also for the final if we made it that far, so we spent the weeks leading up to live week rehearsing like crazy. It literally became our sole focus and was all we spoke and thought about.

The experience is quite surreal because you get caught up in a bubble which isn’t real life but something that becomes your reality for a few months.

The day of the semi-final was suddenly upon us in what seemed like the blink of an eye.

We were prepared like never before and again, everything went better than we could have anticipated. The first live semi final of the 2017 Britain’s Got Talent show and the first live public vote of the series and we took first place and advanced straight through to the final.

Our final act was something we had spent months rehearsing and perfecting. In the morning of the final we made a decision to change our act.

We didn’t have long enough to think it through, rehearse the lines or practise the performance. It was over before we knew it and we realised straight away we made a big mistake.

That’s where we came unstuck and it’s our biggest professional regret to date. Britain’s Got Talent was an absolutely incredible experience for us both, however it ended bitter sweet.

But happily, there is life after the show…

We had our first live theatre show at the Leicester Square Theatre in London on Halloween 2017. Playing to a packed theatre, to an amazing crowd who were all there to come and see us live, was an incredible feeling. A feeling we have spent years to try and get to. A feeling we will never forget.

We are so excited to perform in theatres across England, Scotland and Wales for our 2019 UK tour.

We can’t quite believe it and we can’t wait to meet everyone who is coming to see us.

We have been working night and day to put together a fun, entertaining and mind-blowing show for the whole family. There’s lots of audience participation and we get as many people involved as possible.

Sometimes we go out into the audience, sometimes the audience comes up on stage with us – sometimes we read people’s minds from the stage to the stalls without being anywhere near anyone!

Our show is interactive, fun and most of all, thoroughly enjoyable for all the family. We want everyone who comes to see us live to leave and feel like they’ve had a really great time. That’s the most important thing.

After every show we do, we always like to hang out after and meet our audience.

Whether people want a selfie, an autograph or even just a chat – we love spending time with people.

We know we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are today without the people who take the time to come and see us live. We really appreciate everyone and won’t ever take that for granted. We hope to see you on tour!

By the way, we’re pretty sure you’re thinking of a kangaroo in Denmark :-)