Interview: The 'lovely Debbie McGee' reveals her Magical Life

There’s more to the ‘Lovely Debbie McGee’ than meets the eye. The assistant to legendary TV magician Paul Daniels, dancer, TV personality, Strictly runner up, former DJ, charity campaigner, magician and now author is indeed lovely in appearance and personality as she meets me to discuss her new autobiography, A Magical Life.

The ‘more’ is reveal in her fascinating story, from childhood in Surrey through studying at the Royal Ballet School and dancing in Iran where she fled the revolution, meeting the ‘love of her life’ magician Paul Daniels, becoming his friend, assistant then wife and embarking on increasingly starry adventures. She goes on to cover the loss of Daniels to brain cancer In 2016 and how she overcame grief to channel her energies into a revitalised career and campaigning for brain cancer research.

“I was hoping a lot of the fun side comes through as well,” says McGee, luminous with perfect make up and carefully styled blonde hair, still following her grandmother’s advice to ‘always make the best of yourself’. The only time she pauses her flow of funny anecdotes and reflections on the ups and downs of her life is when her alarm lets her know her mother’s carer has arrived and her sister is with her.

For years people had been telling McGee she should write down her stories.

“This year was a big milestone,” she says. “Fifty years of the business, ten since Paul died, so I felt I had enough to share and things that might help others going through what I went through and to hope there is life out the other side.”

Turning 68 next week, McGee was married to Daniels for 28 years and they were together for nearly 40, until his death from a fast-growing glioblastoma brain tumour, which also took the life of her niece's husband in the same year. Since their deaths McGee has been raising awareness for brain tumour research and this summer became an official patron of the charity, Brain Tumour Research.

There’s plenty of fun and starry names in A Magical Life along with harder times as McGee produces a magician’s hat full of experiences and insights.

“I felt there was a lot people didn’t know about us,” she says and she and her husband come across as fascinating characters.

‘Paul was very clever and funny” and could memorise 800 words of any language in a week, plus he was a hopeless romantic, tracking down a tin necklace of McGee’s heroine ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn as an anniversary gift, while McGee is no slouch, constantly reading to make up for an education interrupted by dancing and becoming the first woman to join The Magic Circle.

She reveals Daniel’s proposal - “I’m not very tall. I’m not very good looking. But I promise you one thing. It will never be boring. Will you marry me?” and how she turned down an invitation from Dean Martin to meet Frank Sinatra because she had to go and ‘meet her boyfriend’ Paul.

There is showbiz glamour galore, meetings with the likes of Nelson Mandela, various royals, Buzz Aldrin, ABBA and plenty of tricks for magic fans, including their quest to discover how to do the Indian Rope Trip.

“But the book does have warts and all because I've gone through the sad times,” she says “It's not that I want to come across as a saint. It’s that I wanted people to get something more out of the book than just my story,” she says.

After meeting Daniels when McGee was hired to dance in his summer special at 21 she became his assistant through the 1980s and 1990s on stage and TV, and the couple were household names through BBC1’s The Paul Daniels Magic Show, with his catchphrase, "You'll like this... not a lot, but you'll like it!", and introduction of "the lovely Debbie McGee” entering popular parlance.

McGee credits Daniels with allowing her to step out of the traditional assistant role and recalls how she was able to use her voice when the famous Mrs Merton question comes up.

Posed in 1995 by The Mrs Merton Show host Caroline Aherne: “So, what first attracted you to the millionaire, Paul Daniels?” McGee’s quickfire response was that in fact Daniels had married her for her money.

Was that true?

“Well, it wasn’t, obviously, totally true,” she laughs at the memory. “But what people didn't realise is I had a pretty successful career going alongside working with Paul. I owned my own flat, had a brand new car, didn't need Paul's money. When I met him he wasn’t a millionaire. He had only just got his TV show and become top of the bill in a summer season. I’d worked with him for three years before that. It wasn't like he was hugely successful. Also I had the most amazing day laughing with Kriss Akabusi who was also on the show. I will always remember that day.”

