Combining acting with football ownership ‘hard but fun’

It is more than 15 years since he co-founded Mischief Theatre, a company which has been responsible for the award-winning The Play That Goes Wrong, BBC series The Goes Wrong Show and a host of other theatre hits.

His latest role sees him play a bumbling magician whose attempts at mind-reading and illusion consistently go awry, often with Sayer’s trademark hilarious results.

He said Mind Mangler was “something you can take your whole family to”, as it has plenty of the “typical mischief stuff [and] a lot of laughs per minute”, but also “some really, really good magic”.

However, he said the chaotic nature of the show was purely an audience perception and the reality was that creating such seemingly spontaneous mayhem actually required exacting precision.

“You’ve got to be really on top of all the moments in the show to be able to deconstruct it and make it look like a mess,” he said.

“You’ve got to have a lot of precision to build that kind of chaos.”