My first session convention was ten years ago.

The Session 2024 is coming up in January.

I looked in my phone to find photos from the convention ten years back.

Sadly, my camera roll doesn't go quite that far back.

I did, however, discover that the first photo in my phone is from 2015, and it's a photo of Dynamo and Andy Nyman doing a mindfulness acting exercise side by side. There's a mug of tea on the table, alongside an open box of chocolates and three phones in glass bottles.

How did nineteen-year-old Rory get in the room with the world's most famous magician and Derren Brown's award-winning co-writer and director?

Well, I'll tell you.

One year earlier, at age eighteen, my Mom drove me from our town to the top end of Bristol to a bar not far from where Derren Brown lived when he began his hypnotism shows. I was going to Bristol to meet two Welsh magicians who were a few years older than me and had driven down from Cardiff.

When I finished school, I wanted to work in TV, but I didn't know anyone who worked or lived in London. With an interest in magic, I was aware of young magic consultants like Calen Morelli and Blake Vogt, who had posted original tricks online before getting hired to work on TV magic shows.

This felt like the most straightforward way into TV for me.

A magician called Lloyd Barnes saw my videos.

He liked them and invited me to meet him, and someone called Geraint Clarke. At the table in that bar that day, we all said we wanted to get jobs in the magic industry. Within two years, all three of us made it happen.

Lloyd told me about a magic convention called The Session. This was news to me, with not much more than an interest in magic and certainly zero interest in performing tricks; I didn't know about The Session. I'd never heard about Andi Gladwin or Joshua Jay, the founders of Vanishing Inc. – a company I also did not know. In fact, Lloyd and Geraint were the first two magicians I'd ever met.

I asked my Grandparents to get me a Session Convention ticket for Christmas. A few weeks later, Mom dropped me at a motorway junction so Lloyd and Geraint could pick me up on their way to the convention.

Three key moments still stand out to me:

The first was meeting Zach Mueller, who at the time was the face of theory11 and was also my age. We got along well, and though today, I haven't spoken to him for years, back then, he helped me massively. He gave me a couch to crash on in LA when he found out I was staying at a hostel not long after we met at The Session. He also introduced me to Michael Stern, who is now a lifelong friend.

The second moment that stands out was a bizarre experience with a well-respected mentalist. At lunch during the convention, a group of us were at a restaurant. A well-known mentalist sat next to me, and at one point, he took off his watch and placed it on the table. Eighteen-year-old Rory, being the cheeky sod he was, decided to secretly take his watch and move it forward five hours while the mentalist was deep in conversation about his latest PDF with the person to his left.

The mentalist put the watch back on shortly after, without realising what I had done, and a few minutes later, he went to the bathroom. I'd moved the time forward on his watch as a bit of a harmless prank and thought not much more of it. But Geraint had seen what I did and snapped into action.

Geraint asked how many hours I'd put the watch forward, and then he got the entire table's attention and shared what had done. He asked everyone at the table with a watch on to move it forward, too. Everyone was told to play along.

The mentalist returned to the table, and about fifteen minutes later, Geraint began his performance. He asked the mentalist to name any number, then asked one of the other magicians to choose a second number. The two numbers added up to five, the same number of hours that everyone had moved forward their watches.

Geraint made a gesture and announced that everyone's watches had been turned forward the named number of hours by magic. A true miracle.

We all looked at our watches and gave our best shocked and amazed reactions. I think at that point, we were all expecting to come clean about the fact we were all in on it once the mentalist reacted – but he didn't react.

He sat frozen, staring at his watch, utterly fooled.

After a few seconds, his facial expression shifted to one of anger.

He pointed at Geraint and called him a bad word, and then he accused Geraint of something utterly bizarre. The mentalist told the whole table that he had spent ages going around and secretly changing the time on everyone's watches at the table and that Geraint had seen him doing this and stolen his payoff for this trick.

He claimed he was the one who had turned the time on everyone's watches and that Geraint had stolen the ending.

Of course, we all knew the truth – that he was spectacularly fooled, and instead of admitting it, he chose to take credit for the method and insult the magician who had tricked him. We all sort of sat in silence and then moved the conversation on.

This, I learned, is a theme of all magic conventions – especially the mentalists.

When a lecturer performs a fooling trick, magicians will do all they can to withhold their reaction and only let it out when the lecturer teaches the secret.

The trick gets performed... silence.

The method gets revealed... applause and, honestly, relief.

The final key memory from the convention was bumping into Dynamo.

He was attending the convention. I'd never met him. I knew I had to talk to him. Not because I wanted to work for him, which I did, but because my friend's younger brother had just been diagnosed with Cancer, and he was a Dynamo fan.

I walked over to Dynamo and asked if he could record a video for the young boy. Instantly, Dynamo said yes and recorded the video on my phone.

That was our entire interaction.

I wouldn't meet Dynamo again for another seven months – when Harry De Cruz invited me to their offices as they prepared for The Shard levitation in August 2014. Harry had seen my original trick videos on the internet. I ended up posting 298 magic videos online every day before getting hired by Dynamo as a full-time magic consultant at nineteen.

I returned to The Session the following year as part of Dynamo's team.

What a transition.

Almost immediately, being around Dynamo meant I spent time with celebrities like Taylor Swift, Cara DeLevine, Liam Payne, and more. During that time, and in the ten years since, I've worked with stars like John Legend, Katherine Ryan and John Cleese. I've never asked anyone for a video, a picture, or an autograph.

Dynamo is the only person I've ever asked for anything, and it meant the world to me that he so quickly obliged for my friend. The boy made a full recovery and still mentions it to me when I see him, usually around Christmas time back home.

That's it.

It's why I force myself to go to these conventions most years. It's not the lecturers (who are never getting paid enough to do much more than a pitch for their products), and it's not the venue, the food, or even the dealer hall.

For the last ten years – most years – I get to see a handful of people I love greatly every January in a hotel on a motorway junction by a big airport. And it's strange; there are people I'm no longer friends with, and there are people who are no longer friends with each other, and yet this odd passion for magic still unites the lot of us.

I've made lifelong friends and built a career from these relationships. Heck, the last time I made myself go to a magic convention, I landed three gigs for projects, including one for HBO! Was the convention ticket worth it – yes.

Oh! Also, Sasha Crespi was at my first Session convention, and he performed a method for coin bend that is still one of the most fooling tricks I've ever seen.

His coin bend method is why I just can't shake magic – and it's not the kind of trick you can package up and sell to people; it has to be taught in a book, a newsletter, or in person at a convention.

That clever thinking that makes you go, of course!