Vanni Pulé

Vanni Pulé is a man of many talents and he, himself, does not like to be restricted by categories. By profession he is a lecturer at the University of Malta Junior College, teaching English and preparing 16 -18 year old students for their ‘Advanced’ and ‘Intermediate’ Levels before entering University. He has been in the educational sector since 1970 and has been teaching this level since 1981. For some years, he worked as producer and scriptwriter for Educational Broadcasting in Malta.

His B.A.(Hons) and Masters Degrees are both in English, specialising in Literature, especially Shakespeare and Larkin. However, by the Maltese public and by his peers, he is mostly know to be a magician whose career has spanned almost 50 years of performances. At the age of 13, on the other hand, he had his first strip cartoons published in a weekly public newspaper and he has developed a sceptical interest in anomalous belief. Underlying all this, he has a great love of photography and music. In the latter environment he has contributed his own song-writing which, for a short period, became popular among acoustic music lovers of the island of Malta.

Family life

Vanni Pulé was born on the 18th May 1949, in the small quiet boating village of Kalkara, in the South of the Island, near the three cities. He was the third of five children born in a lower middle class environment. His father, Joseph, was an intelligent yet humble engineer who worked most of his life on tankers and submarines and who found refuge in fishing and reading avidly for relaxation. His mother Sophie (nee Forte) was an educated housewife whose main obsession was to advance her family in the academic sector and to cook delicious meals and pastries. His eldest sister teaches German and his older brother is a retired Professor of Mathematical Physics, while his two younger sisters are facilitators for physically and mentally challenged children.

His schooling was mostly at De La Salle College, Cottonera after which he spent a year at The Seminary, Floriana, followed by University in 1966 and graduation in 1970. That year he also met Mary Anne, whom he married in 1976. His first son, Konrad, was born in 1978 and his daughter, Davinia, in 1981.

Magic

Since early childhood he was always fascinated by magic. His father had no knowledge of magic but he used to make an egg disappear very crudely and this lingered in his memory. After seeing rare performances of magic on Television, when one of the frères in charge of the bookshop, Brother Peter, offered him a few tricks bought from Ellisdon’s, he was overjoyed but too self-conscious to demonstrate them in public. At that time he used to attend a Christian Doctrine children’s society (M.U.S.E.U.M.) and one of his group leaders, Angelo Vella, knew a couple of tricks that he performed quite well. Vanni, gave him the tricks he had just acquired and begged him to perform them for the New Year’s Party. In turn, Angelo said that he had too many things to do and requested Vanni to perform them himself. On the 1st of January 1963, Vanni Pulé gave his first public performance to a group of enthusiastic naive children from his native village. He felt so elated that, after passing through his baptism of fire quite unscathed, he was asked to prepare another show for the following year. Having no contact with other magicians or dealers he was lucky to find Elsden Tuff’s ‘Teach Yourself Conjuring’ nestling in a bookshop in Valletta and he tried to learn some tricks and make a few simple props himself with a little help from Angelo.

The second show in January 1964 was followed by other shows in other M.U.S.E.U.M. branches, Catholic Action groups, Parish Centres, Band Clubs and charity parties. He was asked to appear in a children’s TV programme when he was only sixteen and this was followed by other appearances. At the age of seventeen, during a visit to London, he chanced upon Davenport’s while coming out of the British Museum. There, he found an Aladdin’s cave of mysteries and marvels and he was lucky enough to enjoy Patrick Page behind the counter who mesmerised with his demonstrations of classic magic. In Malta he met up with two contemporary magic performers, Vonfred and George Gatt, known as ‘The Phantom’. The latter became his model and friend for many years. Then he also became friendly with two very knowledgeable local magicians, George Sharples and Doctor Joseph Saliba, who introduced him to the Malta Ring of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. He started performing in cabaret in 1970 and, from then on, shows snowballed until he could not accept everything. His performances were mostly in nightclubs, hotels and restaurants and he managed to fit in some stage shows, children’s parties and various television appearances. He became the most popular cabaret magician and he used to do about twelve shows a week for thirty years plus hundreds of TV appearances including his own specials on TV which made him a household name in his country. He also participated in several shows for charity, appeared in various chat shows and even adverts, movies and sit-coms and had his one-man shows in theatres and open-air arenas and lectured to various magical societies.

