Puff… Copperfield plans go up in smoke

By Andrew Adamides

PLANS for Cyprus to celebrate the millennium by having master magician David Copperfield make Aphrodite’s rock vanish have been put on ice, Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Nicos Rolandis told The Cyprus Mailyesterday.

He explained that while the Miss Universe contest looked set to be Cyprus’ big millennium event, the climate hadn’t seemed favourable for the magic act.

Environmentalists and others had threatened to protest over the stunt, and Rolandis said Copperfield’s agent had said that if the star was met at the airport by protests and placards calling for him to go home, he probably would.

And as he would be paid his fee (thought to be around £500,000) up front, this would leave the nation with a gaping hole in its pocket and much egg on its face.

But Rolandis added there still was time for arrangements to be made, unlike in the case of the beauty contest, which had to have a venue arranged by the end of the month.

He also said that the Council of Ministers had not approved the Copperfield visit, although he believed that once the value of the stunt was explained to them in tourist terms, they would have given it the go-ahead.

Copperfield, longtime boyfriend of supermodel Claudia Schiffer, has in the past dazzled the world with a series of illusions, including making a Gulf Stream jet and the Statue of Liberty disappear, passing himself through the Great Wall of China and escaping from Alcatraz.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.