Vic's lifetime of death-defying acts

As Louise Odin loads six bullets into the rifle she looks across the room to her husband Vic, who stands blindfolded and handcuffed.

With steady hands she points the gun at him and when he says "shoot" she pulls the trigger, knowing the bullet is flying straight towards his face.

A second later and Vic is standing in front of the aghast audience with a big grin on his face and the bullet between his teeth.

"We have performed the bullet catching act all over the world but the first time I did it was when I was in the army in Hong Kong," says 74-year-old Vic, from Surrey Road on Dudley's Holly Hall Estate.

"I joined the army at Christmas time and the entertainment officer told me they were having a party and asked if I could put an act together.

"I had read about the bullet catching act and decided to do my own version of it as there were plenty of weapons for me to choose from.

"It is a dangerous act which has killed many people over the years – but the officers loved it."

Over the years Vic has performed at venues all over the region including Birmingham's Hippodrome, Dudley Town Hall, Wolverhampton's Grand Theatre and even at Stourbridge's Mary Stevens park.

Vic and his assistant, wife Louise, have also travelled the world on cruise ships and circuses with the death-defying act.

Due to ill health Vic performed his last daredevil act in 1989. But now he is coming out of retirement for one last show on June 22 at Brierley Hill Civic Hall. He will perform his Cheating the Gallows act. The charity night is being held as a tribute to the Black Country comedienne Dolly Allen.

Vic was born in Birmingham and travelled around the Black Country, including Smethwick, Black Heath and Oldbury, with his parents who were pub landlords. He met Louise at the Stourbridge Odeon and the couple got married in 1958. The pair will be celebrating their golden wedding anniversary just days before next month's show.

"We started off doing jobs between doing the act, but it wasn't long before we were getting off one cruise ship and stepping straight onto another," he said. "We were on TV's Opportunity Knocks and the Tonight programme with Cliff Michelmore. The day after the Tonight programme I performed the Underwater Escape Act at Mary Stevens park in Stourbridge for a Flower Show. I was wearing handcuffs and leg irons and was put into a box, which was screwed down, and then lowered into the lake," he says.

"They asked me to do it as numbers for the Flower Show had been dwindling – that year they had 5,000 visitors." Vic won't give away any secrets about his illusions but he has enjoyed baffling many a policeman with his handcuff tricks, performing shows every year for West Midlands Police officers.

His tricks have not always gone to plan however, and sometimes have come close to ending in disaster.

During a performance in Ireland, Vic was trying to get out of a strait jacket while suspended from a burning rope.

The matinee performance had gone well but the rope had continued to quietly burn during the afternoon, smouldering on the inside.

"By the time I used the rope in the evening, it was dangerously weak and down I came," says Vic. "I was still locked into the straitjacket with my trousers on fire when I hit the deck."

He was bruised, had a blood clot on his eye, and his shoulder was out of joint. "I was in a hell of a state," he says. "But it didn't stop me. If you live you have to get up and do the same act again. That's the real magic."

By Cathy Spencer.