BAIRN NoW with the third person I hand them the pad (I'm using a Kozar pad by the way, which I think may be the best available right now), and have her look at me. I say, "In a second I want a single digit between one and nine to come into your mind. Now. Do you have it? Okay, please write it on the pad under the other one. Now this time I am going to ask you to do the same thing again, but only when I click my fingers. No. You have a number in mind already don't you? Yes. I could see that. Not that one. That won't work. Wait for the click:' I click my fingers. "THAT one. Pop it down on there next to your other one. The third one, this will come into your head when my finger touches your forehead:' I lift my index finger and make a slow motion toward her and suddenly tap her forehead. "Write it down:' "The same again. Wait for the finger:' I do the same again. "Write that one down ... oh wait no. Stop. Sorry. Not whatever that one is ... " she hasn't written anything yet, "watch my finger again ... pop. There that one. Go with that one instead:' She writes it down. "Please close the pad yourself. Now this is important, because people think I might do something funny. Those numbers just came into your head and you wrote them there in the pad on that very first page, didn't you?" She agrees. "Please hand the pad and pen to this gentleman here'; I pOintto a spectator seated near the front, "Sir take the pad, open it up and would you please total tonight's numbers:' I go back and dismiss the lady. "Sir have you reached a total? Can you please confirm that the numbers you added were indeed on that first page of the pad, and I did not touch it, in fact Marie ... " or whatever volunteer #3's name happened to be, "handed it to you, and you have
BA\RN genuinely reached a total of tonight's numbers that were written by these people?" He will agree! This routining continues to serve me very well and I am no longer hearing people talk about switching or swapping the numbers. There are, however some further considerations for the add a number that may be worth sharing too. CONSIDERA nON#3 SHARPIE IS TOO SHARP (OR BIRO ALL THE WAY) In one performance I am sure the switching of the numbers was blown because during a previous routine I hadn't realised that my second volunteer had moved seats. I had the pad handed to a gentleman for the totalling only to look up and see the second volunteer now sat directly behind him, looking over his shoulder and then whispering to her husband. There are a few ways around this. First of all, I have the man doing the totalling stand up and come to the front of the stage to do the totalling, using the front of the stage to rest on. Secondly, I reduce the visibility of the numbers from any kind of distance. I was using a Sharpie marker for them to write their numbers with. These things are visible for the first few rows and maybe even from the balcony. So instead, I use a thin blue Biro pen. The white glare off the pad will usually white-wash any view of the pad from even a short distance, and rid you of this problem further. 198
BAIRN CONSIDERATION#2 VISIBLE CTHANK YOU JON ARMSTRONG) I was excited to see Hollywood's Magic Castle's Jon Armstrong in my audience recently, and I was lucky enough to be able to hang out with him afterwards (and see him work!). Jon had 'just two notes: One was about where I place my table, and the other was about keeping the Add A Number pad on clear display at all times. This is very important. Otherwise smart audience members may easily jump to the conclusion that you're switching pads. CONSIDERATION #3 FORGET THE NUMBERS I really want the volunteers who have written numbers to at LEAST doubt their numbers they've written, if not forget them altogether. Some things I do along the way to encourage this is ask for people to tell me things about themselves that include numbers. 'How many years have you been married?; 'What is your house number?' and also include numerical facts throughout the performance myself to. Well there you have it. A whole section of my thoughts on Add A Number that I've mused and worked over the past few years. Some more successfully than others. Truthfully though, I do enjoy using Idea #1 - Add A Nein when I know there's a few magicians in the room as it has a nice moment of them leaning forward and asking some questions afterwards. I rarely perform for magicians though in truth.
