Early Life and Magic Career
McGee was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, to an English mother, Lillian 'Bubbles' Howes, and a Northern Irish father, Patrick McGee. Her sister is a banker in the City of London and her brother is an accountant. When McGee was young her parents ran a corner shop. Later, her father worked for a large gold manufacturing firm making rings and other jewellery.
McGee enjoyed music and dressing up from an early age, so her mother enrolled her in a dance school when she was seven. She attended Our Lady Immaculate RC Primary School in Tolworth, Surrey followed by Tolworth Girls' School, a secondary school also in Tolworth, Surrey. At 16 McGee auditioned for and won a place at the Royal Ballet School. After graduating, she joined the Iranian National Ballet in Tehran. Aged 19, she became part of the Corps de Ballet and later a soloist, but her ballet career was brought to an abrupt halt by the Islamic Revolution. She was forced to flee the country and ended up returning to the UK with little in the way of money and possessions. Seeking new work she auditioned for the Bernard Delfont Organisation, which was responsible for a number of big summer resort shows and touring productions.
Delfont found her a job performing on stage with magician Paul Daniels in his 1979 summer show in Great Yarmouth. She first met Daniels on 23 May 1979 at rehearsals for the show, which were held at a church hall in London.
She later joined Dougie Squires's Second Generation troupe as a dancer, which involved touring Europe with acts including Chris de Burgh and James Last. After winter work in pantomime, McGee joined Daniels again for his 1980 summer season in Bournemouth. She then went on to perform in his London stage show It's Magic, which opened on 10 December 1980 and which, by the time it closed 14 months later, had become one of the longest running magic shows ever to play in the West End.
McGee achieved national and international fame through subsequent television appearances with Daniels. After seeing her on stage in the West End, BBC producer John Fisher asked Debbie to appear in the BBC One series The Paul Daniels Magic Show, which had begun in 1979. That series continued until 1994 and regularly attracted audiences of 15 million in the UK as well as being sold to 43 countries. Daniels regularly referred to McGee on his TV shows as "The lovely Debbie McGee", a phrase that entered popular culture as a stereotype for magicians' assistants. Daniels and McGee were married in Buckinghamshire in April 1988.
In recent years, McGee has performed some magic herself, usually on the corporate cabaret circuit.
Debbie McGee's pastimes include golf and she has played in celebrity charity events.
She has struggled with alopecia for many years.
Read more about this topic: Debbie McGee
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, magic and/or career:
“In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Seeing to it that a youngster grows up believing not just in the here and now but also in the grand maybes of life guarantees that some small yet crucial part of him remains forever a child.”
—Anne Cassidy (20th century)
“Both magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant revelation of their wonder-working power. They both are surrounded by taboos and observances which mark off their acts from those of the profane world.”
—Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)