By Mark Anstead Published: 6:22AM GMT 17 Feb 2010  This year I will be touring the UK and performing in Hong Kong, New Zealand and Los Angeles. I will also be teaching seminars for magicians and I am often called to help design illusions.  Then there's our online magic shop, which is growing all the time, and I give after-dinner speeches. Debbie helps me organise it all and also presents her own show on Radio Berkshire every Sunday, as well as writing a cookery book. So we're both keeping busy.  I like to think I'm responsible with it. I rummage around on the internet for the best deal whenever I want to buy something and I try to avoid buying what we don't need. I don't understand people who go shopping for fun as if it were some kind of recreational pasttime – I only shop if there is something I want.  In my younger days I threw caution to the wind when it came to cars and I regret that now. I bought some expensive Ferraris and Bentleys, but I got rid of my last Bentley four years ago. It cost me around £150,000 in 2001 and I sold it four years later for around £30,000. A fabulous touring car, but what a waste of money. I don't need status symbols anymore so I drive a Prius.  I leave everything to her. Debbie looks at our bank accounts and I focus on bringing money in. Every week she looks at the interest rates we are getting and whether there are more competitive deals in the market.  Our money is spread across different accounts and if it is a bonus account she'll wait for the bonus period to end then move it. She'll also change energy providers if she finds a better deal.  I grew up in Middlesbrough in a two-up, two-down council house in a very polluted area called South Bank. My mother, who is still alive at 94, controlled the money in our house and had a school exercise book in which she logged Dad's wages and divided it into columns for the expenses we had to meet.  I don't have that kind of organisation – I reached a stage early in my career where I believed if I needed any more money I would always be able to do something to bring it in.  My father was a cinema projectionist and he was a very practical man who gave me a lot of optimism. He taught me that since I had the same number of thumbs and fingers as the next man, if there was anything someone could make, I could make it too.  Absolutely – I believe if people stopped booking tickets for my shows or buying magic products from my online shop I could still go down to the local pub or market and make a living.  I proved it in 2001 when the BBC sent me to America for Paul Daniels in a Black Hole. They dropped me in a place where I was unknown and I performed in bars and pubs and took on a theatre and made a profit.  That's why I have a hard time believing in giving to the homeless – they should get off their backsides and do some work.  If I am approached by a beggar in the street I want to know what they will do for my money before I will give them a penny. I don't believe in getting something for nothing.  Yes. I've been poor and I can tell you that lack of money is a strain in life unless you are happy to live in squalor, which some people are. On our council estate my dad would buy a pot of paint and some brushes to freshen up our doors and windows because the council weren't doing it.  Others in the community would criticise him, saying if he did it the council would leave it even longer before painting their houses. Neither I nor my dad could understand the mentality of being unwilling to buy some paint. They were expecting everything for free.  I should have paid more attention to my pension fund when I was being managed. I only found out 10 years ago that my fund wasn't as big as I had believed. I had been told a certain amount was held back each year for my pension, but when my manager died I took a look and there was nowhere near the right amount in there. Of course there was no point trying to get it back by then, but Debbie and I have since taken steps to put more in and now we are told the fund will produce a reasonable income.  I sometimes wish I had never started a pension though – I have a friend who just banked his money in various deposit accounts and he's the one with the money now.  He is far better off than other friends of mine who took the pension route like me, but found that either the stock market fell, company managers were dipping their hands into the pot or annuity rates were not as good as they used to be.  We live in a lovely three-bedroom house on the Thames that cost me around £750,000 13 years ago. We've done quite a lot to it since and I reckon it's now worth between £2m and £2.5m.  We came here from a seven-bedroom house with a 12-acre garden, which was very nice, but if you have a house of that size you have to have staff and are never alone. We're happy with where we are now and I don't think we'll move.  I remember going into Barclays Bank to withdraw money a few years ago before the introduction of chip and pin. It wasn't my own branch, but the lady behind the counter recognised me and I showed her my card and asked to withdraw £200.  She asked for additional identification and when I pointed out to her that she had just called me by name she said she needed more proof. So I turned to the waiting queue and asked them who I was and they all replied "Paul Daniels", but she said that wasn't enough.  So I asked to see her manager, who came over and said, "Hello Mr Daniels – I'm afraid we do need proof of your identification." I said, "Are you listening to what you are saying? This is mad." Eventually I threatened to transfer my money to NatWest or call the police. I told them it was my money and to withhold it was theft.  They finally gave in and later set me up with private banking, but I do think it's ridiculous when everyone prefers to work to an arbitrary set of rules.  I have always made good money from magic posters. I used to have nearly 4,000 posters used to promote magicians of the past, but I only have 1,000 now. Quite a few years ago I bought a poster used for Chung Ling Soo, a magician who died on stage in 1918. I only paid £50 and I sold it recently for just under £5,000. His posters were always very artistic.  I invested in some shares in a couple of companies in the Nineties and it didn't work out – I lost about £40,000. I'm from Yorkshire and up there we think of that as a lot of money.  Credit card, but we clear our balance every month. If I were prime minister for a day, one of the first things I would do is change their name to "debt cards". People might think twice about building up massive balances on them if every time you went into a shop to buy a pair of shoes you had to say, "Let's put it on our debt".  I only have two – an Amex and a MasterCard. For many years I also had a Visa, but because I was abroad for a long time one year I missed a payment and they declined my card. I only owed £40, but when I phoned and pointed out that my bill had always been paid they said it didn't matter because I hadn't paid last month.  I realised then that we were in the machine age with computers making all the decisions, but computers can't think. So I closed my card with them.  The 'Best of British Variety' tour 2010 features Paul Daniels, The Grumbleweeds, Syd Little, The Krankies, Dana and Christopher Biggins. Call the ticket hotline 0844 847 1726 or visit tdpromo.com
Paul Daniels, 71, is one of Britain's best-loved magicians and his 'Magic    Show' ran on the BBC from 1979 to 1994. In 1988 he married his television    assistant, Debbie McGee, and the couple now live in Berkshire.