BA\RN Otherwise, I just rely on the words in Idea #3. I hope this has been useful and/or interesting for you, and that perhaps you'll be able to add some of this subtle stuff to your routines. Even if it's not add a number, any other routine where you switch something, it's certainly worth considering how We can abolish any thoughts of that people possible. BONUSI 2.00 You can see performance clips, receive updates on this and the other routines plus additional, previously unreleased material by visiting: www.mentalunderground.com/bairnbook
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BAIRN HEADLINES IN BLACK AND WHITE In 2012 my ruddy-cheeked Scottish friend Colin McLeod came to me asking for ideas on predicting headlines for use on a TV performance he was booked to give. He gets all the good gigs. That'll be down to the good looks and muscles and facial hair he's donned in recent years. That's the key to success there folks. Anyway, this is the idea I came up with him. The effect is simple. You're on telly. You have the host open an envelope to see that you predicted in advance which girl has her boobs out on page three of the Sun newspaper. Or else a natural disaster, or something happy like that. It's your five minutes of fame - touch the hearts of the nation why don't you? Then no-one believes that you really predicted it. They shrug their shoulders and pull your thumb-tip off. Only then you show them that you have a copy of the newspaper from a number of weeks ago, where you placed a personal ad with the prediction intoo. Their laughs turn to tears. They weep. You laugh in their face. This is not really a method for predicting the headlines, I've shared my own method for this elsewhere in my book Future Visions (available from www.mentalunderground. com) but this is something that overcomes any idea that a switch was made, especially when it was (as is more often than not the case). The problem with headline predictions is that there is always a tiny amount of suspicion that some kind of switch or exchange has been made. Perhaps not on the part of the person who has had the thing in his possession the whole time, but for the rest of the
BA\RN audience. So my little grey cells got to postulating a solution to this. Use this with any standard headline prediction and you'll be a miracle worker. Imagine that on the day of the performance you ask the person who has had the envelope in their possession for the past 4 weeks to join you on stage. They confirm they have been holding on to that envelope the entire time and it's never left them, been borrowed or opened. They open it up and inside your prediction is seen to be true. That's where most will end. However imagine; As the applause dies down the performer goes to his case and removes a large envelope. Handing it to the on stage volunteer, he asks that they remove the contents. Inside is found a folded newspaper. Not an entire newspaper, but the front cover of one, and a single inside page. The cover is the News OfThe World and the date reads that of four weeks ago (as if!). They are not directed to open up the cover and see that you've also kept one page from that day's newspaper and taken the time to circle a single personal ad. They read it out and it predicts the events that happened today. Proving that you certainly knew all those months ago about the things you predicted. As you can see, this eliminates thoughts of a switch. One thing I should mention is that this method could well stand up on it's own, but it certainly nowhere near as powerful as when combined with a switch method. THE TRUTH On the day you send your prediction to the person, go out and buy a newspaper and keep the front cover. Find one of those companies who print novelty newspaper pages for special occasions. Usually they'll put the face and details of a friend or family member on to a page as a special gift and send you it printed on to news sheet. The company I've used is called Your Name In Headlines, but there are many around the world. Call them and tell them that you're a performer and what you'd like them to do is have 2.04
BAIRN a mock up page of the newspaper with the same date as the cover you've kept. On the page you create, have it made to look like the personals page and in one of the adverts on that page write whatever it is you are predicting. Luckily, the company I use are close to where I live so on the morning of the show I call them up, tell them what that little area of the page is to say, they print it and I go collect it before heading to my show. NoW you have a genuine front cover from a day many weeks ago, plus a fictitious fake inside. Seal them together in an envelope and head to your show. Proceed as before - do your switch or whatever other method you use to make the normal prediction, and then introduce this envelope as a final kicker. The good news is that, unless you're performing for the newspaper themselves, no one can easily put their hands on a specific edition of a newspaper from four weeks ago, so they will just have to take your word from it. More than that, for some crazy reason, members of the audience who read this particular paper, when asked after the show if they remembered seeing this strange personal when they flicked through, have said they recall seeing something and not thinking much of it. Which is strange, because we know that was never the case. It is however a good case for the human imagination. Of course better still is to have this newspaper from four weeks ago as the prediction itself. So you switch this in as your prediction. Jim Steinmeyer has the ideal method for this that he published in Magic Magazine some time ago. BONUS! You can see performance clips, receive updates on this and the other routines plus additional, previously unreleased material by visiting: www.mentalunderground.com/bairnbook
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BAIRN ANDTHESTAR SAyS .... You walk out on stage, the theatre holds 2000 people. Your big-wig promoter from Ipswich has packed the place with sixty five people. You voice echoes around the theatre as you try and fight through your embarrassment to 'get on with it' You have one lady stand. Only to realise she might not be. A lady. "I'm one of his mates in 17" Translated from pleb-speak you suppose he means that he knows your skilful promoter. You press on. You ask him to think which star sign he was born under. Half expecting him to say 'The North Star' or The Daily Star; which would have been 'hilarious: You proceed to ask one question before naming his star sign. "Yeah man I'm a Scorpion, in 17" Yes sir, yes you are. A "Scorpion': The crowd erupts, throws you on their shoulders and marches you to the centre of down chanting your name. The next day - you change your name. In my first ever mentalism performance, and for the year proceeding it I worked in a routine of Ted Kamilovich's where one could apparently reveal the star signs of three members of the audience. For details on Ted's method get hold of his No Prop Nightclub Act. Later my friend Alain Nu came out with his approach to the same thing, which I enjoyed playing with too.
