Paul Daniels made it look easy on TV, but he was a tireless practitioner of the discipline of magic, who spent thousands of hours perfecting his sleight of hand and the art of distraction.
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His TV show ran on the BBC for 15 years - at the height of his success he was performing to millions, and fooling us in front of our eyes. And we never heard how he did it - one of the golden rules of the Magic Circle, of which he was a well-respected member, was never to give the game away.
And he was still performing magic, long after his show had finished. He was on tour as recently as a few months ago, proving his undimmed enthusiasm for tricking us, and entertaining us, while he was about it.