Grand Illusions

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About

Grand Illusions is the name of the YouTube channel for entertainer and vlogger Tim Rowett, a gentleman who uses his channel to display selections from his large collection of magical items and toys.

History

Rowett was born in Surrey, England on July 12th, 1942.^[1] He worked as an entertainer for children's parties for most of his life, retiring in 2007 at the age of 65. On July 9th, 2008, he uploaded the first video to his Grand Illusions channel, demonstrating a "climbing coin" trick. The video has gained over 135,000 views over nearly ten years.

In the course of nearly ten years, Rowett has gained nearly 686,000 subscribers and several of his videos have gained millions of views. For example, his most popular video, uploaded January 4th, 2015, has over 4.4 million views and displays his collection of whistles (shown below, left). A video posted in 2016 in which he demonstrates a spring toy he'd made has gained over 3.5 million views (shown below, right).

Online, Rowett has been profiled by The Daily Mirror in 2014.^[4] On December 23rd, 2014, Rowett was profiled by the BBC in a short documentary (shown below).^[2] He was named one of the Best YouTubers Over 50 by The Telegraph.^[3] On March 26th, 2016 he did an AMA with Reddit.^[7]

Water From The Nile

On July 31st, 2014, Rowett published a video titled "Vases and Pneumatic Toys," in which he showed off his collection of magic and quirky vases as well as some of his toys. Throughout the video, Rowett continues to perform a trick called "Water From The Nile," in which he completely pours water out of a vase, then several seconds later, pours water out from the vase again, each time saying "Water from the Nile." The video has gained over 1 million views (shown below).

On April 30th, 2016, YouTuber Scorch uploaded an edited version of the video consisting of only the times Rowett says "Water from the Nile." This video has been gained over 32,000 views (shown below). It has been posted to /r/youtubehaiku^[5] and /r/asmr^[6] since its publication.