Episode 6 Help! My School Trip Is Magic

It's term time again

and our four magicians have left school on a brand-new mission.

But do you think you'd recognise them

if they were outside the classroom?

Do you?

Now's your chance, cos they're going deeper undercover

with new disguises, ambitious costumes and even taller tales.

# La la la la la! #

This time, we're taking unsuspecting kids out of school,

piling them on coaches and sending them on school trips.

They're off to visit some amazing locations

where they'll witness incredible magic.

I was like, "Oh, my gosh!"

And once again, we're hiding secret cameras in every corner

so you don't miss a trick on any school trip.

-The magic is bigger than ever.

-Wow!

It might be term time, but school's out.

I can't believe our teachers did that.

How long will it take before the classes shout...?

Hello. It's me, Iain, and welcome to Help! My School Trip is Magic.

Our magicians are no longer supply teachers.

They're now masquerading as staff in some popular attractions.

And because we know you know them, we've disguised them even more.

We've secretly filmed the results with special hidden cameras.

Today, we have an exciting trip to an athletics stadium planned.

I'm actually quite active myself.

I actively avoid exercise.

Which is why I've invented this -

it's the jogging inducer.

Oh! Cake!

Here's what's coming up. Cake!

Fergus's athletic magic stretches the imagination

and turns heads at the track.

Give it a twist all the way round like that.

James shows you brilliant skills with a coin and a card

in Tricks of the Trade.

You've been sending in clips of all your best magic tricks,

and later on I will be picking my favourite.

It's the Wannabe Wizards.

And John is about to blow some minds with spooky magic

as the head curator at this attraction.

Or should I say the shrunken head curator?

CHILDREN SCREAM

Cake, come here! Oh.

Do you think you'd be able to tell if your school trip was magic?

Do you?

Cake!

This is John and Fergus,

great magicians and bessie mates.

What's that?

Ah, John's got Fergus a new pack of cards...

and a dice...

and a pen.

A lolly! Fergus likes those.

A crayon. How did that stuff get in there?

Oh, there's more, a ball, always handy.

What else is in there?

Are you keeping notes of all this?

That was always on the cards.

-FERGUS MOUTHS: Wow!

-Wow, indeed!

But wait till you see the school trip.

Here are year four and five getting on the coach.

They've been set up by their teachers and their parents.

They think they're going on a regular school trip,

but it's going to be magic.

They're going to the Lee Valley Athletics Centre

to see the hi-tech sporting facilities where gold-medal winning

Olympians Christine Ohuruogu and Greg Rutherford trained.

Little do they know they're about to see

some champion magicians achieve their personal best.

That is after they've been disguised so the kids don't recognise them.

While John and Fergus get wigs affixed and make-up applied,

the class are on their way, blissfully unaware of what

lies in store - or, indeed, on the track.

Adios!

John and Fergus are good sports for dressing as Team GB coaches,

and John is going to play Fergus' dad...cos he's no athlete!

I really would be proud to have Fergus as a son.

Obviously I'm not old enough for that to happen.

But if I was, he'd be my third choice.

Here come the kids now.

I hope the magicians are all warmed up and ready to go.

I think John's saving himself for the big event.

They'd better make their way to the starting blocks.

The school trip seems perfectly normal so far.

They're excited to see the world-class track,

but soon they'll be wowed by a world-class trick or three.

John and Fergus - or should I say Dad and Junior? -

are on their marks.

Here comes the class and they're ready!

Get set and go magic!

-Good morning, boys and girls. CHILDREN:

-Good morning.

Yes, and welcome here. This is the Lee Valley Athletics Centre

responsible for training highly efficient athletes like myself

and others that you may have seen on the television competing in games.

Now, my names is Mr Wigon, you can call me Ivor,

that's my first name, Ivor, I let my friends call me Ivor.

Hang on a minute, did he say his name was Ivor Wigon?

-This is my son, here. This is Radley.

-Radley Wigon?

He's just training up, aren't you, Radley?

-QUIETLY:

-That's right.

-Speak up nice and loud, son.

-SQUEAKY VOICE:

-That's right, yeah.

-Wonderful!

Fergus has squeaky voice and he's in disguise. It's squeaky bum time!

Get down and give me five, son!

Get down and give me five. Discipline.

The girl with the pink flower doesn't know what to make of John.

She should join the club.

See how he did that? Didn't even flinch.

Well done, son, that's lovely. Now, one of the things we do

when we arrive here is obviously dish out the equipment.

We've got this small equipment here we keep these in the, er,

sports equipment buckets.

As NOT used by Team GB.

But watch that bucket carefully - it's magic.

