COMEDY REVIEW : Watch Him Pull a Laugh Out of His Hat : * Magic: Nick Lewin’s jokes and tricks leave crowd in wonderment.

OCEANSIDE —  When Nick Lewin was 11, he wanted to be the world’s best magician. After learning a few tricks, he thought it would be good to throw in some jokes to lighten up his act. Now he is focusing on being the world’s funniest magician.

It’s working. Like magic.

In front of a packed house Tuesday at Comedy Nite in Oceanside, Lewin held the crowd spellbound. After the show, all you could hear was, “Howwwwww did he do that!?!?”

From the evening’s first illusion, it was clear it wasn’t going to be a normal night. Lewin gently coaxed what appeared to be a live white dove out of nowhere, generating respectful ooohs and aaaahs. Then he slammed the dove against his forearm while breaking into laughter, violently shaking what turned out to be a rag doll.

All was not what it seemed in the transplanted Londoner’s 50-minute set.

Lewin’s humor was tucked niftily in and around his illusions, and his mix of Benny Hill ribaldry was tempered with U.S. observations and a touch of topicality. (“Sir, if you can pull this knife from this lemon, you can be king forever,” Lewin said, then stopped himself. “I shouldn’t do this trick. This is how we got Charles.”)

The act--about half comedy, half magic--kicked into full gear and picked up speed from there. Lewin never let the crowd catch its breath or think about the last trick.

Jovial, personable and with a commanding stage presence, the curly-blond Lewin was dressed all in black, but hardly looked the sinister sorcerer. Of his black Reeboks he joked: “How can this British shoe catch on over here? We haven’t won a race since 1913.”

Lewin, who now lives on a ranch in Paso Robles, offers most of the basics in his act--including turning pink hankies into yellow ones, cutting string and a newspaper into pieces before making them whole again--but his signature piece is linking five finger rings together.

You have to see it to not believe it. He asked for five rings from five people in the crowd, told a few jokes and then held up the five rings . . . all linked. When he couldn’t unlink the last two, he quipped, “Damn, it’s gonna be us three and Judge Wapner.”

Lewin--who did the sleight of hand for Kenny Rogers’ card tricks in the “The Gambler”--also dabbles in seances and levitation. The stage’s dimensions determine what he does in a show.

His big break occurred in 1979 when he appeared on the Merv Griffin show. Since then, he has done television, arranged shows for corporate conventions (once making a 38-foot truck appear on stage) and played top casinos.

When Lewin wasn’t turning $20 bills into smoke Tuesday, he was turning words into laughs. “For our anniversary, I asked my wife what she wanted. She said a divorce. I had to tell her I hadn’t plan to spend that much.”

In a fitting twist, the audience wasn’t the only one surprised last night. Lewin had a little stunner himself after borrowing a pack of cigarettes. The one he pulled out was home-rolled. (After pocketing the product, he quickly called security.) “That,” he said after the show, “had never happened to me before.”

Although Lewin, 39, has lived in the United States for 18 years, he retains his British accent. The only complaint about the show might be that when he surpassed his normally frenetic state and entered the overly excited zone a few times, his words became a bit difficult to understand. But part of the show’s charm came from hearing him say words like hawf and st-you-pid. “We invented the bloody language, you just (screwed) it up,” he explained.

Anyone who thinks you can’t do two things well should see Lewin seamlessly blend reality and fantasy, magic and comedy. Reality suddenly becomes a helluva concept.

In the middle slot of the three-part bill at Comedy Nite is Erin O’Connor, a Los Angeles comic with a quick wit and a droll way of dealing with hecklers.

She filled her 25 minutes ably with topical jokes and personal glimpses. (She’s still not too happy about the time an ex-boyfriend of seven years challenged her during a Scrabble game when she used the word commitment.) Her offbeat observations are somewhat reminiscent of Rita Rudner.

Paired with Lewin, O’Connor makes the night one of the best one-two punches to visit in a while.

Nick Lewin performs nightly through Sunday at Comedy Nite, 2216 El Camino Real, Suite 104, Oceanside. With Frank Conn and Erin O’Connor. For more information, call 757-2177.