BA\RN I remember too that my closest friend, Colin McLeod, spent some time obsessing over the use of progressive anagrams to reveal star signs and has some significant thoughts on it that again I'd urge you to read. In early 2012 I came up with my version of the Tossed Out Deck, calling it Passed Out Deck (mainly because I particularly dislike the tossing part of these routines), which eliminated the ambiguity of who had which card. This started my thinking in reducing ambiguity in other routines. A flash back to my performances sharing the platform with Alex Crow and Alan Hudson in a (what we agree was a terrible) show called Beyond Belief where I was still performing Ted K's routine. Wouldn't it be lovely to be able to tell three perfect strangers their star signs with minimal questions? At the beginning of your program you're talking to the audience about compatibility, "Some people are compatible and some ... well some are not. In fact 62% of all marriages end in divorce. So it'd seem that more people are not compatible than are. How many of us are married? Around 100 of you I'd hazard a guess at. Guess what? 62 of you are going to end up divorced! Place your bets on who .. .I'm joking. That's cruel. But how do you know if you're compatible? How many of us were born in the summer? See you're warm blooded people. You're fair weather people too. That means you'll do things when the going is good, but when it gets tough you're quick to abandon them. How many of us are spiritual in any way at all? That might be that you believe in life after death, you are dedicated to a faith or even if you've had some kind of ' experience'? Let's see how compatible our minds are. Would you please stand sir, and you madam, and madam you also:' Three people are now standing. You ask them to concentrate on their star signs. "How many of you have an animal in mind? I'm getting a letter 0 from you too. There are 12 different star signs, and so it would not be uncommon to find two of you being in sync with one another, sharing the same star sign:' You point to the first man, "You are a Cancerian, correct?" he smiles and nods his head. To the first woman, "You too are a Cancerian:' She nods and sits down. "But you are different, you're a Virgo, right?" and she agrees too. With two questions "is it an animal" and "does it contain the letter O"you know exactly 1.08
BAIRN which star sign each of these people are. The advantage of this over your regular old progressive anagrams is that all of the clues are not out in the open for the audience at large to guess along with you. An animal that does not have a letter 0 in it could be Pisces, Libra and others. So we've removed the explanation of logical deduction from this, even though that's exactly what it is. The one stage the audience at large has missed out on is the innocent surveying of them all in the beginning. During the second question asked of the audience you ask for a show of hands for everyone born in the summer. Later when you ask three people to stand for this effect, you have remembered three people who raised their hands as being 'summer' and have them stand. The summer months are made up of three star signs, Cancer, Leo and Virgo. So the three people you now have standing belong to these star signs. The two questions about the animal and presence of the letter 0 when the word is spelled tell you exactly which one. What I particularly enjoy about these two criteria (0 and animal) is that they are not related. One is to do with the visual element of that star sign, and the other is related to the spelling. This means it is easier to disguise the tiny pumping sequence that is necessary. BONUSI You can see performance clips, receive updates on this and the other routines plus additional, previously unreleased material by visiting: www.mentalunderground.com/bairnbook
