Card tricks are great of course. The magician takes a new deck and cuts an ace. They get you to pick a card and then it appears upside down in the pack, in your next hand, stuck in your pocket, tucked behind the clock on the mantlepiece. All of this is brilliant. It’s magic! But you need an audience. And, as the saying goes, you can only do it once really. Do it twice and the magic disappears and the audience starts to think about how much work is going into it.
