Coming up... how to be ruthless with TV execs / two pints of blood and Elvis Presley / a miracle / sitting in front of Basil Fawlty / the best show I've ever seen in a theatre / the truth about Manhattan helicopter trips / a great name for a book store / how to not get into the Museum of TV and Radio / the worst place in New York to commit a crime / Niagara Falls in one day / why it's easy to be a Tour Guide in Providence / the world's worst oil painting

July 11. Ruthless Negotiations.

Someone from ABC Television in New York called me. He was interested in hiring my services. With cat-like reflexes honed by years of experience, I went into Ruthless Negotiation mode:

Executive: Could you come over to New York to tape some stuff for us?
Me: Yes! I'd love to!

This had him on the ropes. I showed no mercy, toyed with him:

Executive: We suggest you drop everything else and fly over at the end of next week.
Me: Yes! I'd love to!

Harsh? Brutal? Maybe, but business is business. He sensed the grit in my voice, the unflinching steel in my eye. It was time to lay down my terms:

Executive: It's just a pilot, so there's not much money. How does x dollars sound?
Me: Yes! I'd love to!

Okay, so I didn't exactly play hard to get. The fact is, I love America and never pass on an opportunity to go there. I'm really an American born in an English body. It's probably a case of mixed-up souls. Doubtless there's a man wandering around Detroit pining for fish and chips and showers with inadequate water pressure.

The above phone call took place on July 11th, and the shoot was scheduled for the 18th. We had to move fast! The next step was to finalise the contract. This only took a day or so.

I'm joking, of course. 'Contract' means 'lawyers', and in this case ABC corporate lawyers. If you take a sloth, bang it on the head and dip it in liquid nitrogen, it will still move faster than a corporate lawyer. While the contract made its peristaltic progress through the constipated innards of ABC's legal department, I prepared production notes for the various bits we were going to tape. I also contempated the creative effort that had gone into the ABC logo:

If you want to know more about the logo, click on it.

The final version of the contract oozed from my fax machine shortly after 1 o'clock in the morning, Thursday 18th July. My outward flight was at 9.20am the same morning. Nice of them to rush it through.

Fun with statistics: in the 5 days before I flew out, the show's producer sent me 27 emails and called me 14 times on the phone.

I flew to Newark International Airport, New Jersey. There was a man holding a sign which nearly had my name on it: IAN ROWADS. It was hot, high 80s, and stiflingly humid. My driver led me to his sleek black limousine which had been parked for over an hour. "If you like", he said, "you can wait for a minute while I get the air-con going and cool it down a little". I smiled indulgently, and gave a polite assurance that this wouldn't be necessary. I got in the car. There was a brief sizzling noise, and my skin slithered off into a puddle on the floor.

What can I say about the drive from Newark to New York? Beautiful... beguiling... spiritually uplifting... it is none of these, and less. It's actually just mile after tedious mile of gigantic freight containers, creaking and yawning in sun-baked freight yards. Some are grey and some are rusty, while others are a sort of grey, rusty colour. Most are empty, apart from murder victims that won't be found for years.

At the TV studios, I met the Producer, Executive producer and Director. If you want to know what these various people do, see here. I enjoyed giving the Props Guy a finalised list of impossible things to find by 9am the next morning, such as:

• blood, 2 pints
• silver candlestick, 1, covered in luminous paint
• armchair, 1, with secret modified bits as per the supplied photocopy of a fax of a quick sketch which wasn't very accurate in the first place
• surgical latex gloves
• signed photo of Elvis Presley on the Grassy Knoll

(I made the last one up.) Incidentally, ABC's own studios were unavailable so we were using an independent stufio facility. I was particularly pleased to meet the studio's Talent Co-ordinator, Head of Client Services, Craft Services Manager and Plant Caretaker. Take a moment to imagine what these people look like, and then view a photo.

