Michael Griffin didn’t want a car for his 16th birthday. He wanted a straitjacket.
“Ever since I was a little kid, I always wanted to be what you saw on television. I wanted to be that guy who got tied up or shackled and then got out. I always thought that was so cool,” said the man named the Ultimate Escape Artist by Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
Griffin and his brother would often tie each other up and while his brother couldn’t ever free himself, Griffin always could.
So when it came time to decide what to do as a career, it was a tough choice between the family trade of medicine and the long path it would take to become an escape artist, which is the road he ultimately chose.
“I started my path and now what I do on stage is I present evidence. I present proof of my misspent youth,” he said.
Griffin has won the honour twice of being named best escape artist at the World Magic Awards. He also appeared on the latest season of America’s Got Talent and was tied up by show judge and radio personality Howard Stern.
He also has one of the largest collections of restraints in North America and Griffin encourages people to bring old handcuffs to his shows because he will pay cash for them. He’s collected some quite old and rare types of handcuffs over the years.
He even had a police detective bring him to a morgue where they found a 33-foot long gang chain full of shackles that he used in one of his handcuff challenges.
At many of his shows, Griffin will challenge the audience to tie him up. If he can’t escape, he’ll give the person $1,000.
He had one close call during the challenge years ago, where he was tied up and his assistant came up to him and whispered in his ear that a fire had broken out.
Instead of panicking, he recalled reading about the Great Blackstone, the famed magician and illusionist, who had averted panic in a theatre full of people during a fire.
He asked the audience to stand up and head outside and he would hop out behind them and finish the escape outside.
“They all go out, slammed the door, they got the fire out and I did the escape. Then the fire chief came out and explained what happened,” he said.
Griffin is performing this weekend at the CLE in Thunder Bay. He said it’s a smaller crowd than what he usually performs for but he loves how close he is to the audience.
Escape artist Michael Griffin performs on the small stage daily during the CLE at 5 p.m.
