My father, Paul MacLeavy, who has died aged 78, was a drainage engineer and, later in life, a professional magician.
Magic had been a hobby while Paul earned his living as a council employee, but when redundancy came along in 1996 he seized the opportunity to turn his passion into a full-time trade. Afterwards he became well-known in north Somerset as a performer, including in hospitals and on respite holidays with the Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline Project. He held membership of the British Ring of the International Brotherhood of Magicians for more than 50 years.
Born in Mandeville, Jamaica, Paul was the eldest child of Basil and his wife, Vera (nee Black). His early years were spent in a colonial-style mission house at the Moravian teacher training college in nearby Bethlehem, where his parents worked respectively as the college principal and librarian. His first name was David, but when he was five a son of family friends, also named David, came to live with them, and so to avoid confusion it was decided that my father would be called by his middle name, Paul, a change that lasted for the rest of his life.
At 13 he was sent to Britain to attend Fulneck school in Pudsey, Yorkshire, as a boarder. He often spoke of the shock of the cold winters and how he would long for the Caribbean sunshine. His parents remained in Jamaica, only returning to Britain on extended leave every four years, so he spent his school holidays with his paternal and maternal grandparents, in South Shields and Bristol.
After completing A-levels at the Central Institute in Bristol, Paul moved to London to study land surveying at Walthamstow Technical College (1965-69), taking labouring jobs to fund his fees.
In 1970 he became a drainage engineer at Bristol Corporation. It was there, on his first day, that he met Frances Drake, a secretary; they married in 1975 and settled in Backwell, in north Somerset. In 1974 he moved to the local Woodspring district council and worked for them until 1996, when their drainage work was transferred to Wessex Water. After a year or so with that company, a reorganisation led to his redundancy.
Frances died in 1988, leaving Paul to balance his career and his magic with the demands of solo fatherhood. He decided to devote much more of his time to his hobby, pitching an idea to Wessex Water for an educational magic show to teach schoolchildren about the water cycle, which the company took up.
He also put himself on the books of entertainment agents, generating work in children’s magic shows; perhaps his highest profile gig was performing at the wedding of the actor and comedian James Corden in 2012.
Over the years Paul played a lot of football and kept going well into his 50s. He also enjoyed travelling, was an energetic, fun presence in the lives of his three grandchildren, and was especially happy with a coffee, a slice of cake and a long conversation with friends.
He is survived by his children, Richard and me, his grandchildren, Cillian, Darragh and Aisling, and his brothers Martin and Robin.
