Be the life of the party

Posted on 30 Jul 2010 at 14:51

Polish your party tricks and cocktail-making skills with our guide to the best sites for show-offs

Fancy yourself as a showman? Sad to say, you won’t dazzle the crowd sitting at your PC, but you can find everything you need online to build up a huge repertoire of party tricks.

A great place to start is Goodtricks.net, which contains instructions and video tutorials for a plethora of magical illusions, including card tricks, coin tricks and neat little stunts you can pull off with bottles, cigarettes and other everyday items. Of course, you’ll need to practise your sleight of hand, and for the most advanced tricks you might need to invest in specialist equipment. But this, too, can be ordered online, from stores such as MagicTricks.co.uk.

If you fancy yourself as the next Keith Harris, you could even give ventriloquism a whirl. A former professional ventriloquist spills the beans on his techniques here – the page design is pretty frightful, but his explanations of how to enunciate difficult words without moving your lips is literally ingaluagle.

For another take, try the endearingly stuffy book from the early 1900s entitled Ventriloquism in a Month (PDF).

If you prefer more energetic pursuits, why not try your hand at juggling? You’re not going to become a master juggler with one hand on the mouse, but you can learn the basics and discover new techniques at the Internet Juggling Database before you take up your balls and start throwing. A big archive of videos will help you bone up on new tricks, and there are details of conventions, friendly chat and a directory of equipment suppliers. Or, for a touch of the classic music hall, try plate spinning – see Juggling World for a guide to the basics, with a video tutorial.

After all this showing off, you (and your audience) will probably need a drink. The tutorials and videos at The Flair School will have you spinning, throwing and flipping bottles and cocktail shakers in ways that would make Tom Cruise weep.

You probably ought to know what you’re mixing too: at Webtender.com there are more than 6,000 recipes, contributed by almost 4,000 users, along with details of mixing terms, measures and even a gravity chart showing which drinks are heavier than others, for making traffic-light-style layered concoctions.