You know how when you’re in a group of people, and someone says, “I don’t mean to sound racist but...” and they proceed to say something which is quite clearly racist but because they’ve added the little disclaimer everyone feels more comfortable with the person’s bigotry.  Anyways, as a disclaimer to this blog, I feel I should say that some of my best friends are magicians...

I have respect for the fact that it takes a certain amount of skill, lots of practise, and a large amount of charm to get people interested in what is essentially you lying to them constantly – making people believe you have magical powers, when in actual fact you’re just good at secretly hiding money in a banana or something.

But magicians have had years and years and years to think up new tricks, and despite the ample time they’ve had on their shifty hands, they have only managed to come up with three basic tricks...

a) Destroying something, then putting it back together again.
b) Disappearing something then reappearing it.
c) Making you believe you picked something, then showing you what you picked.

Every now and again a magician will break from this mould, so David Copperfield will go flying around a bit, or David Blaine will live in a box for no particularly good reason, but mainly people stick to the same tricks.

David Blaine is particularly annoying, because he’s not actually doing magic anymore; he’s just doing ridiculous things which people seem to just accept because he used to be a famous illusionist.  We wouldn’t really tolerate his behaviour if he was anyone else – if your neighbour told you he was going to hang upside down for 60 hours off his office block without a safety net, you’d call a psychologist – but because it’s creepy David Blaine and no-one really minds what happens to him, everyone is like, “Sure David, go ahead – what?  You’re going to drown yourself alive?  Yeah sure, why not...”

It’s about time magicians thought out the box, instead of relying on the old tricks it contains, or allowing David Blaine to live in it.  There must be plenty tricks that don’t involve those three basic ideas, but you’re probably not going to discover them if you’re content in simply cutting up a newspaper, rope or pensioner, and putting it back together again.

Don’t worry though, I know it’s very easy for me to sit back as a member of the audience and judge a timeless form of entertainment, so I have put time aside to help and create an example of a completely fresh magic trick...

The Human Super Glue

You pick a member of the audience and tell them they’re about to become The Human Super Glue.  They look at you puzzled, but then you throw a dog at them and it sticks to them.  They laugh awkwardly in embarrassment and then try take the dog off, but this only makes their hands stick to the dog.  The audience laughs, but a concerned animal activist takes to the stage to try rescue the dog from any discomfort – even though, for the record, the dog is loving this.

The activist makes the mistake of brushing against the volunteers shoulder, and... you guessed it... becomes stuck to the shoulder.  This goes on for a while until all sorts of people and objects and animals are stuck to the volunteer.  There is even a meerkat stuck to the volunteers head, and no-one is quite sure how it got there.  Eventually the magician asks for another volunteer and tells them they are to become The Human Super Glue Solvent.  That volunteer then goes around freeing everything and everyone from the first volunteer.  Unfortunately he stains everyone’s clothes.

So there you have it – an original trick that all magicians around the world can begin to learn.  Oh and don’t bother trying to e-mail me to try find out how you can do it – a magician never tells his secrets.