We keep things like the tennis balls for the tennis players,

we keep shuttlecocks for the shuttle cockers.

And then the other thing, of course, is my favourite sport

it was my Olympic sport, I competed for 35 years in the pole vault.

In fact, I still hold the world record,

I might say, for the over-20-stone category in the pole vault.

Bet John bent that pole vault like he's bending the truth!

Now, I carry my pole vault in here, as well. I just keep it there.

Hang on a second - how did that get in there?!

So it's all ready for me. Beautiful piece of equipment.

If you put all their open mouths together, you'd make the Olympic rings.

That is Irish maple. You don't see a lot of Irish maple. Now...

They are loving this athletics lesson,

but John won't let them pause for a breather just yet.

We also have to do what we call research and development.

-Research and development.

-Now, one my favourite sports,

and Radley's here, is the 4 x 100m and I've got a new little thing

that we've developed for the 4 x 100m.

I'm going to show you now, I'll just get it.

Here comes the next leg of our magical school trip.

Now, the 4 x 100m is all about the baton passing.

This is one we've developed.

This is the new aerodynamic baton,

you can see it's slightly thinner on one end than on the other

so it travels through the air a lot quicker.

In fact, we have shaved a third of a second off a lap

just using this new baton.

The baton's more like a magic wand. Keep your eyes on it.

A gold-medal-winning trick is hurtling towards the class.

Now, we're going to demonstrate our baton changing, but it's very fast.

It's so fast, right, you might not even see it,

it's like the blink of an eye.

So we're going to do it in slow motion, all right?

Even then you might not see it.

So we'll imagine now that I've just ran the 300m leg

of the 4 x 100m, and I'm coming now onto the last straight.

We've got Radley there, he's in position.

And just imagine in slow motion we're running like this, so here we go.

Whoa, it's like Super Saturday at the London Games all over again!

John's doing this in slow-mo,

cos otherwise you'll never see it happen.

Whoa! The baton threw through the air from John to Fergus.

Let's get a rewind.

The speed of light, but in slow-mo -

I didn't even see it go.

The class are speechless.

John and Fergus are milking their golden moment, but no wonder.

Wonderfully done, I think you'll agree. Well done, son.

Beautiful passing of the baton, there.

The lesson's already world-beating but can they top their own record

with some body- and mind-stretching magic?

We go all the way down and all the way up.

Now James is going to set you a magical challenge

in Tricks of the Trade.

If you fancy yourself as a magician,

here's a trick you can try on your mates.

First, you need to balance a playing card on top of your index finger.

Then place a coin on top of the card,

balancing on the end of your finger, just like James is here.

Touching only the card,

James is going to show you how to get the card off your finger

leaving only the coin balancing on your fingertip.

Sounds pretty amazing, eh?

James has had to psyche himself up first.

Grrrr! Keep watching and you'll find out later in the show.

It's going to be awesome!

It's time to rejoin our school trip to the athletics stadium.

John and Fergus have been posing as coaches for Team GB.

Let's hope our heroes don't trip up before they collect

their medals for magic.

As well as doing research and development

and giving out the equipment, the other thing that we have to do,

of course, is stretching and exercising.

And Radley is a bit of an expert, so I'll hand you over to Radley

and he'll tell you about the things he does here. Away you go, Radley.

Thanks, Dad. So, today I've brought with me...

this is called the hyperextension machine.

He'll be hyperextending the truth.

The hyperextension machine allows for a greater amount of flexibility.

So, I'd like to demonstrate that for you now.

-Who'd like to see it?

-CHILDREN:

-Me!

Very good, very good.

-You want me to get you in it, son?

-Yes, please, Dad, if you don't mind.

The class are getting suspicious,

but Fergus is about to stretch their belief that little bit further.

Here we go. So, I'm going to get in here like that.

In you go, son.

Brilliant.

Lovely, yeah.

Put my head through here.

Great.

So, in the hyperextension machine, what we've got is

a micro filtration system.

A micro filtration system that circulates heating fluid

around the machine and around the muscles.

It means I can stretch them further,

more than you would think otherwise humanly possible.

So, we're all going to start off by breathing together

in a nice relaxed way. So... And in.

That's it, nice and calmly and slowly and smoothly,

-slowly and smoothly wins the race.

-That's right, son.

When I breathe in, I want everyone to stretch up to the air.

So, stretch up.

Good, and then stretch down.

Good, and then stretch up.

Fergus' hands are stretching up in the hyperextension machine.

And then stretch down.

Whoa! How low did his hands just go?

How low did their jaws just drop?

This time we'll change over. This is the hard stretch, isn't it, Dad?

