ENGLAND ace James Beattie once had a £40,000 designer watch smashed to pieces by Paul Daniels – after a ‘magic trick’ went wrong.
The ex-Everton, Blackburn Rovers and Sheffield United ace was left horrified when the legendary magician brought a hammer down on his Frank Muller timepiece.
At first he thought it was a prank – but it soon became clear the late TV star had made an almighty mess of his trick.
Details of the story were revealed in a new Undr The Cosh podcast with Matthew Kilgallon, who played with Beattie at Sheffield United.
He explained how Daniels arrived at a players’ Christmas Party only for carnage to unfold leaving the retired player, now director of football at AFC Totton, stunned.
He said “We’d been out Saturday night or Sunday drinking, drinking. I was up at the bar and [the boss] said, ‘come here.” I said, ‘what’s up?’ He went, ‘we’ve got Paul Daniels coming in here to do a magic trick.
“’This is what he’s doing now, you can hire him out to do a thing. He’ll come out and I’ve paid him’.
“So we’re sat in there, we’re up Covent Garden, a proper tight pub, and we’re bevvying, just topping up from Saturday night, all p***ed as a fart, as you can imagine, I get a nudge, and…he’s here.
“He’s come in and everyone’s gone berserk, legend…he’s come in, and he must have been an 80-year-old man.
“He’s not like, you know when he’s on telly, so he came in and did a few tricks, and everyone’s buzzing.
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“He’s pulling things from your leg and everything like that. Then he says ‘who’s got a watch?’ because we’re all buzzing, there’s 20 lads, rowdy football players.
“So Beats, James Beattie…loves his watches, hundreds of them. He’s got a proper collection of them, every one you could think of.
“He’s got this Franck Muller. It’s got diamonds all around it.
“So Paul Daniels has gone to Beats. Pass your watch there’ -and he’s said: ‘Nah, not this watch, it’s about 40 grand, nah, nah’. “We’re like, Beats, give him your watch mate, it’s Paul Daniels, chill out.”
Kilgallon continued: “He’s taken his watch off like that, and gives it to Paul Daniels.
“So, we’re all around the table. Paul put a serviette on it, and pulled out like this little hammer thing, and he’s gone boom, like this, and everyone’s gone quiet, and Paul Daniels’ face is just drained mate.
“Debbie McGee has gone, ‘err’, and he’s taken the cloth off like that and he’s smashed the full f***ing watch. The watch has gone.
“Beats has gone, ‘that’s 40…you know how much this watch is?’ “So, Debbie McGee came over and said to Beattie after him, ‘listen, he’s not what he used to be.’
“His watch was in tatters, mate.”
Kilgalon said Daniels, who died in 2016, later invited Beattie and his girlfriend to dinner at his house – an offer the retired striker accepted.
Kilgallon added: “Beattie expected him to pull a new watch out of the bowl, but Paul just tucked in and started eating!”
