Kevin Quantum's stunt must go on... despite torn Achilles tendon

The finale of comedy magician Kevin Quantum’s Edinburgh Fringe show just got a lot tougher.

The final stunt in his show Momentum demands agility and precision timing as he walks blindfold between swinging flaming cannonballs. However, he has just snapped his Achilles tendon and will have to go through the entire festival run wearing a moon boot. 

And the risks are real – as Kevin learned when the trick went wrong one time in his recent Australian tour. He was only clipped with one of the cannonballs and escaped unharmed, although it demonstrated the need for perfect timing.

The Edinburgh-based comedy magician was rehearsing last week when the latest accident happened and forced him to consider whether the show could go on. 

He said: ‘I was shifting some props and "snap". I hoped it wasn’t anything too bad, but got to hospital and had an examination – the tendon was completely severed. At first I feared the show would have to be cancelled, but I’m pretty inventive and soon started to work out how it could go on.  

‘But the really big challenge is the final trick – a death-defying stunt featuring nine flaming cannonballs that swing in a giant Newton’s cradle and I have to dodge them while wearing a blindfold.  It’s challenging at the best of times, but much, much more so now."’

Quantum - whose show is on at the Assembly Rooms –  made the semi-finals of Britain’s Got Talent in 2020 where David Walliams described him as ‘a mixture of magic, science and derring-do, you're like a sexy Doctor Who’.

Published: 2 Aug 2023