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Steven Frayne

British illusionist

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ394077 ↗
Source-derived summary

Steven Frayne (born 17 December 1982), formerly known by the stage name Dynamo, is a British magician and illusionist.

His television show Dynamo: Magician Impossible ran from July 2011 to September 2014, and saw him win the Best Entertainment Programme award at the 2012 and 2013 Broadcast Awards. He has toured the world, and his Seeing Is Believing arena tour was seen by more than 750,000 people across the UK, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.

Early life

Frayne was born in Bradford, England, to an English mother, aged 17, and a father of Pakistani Pathan ancestry. Frayne is the eldest of four children, his late father went to prison in 1986 when Frayne was four. At the age of 19, his father came to see his act and, according to Frayne, made a failed attempt to recruit him into crime.

Frayne grew up for a time on the Delph Hill estate in Wyke, one of the most deprived areas in the UK at the time. Frayne was bullied at school. His great grandfather, who had learnt magic tricks in the RN, taught him his first trick to make him seem heavier so others couldn't pick him up. Frayne is a supporter of Bradford City A.F.C.

Early career

Frayne was given the name Dynamo in 2001 while performing at Houdini's centenary celebrations at the New York Hilton in front of magic peers including David Blaine and David Copperfield.

Editorial summary

“Steven Frayne” enters the record as british illusionist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Steven, Frayne and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1982, 2011, 2014, 2012—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1982-12-17. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Steven, Frayne and British.
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Why this record matters

“Steven Frayne” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Steven, Frayne and British provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q394077. VIAF identifies the subject as 305856752. The Library of Congress control number is nb2013024446. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982, 2011, 2014 and 2012.

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The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Steven Frayne” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.