Watch him go! Wow, he's one bendy magician.

OK, and then back again.

That's incredible! How does he do that?

But, Dad, like you've always said to me,

-it's important you've got a flexible neck.

-Yeah, that's right, son.

I'm going to stick my neck out

and predict this trick's going to get even better.

So, I've made sure now that I've got a super-flexible neck.

Wow!

He just rotated his head a full 360,

and he's winding the class up good and proper with his muscular magic.

Now, it's not just the upper body you need to do,

it's the legs, as well.

So, I stick my legs out like that

and then I stretch first to the front and the back at the same time.

His legs are out and the class's eyes are popping out.

And then I'll change over again just like that.

They cannot believe it!

And then once I've done that and held that for a while

I can shake it out just like that.

Shake it out? More like leave it out!

-Will you let me out?

-I'll get you out, son, don't you worry.

Who enjoyed that? Isn't that cool?

John's letting him get out, and it's time to let the secret loose, too.

Now, this brings me neatly on to my next event.

And that is to tell you

that I'm not actually an Olympic training athlete.

They're not as shocked at that fact as you'd like them to be, eh, mate?

And neither am I.

-Get out of town!

-In fact...

NORMAL ACCENT: My name's John, and I'm a magician.

They didn't see that one coming.

And I'm called...

-NORMAL VOICE:

-..Fergus, and I'm also a magician

and all of you have been set up by your school and your parents.

There's a camera over there, there's a camera over there,

there's a camera over there

and you're all going to be on CBBC's Help! My School Trip Is Magic!

CHEERING

Well, MO me down with a feather!

That was by FARAH the best magic I've ever seen.

Let's hear what they thought about it.

I thought that trick was spectacular.

Fergus's hyperextension machine

stretched the class's belief to the limit.

He put his hand on the ground and put his head up in the air.

That was...fabulous!

He made their heads spin, and...well, his own.

His head went round and round, that was really, just, weird.

He looked like he was running through the air

and had their hearts racing.

I'm so, so happy. I'm just... Wow!

The school trip had no idea that Fergus and John were magicians.

How long would it take for you to shout...?

James will reveal the secret

in Tricks of the Trade.

Have you worked it out yet?

And will it work when Katherine and John

put their heads together on another school trip?

Come on, be more positive.

There's an eye-popping trip featuring Fergus

like you've never seen him before.

Isn't that horrible?

Will he fool the class or will they realise their school trip is magic?

But first, we asked you to send in clips of yourselves

performing your best magic tricks.

We received loads of clips from all over the country.

Each week, I'll be choosing a favourite Wannabe Wizard

and showing them to you guys.

My Wannabe Wizard this time is Ally from Wakefield.

See this card, normal card here?

Put it in my hand, magic wave and it stands up.

Wow! That deserves a standing ovation.

And what's really cool is I can move the card in the air,

and it's floating, there's no guidance and it's a normal card.

You might think it's on a piece of string

but how does he pass his hand around it?

Round, round, round my hand.

My head's spinning. Let's get a re-spin.

Thank you for watching.

The pleasure's ours, Ally - great trick!

These are magicians Katherine and John.

They're about to fool another school trip,

but not before John has bounced around.

Katherine's got plenty to throw into the mix.

Double the magicians, double the fun.

This is year four getting on the coach.

They've been set up by their teachers and their parents.

They think they're going on a regular school trip,

but it's one big school trick.

They're going to Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Museum,

and they won't believe what they're about to see.

Just in case, we're disguising our magicians. That's not John, is it?

Oh, it's worse! Only joking, handsome.

While Katherine and John get their stories straight

and their wigs straighter,

the class are on their way, and they have

no idea what on earth is waiting for them.

Katherine and John have adopted some interesting alter egos,

and as a heads-up, they also have some help from a little friend.

Do you recognise him? Ugly, isn't he?

He's not that tall in real life, are you?

HIGH VOICE: "No, I'm not."

The kids have arrived and they're enjoying

the weird and wonderful exhibits.

ALL: Eww!

It's a perfect cover for our magicians,

since they, too, are strange and unexplained.

The magic's weighing heavy on John's mind,

but they need to get a move on.

The kids are getting close. It's OK, Katherine, you're looking good.

School trip incoming.

Their minds have been expanded by the exhibits,

now they're going to be melted by some magic.

Take it away, Katherine.

-SOUTHERN STATES AMERICAN ACCENT:

-Hi, boys and girls!

-Er, howdy?

-CHILDREN:

-Hi.

Hi, my name is Heidi Claire.

Heidi Claire? That sounds like "I declare."

Well, let's hope she doesn't declare she's magic.