The studio was on the zillionth floor of a very tall block, so I could look down on the tops of  nearby skyscrapers. I particularly enjoyed this scene: the New York version of a rooftop picnic area, on a building featuring a poster for some sort of watch (click on the photo to see the large version):

After the production meeting, I took a yellow cab to my hotel. I love how easy it is to get a cab in New York. There are thousands of them. In contrast, London has exactly 6 licensed cabs for the whole city. This is official London Transport policy. The only way to actually get a cab is via some freakishly benevolent act of divine intervention. The official tariff is your life's savings plus a kidney, per mile or per every three minutes stuck in the seemingly permanent gridlock of the city streets.

Someone at ABC had chosen a hotel for me: the Lucerne, on West 79th and Amsterdam.

You might like to stay there some time. Or you could just make a hole in your head with a corkscrew. Equally painful, but cheaper. I made a few phone calls and then had the pleasure of hanging out with Jamy Ian Swiss, an expert magician and one of magic's most knowledgeable historians. He was immensely helpful to me while I was dealing with ABC and getting ready for the trip, and it was a  pleasure to spend some time with him.

July 19. A Seance And A Miracle.

The day of the shoot. The aim was to tape three segments:

• a seance as it would have looked in Houdini's day, featuring the set you see below
• some psychic surgery
• cold reading in the style of a television psychic medium

The third segment was an exciting new challenge. I had demonstrated cold reading before, but never in the style of a TV spirit medium. Preparing for this third and final segment had taken up quite a bit of midnight oil, and I was looking forward to it.

Segment 1: the seance. No problem, in the can. Segment 2: psychic surgery. No problem, in the can.

Unfortunately, at this point we ran out of time and the third segment had to be cancelled. This was a disappointment all round - not least, I imagine, to the lovely people who had turned up hoping for messages from heaven.

It was 7pm when I left the studio. I desperately wanted to see Ricky Jay On The Stem, scheduled to start at 8pm. I didn't have a ticket, it had been sold out for ages, and I didn't know which theatre to go to. However, I wasn't going to let these petty details stop me. This was my only chance to see the show, and I had nothing to lose except my faith in miracles.

Someone said the show was on at the Second Stage theatre, Broadway and 76th. I raced there with magnificent, lung-bursting urgency. It turned out that I was in the wrong place. I needed the other Second Stage theatre, at 307 West 43rd Street. Hurled myself into a cab, barked the co-ordinates. The driver, alert to my urgency, sliced through the traffic like a child's safety scissors through armour plating. I died of frustration. However, he did get me to the theatre. Well, to a theatre. One with a sign saying 'The Vagina Monologues'. I somehow guessed this wasn't the right one. Someone told me the theatre I wanted was just a few blocks away, so I ran there.

7.40pm. Breathless, I explained that I didn't have a ticket but really wanted to see the show. I was aimed at a wall where I could wait for cancellations. Then my miracle happened. A man came up to me, said he had overheard me, and that he had a spare ticket for sale at face value. I checked that the ticket was genuine (it was) and that the asking price was legitimate (ditto). It was as easy as that - I had my ticket! Why doesn't life work like this more often?

I liked the artwork for the programme, by the way. Here's a portion of it. You can click on it to see more, and to also see a truly bizarre advert which appeared inside.

Not only was the ticket legitimate, but it turned out that I had a very good seat indeed: fourth row, fairly central, perfect view. Let me tell you just how good this seat was. In the row behind me, there was John Cleese, Salman Rushdie, Steve Martin, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson. I'm not making this up.

The show was superb. Great material, performed and presented by the inimitable Ricky Jay at his finest. In fact I think the first half was the best thing I've ever seen in any theatre, anywhere, ever.

After the show I enjoyed walking back to my hotel - the Lucerne, on West 79th and Amsterdam. You may like to stay there some time. Or you could just set fire to your bare feet and then go tap-dancing on salt. It was a walk of some 36 blocks, and I didn't mind in the least. There is something uniquely pleasant about the streets of Manhattan on a warm Summer evening, and I enjoyed every step of the way. I realised how much I'd missed the city, and it felt good to be back.

> > > Continued in Part 2

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