Mrs Merton appeared to enjoy the exchange too.

“I think she loved that she could relax and say whatever she liked to me, by the fact I’d thrown that back at her. I could have said, ‘oh, no, he wasn't a millionaire when I married him’ but I hit back. Also, I knew she'd just married Peter Hook, a bass player who was a millionaire.”

“I always had that ability. What Paul loved about me was he could say anything and I would come back at him. I could be myself. It secured a bond between us”

The couple’s sense of fun recurs throughout the book: Daniels woke McGee every morning with a joke, locked her in a box during a rehearsal then pretended to call a tea break and auctioned his wigs - of varying lengths rotated to imitate hair growth - while McGee response by convincing the gadget lover his new Blackberry works the TV controls and stages a birthday riposte to one of his controversial opinions.

“This isn't in the book but he used to joke about a certain nation, that the women suddenly became ugly and fat at 40. So on my 40th birthday I’d hidden one of those old lady rubber masks under my pillow and put it on before Paul woke up so when he opened his eyes and started singing happy birthday, I turned around and said ‘yeah, I'm 40.’”

She’s more diplomatic than her husband so she’s not going to tell us what country that was, is she?

“I certainly wouldn't,” she laughs. “We were very different in that way. My dad bought us up with you don't talk about religion, money or politics or you'll lose friends. He was absolutely right.

“I was always saying to Paul, ‘Why did you say that? You can't say that’ and he said, ‘well, I have to be honest’. And I’d think, yeah, but...

“That's probably the one thing we would disagree on sometimes. That he would be too outspoken. But that was him. And he treated everybody the same. You were a human being; it didn't matter if you were on the breadline or the richest person in the world. He never looked down on anyone and he didn't look up to anyone either.”

She also reveals that Daniels threatened to resign from The Magic Circle in the early 1990s unless they allowed female members, with his wife being the first admitted and later Honorary Vice-President.

As well as the fun times, McGee delves back in the book into her formative years, from her childhood with parents who ran a corner shop then worked in factories and encouraged her dancing dreams, to the drama of her flight from the 1979 Iranian revolution as a 19-year-old.

“That taught me that no matter what you can survive. It's helped me through life to know when you meet a challenge it’s about how you react. You find your strength.

“All the telephone lines were cut so it was a long while before I could make contact with mum and dad and they didn't know if I was dead or alive.”

Back in the UK McGee needed a job, which is when she found herself sitting on a wall waiting to join rehearsals for a show featuring a magician she’d barely heard of and he showed up early too and sat down.

“There was no internet, so I had asked what he did and people said he was a magician. One friend said, ‘I saw him in Croydon and he was the funniest person I've ever seen’, but the only funny magician I'd ever seen was Tommy Cooper so I couldn't imagine what was he like. Then I saw him on Blankety Blank playing a joke on Terry Wogan where he looked really stupid. But I thought, actually, he is funny. This could be OK.

“But I still felt ‘magic? Oh my god.’”

She writes in her book “It wasn’t as though Paul was George Clooney but there was something about him.’ What was her very first impression?

“He really made me laugh. He was really friendly and approachable. We made each other laugh on that first meeting. That was the spark, I think for both of us, to be honest.”

Daniels was hesitant for several years, due to the 20 year age difference, but they eventually married on 2 April 1988, McGee vetoing his suggestion they marry on April Fool’s Day.

“He was unbelievably romantic. And because he'd been married before and seen what had gone wrong, he made our marriage better.”

“I think we both have a sense of humour that we can find fun in most things.” she says, unconsciously switching to the present tense. “There are loads of things I haven't put in the book and things that are a little bit naughty, because my audience doesn't expect that of me.”

Because she’s the lovely Debbie McGee?

“Yeah.”

Is she ever not lovely?

“I suppose. But my mother bought us up to find what you like in people and focus on that. And I do like people and knowing about them.”

Being a people person saw her present a show on Radio Berkshire for 12 years, which she felt was her forte.