Now, we have a world of remarkable things here, but I'm going to talk

to you specifically about the more unusual and mysterious ones we have.

In fact, this is a little collection of my favourite items.

They look very old and strange, don't they?

And they belong to a lady called Ida Guess.

Heidi Claire? Ida Guess? But the school trippers still don't suspect.

She was an old fortune-teller that came from north Africa

and this is what she used to wear.

You can see she used to dress in a very elaborate way,

and right down here we've got an old scroll.

That scroll contains a prediction.

Keep your eyes on that cos it'll become very important.

Now, this is a prediction Ida wrote over 150 years ago.

Can you believe that? It's a very long time ago.

Now, all of these different things here on the table,

these are thing that she used to carry around with her.

So, she used to carry around a quite elaborate-looking mask like this,

and its got some nice colours on that.

And then also she used to carry around

this carved out wooden, heavy jug, as well.

And we've got here a pyramid of

carved out pretty little elephants, too.

Now, Ida said if all these items were separate,

then they didn't have any power.

But together they had an awful lot of power,

and they could control what people would do and think.

Could you imagine?

She's messing with their minds, but she's going to read them.

So, I'd like one of you to come up here and help me

-so who'd like to come up? What's your name?

-Claudia.

Claudia? That's a very pretty name. Come on up here.

Step forward, Claudia, you're about to star in a great trick.

That's great. Now, boys and girls,

you can imagine, working in a place like this,

we get an awful lot of deliveries

of all kinds of strange and wonderful things.

And it's our job to choose what we're going to do with them.

So we do one of three things - we either sell the item,

we display it or we store it.

You can see here, we've got all the different signs here to show

what we're going to do with them.

So, in a moment, Claudia, what I want you to do is choose one of

these items, but I don't want to see what you're going to choose, OK?

So, I'm going to stand over here like this,

and I'm going to close my eyes

so I cannot see what it is that you're choosing.

So, Claudia, when you're ready I want you to pick up whichever item

you like from the table.

Claudia's picked up the elephant statue

but Katherine doesn't know she's chosen that one.

And I'd like you to place that item behind "display".

Great, have you done that? OK, so you've got two items left.

I want you to take one of those items and pick it up.

Claudia's straight in there with the jug.

Katherine can't possibly know her choice.

I want you to place that behind the sign that says "sell".

You see that on the table there? That's great.

And finally I want you to pick up the last, final item...

..and I want to place that one

behind the sign that says "store".

It's the tribal mask, but Katherine still doesn't know.

Thank you so much for your help, Claudia.

Now, honestly, I have no idea which item will be placed where.

Katherine didn't know which order Claudia would pick up the artefacts.

But now she's about to surprise them with some amazing fiction.

Do you remember right at the beginning

I said that Ida Guess made a prediction over 150 years ago?

-CHILDREN:

-Yes.

A prediction that's been there the whole time.

And this is the prediction that Ida made.

It says: "You will display the elephant,

"you will store the mask and you will sell the jug."

That's kind of spooky, isn't it?

How is that possible? How did Ida Guess...well, guess?

-Is that amazing?

-Yes!

-Wow!

-It's magic and it's a bit spooky.

-Thank you very much.

Katherine told them a tale about

a scroll that would foretell the future.

This is the prediction that Ida wrote over 150 years ago.

Claudia from the class picked the items at random

-and put them in place.

-That's great.

There's no way Katherine could have known the order.

The prediction was right!

"You will display the elephant, store the mask and sell the jug."

But the trip's about to get a fright

when this shrunken head is brought back to life.

SCREAMING

Now it's time for James to reveal the secret in Tricks of the Trade.

James, who has been patiently standing like this

will show you how, touching only the card,

he can get the card off his finger

leaving only the coin balancing on his finger tip.

He's been in training for this for ages.

Here we go.

One, two, three,

boom!

Let's get a rewind!

You just need to give the card a hard flick

right on one of the corners... and practise loads.

Did you get it?

Now you've got a trick with a flick to flip your mates' minds.

It's time to rejoin our school trip

to the museum of the weird and wonderful.

The kids think Katherine's way out there,

but still don't suspect she's magic.

That was lovely!

John's about to turn the whole outing on its head.

It's great to be here, thank you very much for coming to see us

here at the attraction.

Now, I'm in charge of some of the stuff here.

I look after what we call the oddities.

The oddities, yes, we call them oddities.

In fact, my wife says I'm one of the biggest oddities here.

-We're all thinking it.

-I don't think she likes me, my wife.

Anyway, I'm one of the curators.

That's what I do, I curate the things.

