Aspiring magician prepares to meet Penn & Teller after her fan letter garners response

Young girl awaits magical meeting with Penn & Teller London Jones, an aspiring magician, will have an opportunity to meet two of her heroes Friday night. Jaclyn Brown reports.

The letter London Jones recently penned to two of the biggest names in magic found its way to them and led to a meet-and-greet opportunity for the nine-year-old Calgary girl.

After Jones’ father secured tickets to Penn & Teller’s performance in Calgary, he encouraged her to reach out to the magicians.

“We were talking about it and he told me that we should write a letter to them,” said London. “They’re just so funny. I like the tricks that they do.”

“We sent it to them through Twitter but we also emailed it to their website,” said Jeff Jones. “We got a response back from their website in probably about 30 minutes saying that they were going to forward it on to Penn & Teller.”

“About 20 minutes later, Penn (Jilette) himself emailed back to her.”

London, a member of the Calgary Junior Magicians Club, said the world renowned magicians had high praise for her note. “Penn said that it was one of the best fan letters they’d ever saw.”

London and Jeff have been invited to meet Penn & Teller ahead of their sold-out show at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium on Friday night.

The nine-year-old’s love of magic started more than three years ago when her family visited a restaurant where a magician would move from table to table performing illusions.

“When he was done, I would look at my dad and say ‘I want to learn how to do that’,” said London.

Jeff learned a few tricks and taught them to London and the Jones’ became regulars at the establishment. “We would go back to that restaurant week after week,” said Jeff. “That magician, when he would come to our table, he would sit down and London would stand up and perform magic for him.”

London has 50 or 60 magic tricks in her arsenal and Jeff hopes she’ll have a chance to perform during the meet and greet. “We’re hoping that she can do a magic trick or two for them to kind of show her skills and show them how they’ve inspired her to learn magic,” said Jeff. “She’s a great little girl. She’s so confident and so energetic and so courageous. Just to know this is happening to her, I couldn’t be more proud.”

With files from CTV’s Jaclyn Brown