“I loved the medium. It was a lighthearted Sunday morning show where I interviewed people from different walks of life, and had a ‘showbiz sofa’ hour with performers visiting the area or a famous person I’d got hold of.

“Local radio is a lifeline for a lot of people, about their area and personal to them. Most listeners are over 55 and on their own. They would stop me in the supermarket and I liked that. I'm interested in people.”

As well as being a showbiz trouper, McGee is a glass half full person, and someone her friends turn to.

“They say you're the most positive person we know, so I wanted to get through to people how you cope. Life is not easy and it throws big boulders that don't take a few days to get over.

“Sometimes something happens and you can't see a reason why you've been put through that. Like in Tehran when I was 19. If I wasn’t there I would never have met Paul and never have changed from ballet to the commercial side of entertainment, which is where I'm happiest.”

McGee’s advice for pulling yourself out of dark times is to focus on the positive, but the shock diagnosis and death of her husband saw her having to dig deep on her reserves of strength.

“It's really important to have something to look forward to. But when Paul was diagnosed, I was told the most he's got is two months. You can't talk about the future, and I couldn’t talk about the past - I would have burst into tears. We just dealt with that day through the month he had. All his kids, grandchildren and family and a few friends got to see him. Then he got weaker and wasn't up to having visitors because it takes energy to talk. And Paul wasn’t a person that would sit and quietly talk to you - or let other people talk!” she laughs.

“Those things kept me going in the early days after he died. Firstly that I was with him and he got to see the people he loved. And also that he wasn't in pain. I lost my dad 18 months before Paul, he just slipped away... and Paul was the same, and my goodness we'd all want to go like that, surrounded by loved ones.”

“I can talk about Paul now. Occasionally I have an emotional moment, but on the whole, I think inside I'm so much stronger. I think it takes four years before you feel that strength coming back. And then it's just attitude of gratitude. I'm so lucky I had all that time with him and this amazing life we led.”

Resuming a TV career after Daniels’ death saw McGee landing her dream with Strictly in 2017, when she and partner Giovanni Pernice came runners-up.

“I always wanted to do it but had no idea I’d enjoy it as much. It wasn't just the dancing. It was performing, back to my roots, like doing The Paul Daniel's Magic Show again. Huge studio, live audience and long running so I got to know everybody. It was an amazing experience.”

“And I suppose, selfishly, people got to know Debbie McGee more. And a younger audience who'd never seen the magic shows.”

Since Daniels death, and that of their niece’s husband, McGee has been working with the charity Brain Tumour Research.

“I had no idea until Paul was diagnosed that it was the biggest cancer killer in the under 40s, but they get 1% of the funding. So we're trying to raise awareness and get people to donate, because research is the way forward.

“They still don’t know what causes them. I’ve got this passion about it and see it as a way I can give back by talking about how important research is. There's rarely a person that hasn’t known somebody with a brain tumor and it can be someone older like Paul, but most are young and we've got to stop that happening. There are so many children. I've been to visit some in Great Ormond Street, going through treatment, and it's horrendous for them and their parents. I really want them to find a cure.”

Looking ahead McGee will perform in the musical Grease, which comes to Edinburgh Playhouse, Glasgow’s King’s Theatre and His Majesty's Theatre Aberdeen next year, playing the stern Rydell High School teacher Miss Lynch.

Will she base her performance on any of her dance teachers?

“I haven't got the script yet, but have a few options; one who was unbelievably strict and others who were warm and kind. I was lucky to have both because if someone's just strict, you just lose confidence, and if you're just kind, you never push anybody to their limit.

“And isn't it amazing that in the movie the character was Miss McGee? I think it's a lovely bit of almost serendipity. I can see her being strict - but with a little bit of a cheeky side too.”

A Magical Life by Debbie McGee (Mirror Books), £22 hardback. She will appear in Grease at King's Theatre Glasgow, September 13–18 2027; Edinburgh Playhouse, September 20– 25, 2027; His Majesty's Theatre Aberdeen, 28 September–2 October 2027.

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