In fact, I like to think that I'm the head curator but I'm not, I'm not.

I'm not the head curator.

I'm actually even better than that - I'm the shrunken head curator.

It's marvellous that, isn't it? Who's heard of a shrunken head?

They haven't heard of it.

But they won't forget it after John's trick.

Shrunken heads, right, they don't do them now,

but hundreds of years ago

the tribes, right, in places like Ecuador and Peru, you know, in South America

they used to get the enemies, right, and when they'd

captured them, they'd shrink the head right down, really small.

Grisly but true.

Now, the problem is, with shrunken heads, there's a lot of fakes.

You can't tell the real ones from the fake ones.

My job here is to make sure

we know what the real ones and the fake ones are.

Normally a good way of telling a real one is they're very ugly.

They look horrible. Urgh! I've got a shrunken head to show you.

I've got one over here, look. And, er...

They're fascinated by John's chat. Hope he doesn't get too big headed.

Now, brace yourself, cos he's an ugly little fella.

Look at that. Isn't that horrible? Eh?

That little face looks familiar. Maybe I've seen it in a nightmare.

Now, there's only way to tell if this is a real shrunken head.

And what we have to do to tell if it's a real one,

we have to re-hydrate it.

You know when you have mashed potato, that stuff out the packet,

and you put the water in and it all goes back up to mashed potato?

She's nodding nervously.

Re-hydration. So what we can do, if we put all the water

and the moisture and vitamins back in the head,

it makes it nice and big, you see? Lovely.

So, we can do that with one of these.

This is it, this is my re-hydration unit.

Or a box of tricks.

Now, we can give it a try with this one.

I'll just put the box over here, like that.

And then when I put the head in the box, you see,

all the moisture gets sucked out of the atmosphere

and put back into the head,

and we find out if it's a real one. That's lovely, isn't it?

They can't believe this - it sounds impossible.

We'll have a little look.

I'll just put it in here like this, just there, hang on.

Just put it there, look. Wonderful.

What'll happen is, I close this door like that

and what happens now is that head gets re-hydrated.

It sucks the moisture from all around us

and all the vitamins and the minerals

and the bits of...bits of egg, anything that's in the air.

-John's getting carried away.

-There could be egg in the air, I don't know.

And it sucks it all in, into that box, like that,

and then hopefully we can find out if it's a real one, you see?

Cos if all the air's back in, it should look...

CHILDREN GASP AND SHOUT

Whoa, the shrunken head is re-hydrated!

I nearly did a nervous wee in me pants!

What I can tell from that, you see, as soon as I've done that

I know that that is a real head. It's marvellous, isn't it?

I've seen that head before. I never forget a face.

Isn't that good?

HEAD GASPS, CHILDREN SCREAM

Oh, I think it's a real one! I think it's real, boys and girls!

That's Fergus' head, but where's his body?

You can see right under the table, there's nowhere to hide.

Look at you!

Oi, what are you doing here?

It speaks.

I'm just talking to them about shrunken heads and everything.

I thought you... They... I... I was re-hydrating.

You don't even work here!

Ah. No. That's... That's enough of that.

Don't you shut that trap back up! I'm telling you, don't you do it!

Let me out! Shh!

The head's back in, the secret's nearly out.

He's actually right, boys and girls.

I don't really work here. And I don't really talk like this.

NORMAL ACCENT: I talk like this. And my name's John.

-And I'm Katherine.

-And this fella here...

I'm Fergus.

I knew I knew him! He's not just a pretty face, that Fergus. Not even.

-And we're all magicians.

-Hear the collective sigh of relief.

And you've all been set up by your teachers and your parents.

And there's camera over here, there's a camera over there,

and there's one up there and one over there.

And you're all going to appear on CBBC's Help! My School Trip Is Magic!

CHEERING

That trick was incredible!

I hope it doesn't go to their heads - shrunken or not.

It was amazing. It was just amazing.

Just put it there, look.

John put the tiny yet familiar-looking head into the box.

Like that.

First the head was small and then it was really big.

Because if all the air's back in, it should look...

The shrunken head was re-hydrated into a full-size one.

HEAD GASPS, CHILDREN SCREAM

When I saw that it opened its eyes, I was really scared.

Oi, what are you doing here?

It spoke and it was Fergus!

He had a bit of a headache.

You don't even work here.

It was kind of like petrifying to me

cos I didn't think that would actually happen.

A petrifyingly good trick, and this school trip were totally fooled.

Er, not all shrunken heads are ugly. Check out this beauty!

See you later.

But until then, if you're on a school trip

and you think something magic's going on,

maybe you'll find yourself shouting

Help! My School Trip Is Magic!