EVER had an offer you can’t refuse? I have – it was a recent invitation from world-famous illusionists, The Twins.

“We’d like to put you on The Table of Death,” was the somewhat macabre yet intriguing message on my answer-machine.

Now Wareham- based identical twins Paul and Gary Hardy-Brown are very charming, gentle-natured individuals.

But with the table booked – for a date that had nothing to do with dinner! – I wondered if this spine-tingling encounter with them was set to be one meeting too many.

Our rendezvous was at an aircraft hangar at Bournemouth Airport where, cloaked in secrecy, they had been designing and making their trademark large-scale magical illusions for the nation’s major pantomimes.

As I arrived they were tinkering with some “magical” devices to try out on Christopher Biggins in Southampton Mayflower’s musical pantomime Cinderella (which opens this weekend and runs until January 17).

I raise my hat to Biggins, who, on his way to winning last year’s I’m a Celebrity … endured being swamped with rotten eggs, maggots, decaying fish and cockroaches, and managed to eat – after 15 minutes of chewing – a kangaroo penis and a dish of vomit-tasting witchetty grubs.



But had the twins managed to come up with a form or torture worse than any of the infamous Bushtucker Trials – all in the name of entertainment?

I was sworn to secrecy over their plans for Biggins and his Mayflower co-stars Matthew Kelly, Craig McLachlan and Stefanie Powers.

And they never did tell me what they have in store for Billy Pearce in Cinderella at the Bradford Alhambra.

But The Twins were able to give me a taste of the horrors that await John Barrowman, star of Doctor Who and Torchwood, as he headlines in Birmingham Hippodrome’s production of Robin Hood.

Of course, Barrowman’s TV character, Captain Jack Harkness, cannot be killed – only banished to another galaxy.

But, as I agreed to try out the illusion The Twins have lined up for him, I was all too aware of my own mortality.

Inside the bowels of the hangar, I came face to face with the monster Barrowman is set to meet – a huge solid air construction with 26 2ft spikes like menacing jaws ready to impale anyone who dares get too close.

Almost as soon as I arrived, Gary released a rope that set the 200-kilo vice crashing down.

“Would you like to try it out?” asked Paul.

Realising that these spikes are for real, and don’t magically recede or disappear, I almost refused.

But the photographer was ready and waiting – and hadn’t I promised to lie on their Table of Death?

It certainly felt like the point of no return as they shackled me with chains and padlocked cuffs, bolted my feet under an iron bar, chained my arms above my head and lay me down on the cold, hard table.

Escape was impossible. I was instantly reminded me of those medieval torture racks.

“I’m not Houdini, you know … you do know what you’re doing … have Health and Safety looked at this?” I rambled.

Was it the coldness of the hangar or was I really shaking with fear as they proceeded to lower the spikes so they were almost touching my body?

I was terrified and pleaded with them not to let it go wrong. It would have been an instant, painful and bloody death had that slim rope slipped from their hands!

The Twins revealed that Titan – an 8ft steel robot that is conjured back from the future to aid the Sheriff of Nottingham’s quest to defeat Robin Hood – would set fire to the rope each night that sends the spikes crashing down as John Barrowman lies chained on the table behind a curtain.

Apparently he has just seconds to escape to reappear in the audience.

It’s a phenomenal piece of magic.