Talking to a former politician about lying felt very appropriate. It was during one of my ‘Magical Thinking’ sessions, a corporate team-building event I run in which I perform close-up magic tricks and the participants try to work out how they’re being done. Among those at this session was Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who had initially been baffled by a particular mentalism effect. She thought of a day of the week, then a month of the year and finally a playing card, and my guesses on all three proved correct.
Every possible route by which I could have cheated seemed blocked off – but Anne-Marie was brilliant at responding to my hints (part of the process, of course), and gradually she led the team towards the solution. The moment it dawned on her how the trick worked was wonderful. ‘Oh my God!’ she cried. ‘That’s proper lying!’ I replied with the obvious joke – ‘Given your previous profession I’ll take that as a compliment’ – before we agreed that actually the credence Anne-Marie had given to the lie was proof of how honourable our political class really is.
Of course it isn’t just politicians – the ‘good at lying’ jokes are there to be made with bankers, insurance brokers, any number of professions. But beyond the humour, every team, no matter what they do for a living, soon realises that a huge part of magic is about presentation. The sessions are designed to give lessons in problem-solving, which people are expecting. What they don’t tend to expect, though, is how magic teaches us about confidence, about the way we sell ourselves to the outside world.
I got into magic as a kid, learning from books by Paul Daniels, as well as a series of branded tricks he produced that came free with petrol tokens. It was the classic story – magic as social currency, the ability to baffle people making me feel clever, giving me confidence. My interest faded as I grew up, though never entirely, and when my own son reached the age of about six I taught him a couple of simple card tricks. This led to us learning new stuff together: inevitably he was quicker, a situation I loved. Watching your child outdo you is one of the joys of parenthood.
Then I ran a magic club at Barney’s primary school. Occasionally the parents of the kids involved would be round at our house for Sunday lunch. ‘How the hell does that trick work?’ they’d ask (some of the best tricks can literally be done by a child). I wouldn’t give them the answer, but I’d perform the trick several times, and offer hints, until they could work it out. That gave me the idea for the sessions.
In some cases the trick’s success rests solely on how well you present it, how convincingly you tell the audience a story
Yes, some of the tricks involve sleight of hand, and take a lot of practice. But some of the most impressive effects are achieved by what magicians call ‘self-working’ tricks. There is little or no technical skill involved – the trick’s success rests solely on how well you present it, how convincingly you tell the audience a story. The British magician Paul Zenon is fascinating on this subject: ‘There’s a lot of snobbery [among magicians] about the idea that if a trick’s difficult to do technique-wise then it’s somehow better. That’s nonsense. If an audience don’t know how a trick is done, it doesn’t matter how it’s done.’
I love watching people realise how much you can achieve with not that much skill. This again gives rise to humorous parallels with other professions, but underneath them the serious lesson is there, the notion that confidence counts for so much. What do you think the ‘con’ in ‘con artist’ stands for? It’s not just the confidence you portray in yourself, it’s the confidence that this engenders in others. People buy into a trick because they want to buy into it. With one of my favourite card tricks I let the team be wowed by it – and then I tell them that it happened entirely inside their own heads. At no point did I make the claim they assume I must have made. This amazes them even more than the trick itself.
People are always much better than they think they’re going to be at working things out. It’s very rare that someone solves a trick on their own – it almost always takes teamwork, with one person saying ‘Is it x?’, before a second jumps in with ‘No, it’s not quite that, but it could be y’. Neither of them would have got there on their own. Once a team’s grey cells are firing, it’s incredible what they can achieve.
And you can never predict which type of person will work out which type of trick. There are so many routes to a solution. A very logical brain might be able to spot a trick’s weak point – lawyers are often good at this, as their whole job is about exploiting weaknesses in the other side’s argument. But equally there are tricks where conventional logic is doomed to fail, where you need a ‘creative’ brain to come at things from a completely unexpected direction, to engage in lateral thinking. There’s more than one way to skin a liar.
If you fancy pitting your own wits against the cards, the coins and the elastic bands (long story), I’m holding a session for readers in the Spectator boardroom on 22 May. Tickets are available here. When an ex-cabinet minister praises the quality of the lying, you know there’s fun to be had.
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