In the international magic scene he gave various lectures and judged several competitions in Britain, Italy and U.S.A. He is a gold star member of the Inner Magic Circle (London) and executive board member in his third year of the International Brotherhood of Magicians where he has just been nominated as International President elect, a position he should be assuming in July 2010.

Television

He hosted three series of Magic specials:

Tghid Veru? (1976) 7 programmes
Collage (1979) 13 programmes
Tghid Veru? (2000) 13 programmes

He appeared weekly for 9 months in the series ‘Sibtijiet Flimkien’ (38 programmes)
He appeared weekly in the newly-married couple fun programme Gejna Koppji (1998) 13 programmes
He appeared weekly for 9 months a year for 6 years in the children’s series ‘OwKej’ which won the Broadcasting Authority best Children’s TV programme. (240 programmes)
He had his own Christmas TV specials for several years.
He was also guest performer or speaker in several other programmes over the years (four of them as recent as 2009)

Special performances

On the 21st September 1996, Independence Day, he performed a 105 minute magic spectacular on a rock type open air stage for thousands of people.
In December 1998 he presented a one man show with dancers and different dramatic scenarios at the Manoel, the 17th century National Theatre.
In 1999 he performed again a different scaled-down version of the Independence Day show in the same open-air venue.
In February 2001 he presented a special illusion show for the Song for Europe (Eurovision) contest.

Magic magazines

He contributed a plethora of tricks to

Magigram starting from the late 80s,
the Info magazine (International Magic Studio – Ron Macmillan),
Abracadabra,
Mag1 (Ian Adair),
Encyclopaedia of Dove Magic and
3 parades in The Linking Ring (1976, 2001 & 2008). In 2001 one of the tricks in his parade won the Howard Bamman award. This trophy was won again in July 2009 for his One-man parade in February 2008. He is starting a new series of ideas on old classics in The Linking Ring in September 2009.
Reports about his public performances by independent overseas visitors have been published in Abracadabra, The Budget and Trixigram.

Art

As a graphic artist he used to draw strip cartoons in a Maltese national newspaper when he was 13 and then political cartoons in the Sunday Times of Malta in the 1970s. Initially, he was mostly self-taught but later, he studied under Maltese artists Anna Spiteri, Harry Alden and Anton Calleja. The latter was a major influence on him. He also took a master course in mixed media at St Martin’s College, London. Although he participated in various exhibitions, his works are now mostly in private collections in Rome, Los Angeles, London etc. For his abstracts he mostly uses mixed media and acrylics but he also keeps his designing ability honed by drawing representational works in charcoal and in watercolours.

Music

In the seventies he became a great follower of the folk music movement and started his own short singing and song-writing career with the Dragcols. Then he joined Godfrey Camilleri as a duo and, later on, sang with his wife Mary Anne. As a duo they won several song contests including ‘Kanzunetta Sajfija’ twice in a row and a hat trick in ‘Festival tal-Paċi’ where he won best song, best interpretation and best lyrics. Vanni also produced and presented several series of programmes on Folk music on Radio Malta.

Discography:

‘Ħa Nħares Lejk’ – EP with Godfrey Camilleri, Joe Agius and George, Charles & Marthese (Electro, 1973)
‘X’se Nagħmlu’ / ‘Fil-Paċi u s-Skiet’ – (Single - Taurus Records, 1973)
‘It-Tombla / ‘Bħali u Bħalek’ – (Single - Record Centre, 1974)
‘Il-Maltija & Other Folk Songs from Malta’ with Tony Pace & other musicians (LP –Brizzi, 1974; CD - Anthony Damato)

Scepticism

In the late sixties Vanni Pulé became fascinated with the paranormal. He started researching the subject and presented 34 programmes on Radio Malta called ‘Mis-Saltniet Moħbija’ and 34 more called ‘Emmen Jekk Trid’. He became chairperson of the Malta Parapsychology Society in the late sixties till the late seventies. While continuously investigating paranormal claims, the more he searched, the less concrete evidence he found. He adopted the sceptical method to arrive at the truth and joined CSI (Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) http://www.csicop.org and, together with Timmy Zammit and David Pace, formed SICEC (Society for Investigating the Credibility of Extraordinary Claims) which is still active after 10 years. He is a frequent spokesperson for rational scepticism on Radio and Television, has written various articles and has co-edited the SICEC journal ‘The Beacon’.