Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee are one of the most famous double acts in the country. And not only are they still working the magic but they have defied all their critics by remaining happily married for 30 years. Katherine MacAlister finds out what their trick is.

I provide the glamour, and she does the magic,” Paul Daniels chuckles when I ask him about the show. Boom boom.

He and his wife Debbie are on the road again with their show Hair Today Gone Tomorrow. Along with the amazing magic, tricks and illusions, expect the usual puns and jokes from the Paul Daniels school of comedy.

It’s all show business to them, or, as Debbie puts it: “He’s happiest when performing and making people happy.”

Yet despite their longevity and the endless reality TV shows, the pair remain an enigma, appearing unscathed by shows such as Celebrity Wife Swap, Louis Theroux, The Farm and Strictly Come Dancing.

They readily admit that reality TV is a necessary evil to keep their profiles in the public domain and seem unfazed by the sheer awfulness of their appearances. For example, Louis Theroux dedicated an entire skin-crawling episode to the couple, but it’s all water off a duck’s back if it means the show goes on.

“We do a couple of public high profile jobs to keep our profile alive every 18 months,” Paul admits, “but that’s showbusiness.”

Debbie says defensively: “But Louis Theroux came out in the days before reality TV, when TV aimed to make you look as good as possible rather than trying to get you to look worse and we weren’t used to that. But that’s how we live our lives and we know what we’re like.”

Any regrets then? Not including the obvious one – sawing off his index finger in a prop-building accident on New Year’s Day (surgeons later managed to reattach it).

“Celebrity Wife Swap,” Paul, 73, says immediately, grimacing. Is there anything they wouldn’t do? Anyone who saw the Daniels’ underwear shoot, where they posed as Posh and Becks in Closer magazine, will know taking their clothes off isn’t one of them.

“Nothing disgusting or anything Debbie’s mother wouldn’t want to see, but most of the time it’s a bit of fun,” Paul answers in all seriousness.

But that’s why the pair remain so impossible to quantify. They are startlingly honest about things they should never admit to, baring all to the public, while maintaining a genuine and private relationship that obviously works and a career that never flails. Sure, The Paul Daniels Magic Show stopped in 1994 after 15 years, but everything has a shelf life. And Debbie has gone off and done her own thing, setting up a dance company, while Paul pottered about at home in Henley. They don’t understand what all the fuss is about.

Paul says: “We are astonished that people are still interested, but it’s very nice that people enjoy what we do.”

Another puzzle is how a balding magician married his petite blonde assistant 20 years his junior and managed to make it work. Or, as McGee was famously asked on The Mrs Merton Show: “So what first attracted you to the multi-millionaire Paul Daniels?”

There is genuine love and devotion at play here.

“I am more amazed than most people that Debbie is still here, because she is the best thing that’s happened in my life ever,” Paul says.

“And we wouldn’t do things apart from each other, not over long periods of time. We enjoy jobs working together best.”

That is until Debbie, a former dancer, went off and set up Ballet Imaginaire in 2000, with Paul’s blessing. So is that something she needed to get out of her system?

“Yes, Paul loves magic best and I love dance and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it because people treated me totally differently. Until then they treated me as the bimbo assistant who didn’t do much, without knowing about my background or my education. So for that alone it was worth it.

“But although it was lovely to do, it was a lot of work which took me away from Paul. By the third year we were making a profit but it meant giving up everything else and life’s too short,” she says.

So there have been sacrifices to keep the Paul Daniels show on the road, but ones they decided to make together. Anyway, magic is second nature to them now.

“I have been studying it for a long time,” Paul says gently, “And I look at stuff and think about it, and work out how it can be done differently and yes, that does keep me awake at night. But I have always done 10 live shows a year, even when the TV show was on, so when that ended I just carried on going as I always had.”

So what does he think of magic these days?

“Magic has never been the secret of the trick – you have to spend a lot of time on the presentation and be an entertainer to be a magician. We have the advantage of experience and can generally find a different way to do things. But its always been competitive.

“So if I had to define magic I’d say it’s a defiance of all the natural laws that put us on the planet, such as gravity and solid matter. Magicians have to defy the laws of physics and turn them into a theatrical piece.”

But is it still exciting? “It’s so normal for us, having done it for so long, that it’s like getting up and going to the office except that we still love it, it’s our life,” Debbie says.

“And the show is much funnier and better than TV,” Paul says, “I found an old wig in a drawer and put it on eBay for £1,100 and my manager thought that was hysterical, so we called it Hair Today Gone Tomorrow and it stuck. So the show is funny but not serious. Debbie and I practice it in the kitchen and she tells me what works and what doesn’t.

“But people like us together because we are happy people. So we are the ones having the party and the audience comes along for the ride.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

* Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee appear in Hair Today Gone Tomorrow at The Theatre Chipping Norton on Saturday. Call the box office on 01608 642350.