Last night Tim received some delightful memories from over 35 years ago when Timm Stay emailed in some photos from his old Expo 88 scrapbook showing Tim Ellis and “Wendy Wendy” performing at Brisbane’s Expo 88.
Tim and Wendy performed for a month at Expo, on an outdoor stage right next to the heliport. You’d be surprised just how many people came and went to Expo via VERY noisy and extremely distracting helicopters… but the show went on night after night.
Timm even had the Magic Unlimited business card in his photo album.
These photos brought back some fantastic memories of a much simpler time, and thoughts of Expo 88 friends Chris Gregory, Peter Gray, Lee Ross, Fred Anderson and Derek Scott.
It also brought back the memory of Tim getting trapped inside the Houdini Trunk when a spectator somehow managed to snap the key off in the lock!
Wendy was locked inside the trunk, Tim stood on the trunk and lifted the cloth and they instantly changed places. But when Wendy went to unlock the trunk she discovered the key was snapped off inside the lock! She had no way of getting Tim out, so she jumped back on the trunk, lifted the cloth and they changed places again. This time Tim was the one to be faced with an unopenable lock, and he asked the Expo staff to radio for bolt cutters…. Only one problem… it was an outdoor stage and there was nowhere to move the trunk, or end the show, because the audience was now even more interested than ever to see what was going to happen next!
After a ridiculously long 20 minutes, the lock was cut and Wendy emerged from the box to a huge round of applause.
We never again gave the key to a spectator after that.
