BILLY McCOMB was one of the world’s top cabaret magicians, a brilliant, inventive performer who was known for his stylish presentation and off-beat comedy patter.

Nicknamed “the Encyclopaedia Britannica of magic”, he influenced generations of magicians in Britain and America and contributed enormously to the world of magic through his original thinking. Many of his effects and routines are now standard in the world of comedy magic. In 1999 he was named by Magic Magazine as one of the 100 most influential magicians of the 20th century.

McComb was born in Belfast in 1922, the son of the physician Sir Charles Henry McComb, who was knighted for his research into X-rays. McComb graduated as a doctor of medicine in 1949 to please his father but the same year moved to London to pursue his own ambition to be an entertainer. There he met and married June Cochrane, an Irish beauty queen, who later performed a magic act as June Merlin.

Billed as the “world’s largest leprechaun” McComb began working professionally as a magician and quickly made a name for himself in London nightclubs and theatres. He appeared regularly on television, made small cameo film appearances and in 1951 supported Bob Hope in variety at the Prince of Wales Theatre.

By the mid-1950s he was acknowledged as one of the country’s finest magicians and he was in demand as an adviser to magic shows worldwide.

The magician John Wade said: “McComb was a very good entertainer. He had a way of making small tricks look quite big on stages such as the London Palladium — as with his performance of taking any borrowed coin from a spectator, who found that somehow their coin was now rattling about inside a small Coke bottle. It was always returned in good order. In nightclubs he would produce many silk scarves as he walked around the tables and on returning to the cabaret floor would astonish people by producing from the bundle of scarves a live squawking chicken.”

McComb went on to become one of the highest-paid entertainers on cruise liners such as the QE2, and in 1969 he co-starred with Arthur Mullard in the ITV sitcom On the Rocks. In the series, he played a mad producer at Seaview Television, the smallest TV station in Britain, which operated from a lighthouse.

In the 1970s he moved permanently to Hollywood where he became the doyen of the prestigious Magic Castle, and he was elected vice-president of the Academy of Magical Arts. Even in his eighties McComb was still performing in cabaret in Las Vegas and his self-deprecating remarks became an integral part of his stage act: “Let me give you an indicator of how old I am — my social security number is 3.”

He wrote several books about magic, including The Professional Touch (1987), and made guest appearances in films such as Young Harry Houdini (1987), with José Ferrer and Roy Dotrice, and Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions (1995).

Billy McComb, magician, was born on April 22, 1922. He died on April 30, 2006, aged 84.