IN a daring act performed on Britain’s Got Talent, South African duo Brendon Peel and Li Lau had the entire audience and judges on the edge of their seats.
The pair auditioned for the British reality TV show in January 2020, with the clip finally being released to the public on Tuesday, April 14, on the official Britain’s Got Talent YouTube channel as an “unseen” video.
Brendon said it has always been a dream of his to perform on an international platform.
“I think most performers would like to perform for Simon Cowell at one point or another,” he said, adding that the opportunity to be part of the show “arose out of nowhere”.
For their audition, Brendon – a magician and mentalist – and Li – an escape artist – performed an act which combined both of their skills.
While Li sits cuffed to a chair, trying to pick a couple of locks which will set him free, Brendon is on the other end of a contraption that has a crossbow aimed directly at Li’s head. For the complicated act to work, Brendon has to solve a bunch of Rubik’s cubes and then use them to add weight to a scale which, if tipped in the wrong direction, will set off the crossbow and send it flying directly at his colleague’s head.
This same act caused Brendon and Li to make headlines in 2019 when they performed at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda. After something went wrong with the performance, the crossbow was set off, and Li was shot in the head. Fortunately, he did not sustain any serious injuries.
“It has gone wrong before so, of course, we were super nervous to do it again,” Brendon said.
The Britain’s Got Talent clip does not reveal whether Brendon and Li made it through to the next round of the competition. For now, the magician can’t say much more. He does, however, mention that he is proud of what both him and Li achieved.
“Both myself and Li are very proud of what we did. We represented South Africa on an international stage. And we’d like to think that, no matter what happens, we’ve flown the South African flag high.”
