Interesting news from the world of conjuring. Magicians don’t believe in magic any more. Marc Salem, one of the new breed of sceptical illusionists, isn’t a clairvoyant or a mind-reader but a ‘professor of non-verbal communications’. And he boosts his university income by sitting in on CIA interviews to help the spooks decide when a suspect is lying. I certainly wouldn’t like to face him across the interrogation room. He’s as wide as he is tall, and he wears a black frock-coat which makes him look like a cross between a mad rabbi and a Victorian undertaker. His beard is unnervingly neat, he has shrewd little I-can-see-through-you eyes, and his huge white skull has apparently been blasted clean of hair by the electromagnetic storms of his inextinguishable brain.
His show is well worth catching, a mixture of maths, theatre, psychology and stand-up.
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