BAIRN CALLEDOUT THOUGHTS IIWhat your stage act is missing is a card trick'~ says the agent on the other end of the phone. You're excited. You love card tricks! The effect is simple and direct; you point to an envelope that has been suspended from a bulldog clip since before anyone even entered the room. Taking it down from the clip you remove a large playing card. This is what has been kept safely inside the envelope during the evening's proceedings. The envelope is discarded and the single card is replaced in the bulldog clip, to keep it in sight. You point to someone near the front and ask if they know what the card is, without guessing? They shake their head, "no". "Please call out your choice of red or black:' "Red:' Next you point to someone else, "We are going for red, please callout your choice of heart or diamond:' "Diamond:' "Finally, you sir, please call out a value, Ace through King:' "Jack!" comes the reply. "May I ask you please to confirm;' you address the first lady, who called out 'red; "you said red, yes?" Each of the three people confirm their called out choices. "So we have randomly called out the Red Jack of Diamonds, right?" Returning to the first lady again, "Before you called out red the first time, did you ever write that down or select anything from a deck or anything? No? Was this purely a '1'\'\
BA\RN mental choice you made, just before calling it out? And did you change your mind before making that choice?" "Would you two also confirm all of this is true?" Needless to say, the card is openly turned around to be the Jack of Diamonds. THE TRUTH The most skeptical and knowledgeable people have been thrown a curve-ball on this one. I created this when musing (in a hot bubble-filled bath, as is my want) over an introductory phase to my tossed out deck routine. I use this piece as a way of showing how making conscious choices can lead to easy manipulation of those choices, therefore the only way to make choices truly fair is if you take a look at a card you don't consciously choose, but that you choose by luck. From this deck. And I go on from there with my unique presentation that I call Passed Out Deck - for fun. Back to the matter in hand. The truth is nothing is ever written down, no-one selects a card, the selection of card is totally fair and random. Yet you are still able to predict it. And there really is only one card in play on stage. There are however some verbal ambiguities at play here. Powerful ones at that. We are going to be playing with the time-line of a sequence. I was prompted to think of this when recently re-watching the TV drama 24 and the way they splice the'Previously On 24' segments to summarise the previous episodes. You'll need a deck of jumbo playing cards, a spiral bound notebook, a bulldog clip on a stand in full view of the audience and an envelope large enough to contain one of the cards. The effect comes in a number of parts. First of all let us deal with the pre-show. Yes there is some pre-show but it will absolutely be among the easiest you ever conduct. No impression devices or props of any sort are required. So you'll never be looking suspect to any onlookers.
BAIRN Before you approach anyone it is of vital importance that the envelope be on display already, clear for everyone to see. If not then part of the mystery for the folks you preshow will be diminished. In all of my performances this is not a problem as my act is usually set before guests are admitted to dine in the banqueting room. You will use the same approach with all three people you will involve in the routine, find three distinctive looking people who are seated close to the front. For the sake of easy recall later I chose a lady in a bright coloured outfit for the colour (notice the easy recall there) a man in a suit for the suit and a woman who looks important or wealthy (of high value) for the value. Here is the scripting I use for each of them, I'll give you the example for if I was doing this with the woman who will chose the colour - wearing the bold and bright colours. The same script is used for the others, just replacing colour with suit and then value. "As you can see up on the stage there is an envelope, inside of it is a playing card. One of the 52 from a deck of oversized cards. Later I'd like you to call out whether you think that card is a Red card or a Black card. I want you to think about it now, change your mind a few times. Now. Don't write it down and I don't want you to 'pick a card, any card' because I'm not that kind of entertainer, but after you have thought about it, for the first time right now call out, what you think, is the card in that envelope red or black?" She will now say whatever she thinks. After which I ask her to remember that for later because I'll be asking her to call it out again in front of everyone. "But please make sure you keep an eye on the envelope, no-one is going to touch it and we'll see how right you get this:' Now do the same with the other two. During the show you will be asking them to, "Call out your choice, red or black:' this is their choice, the one they made earlier. This is the time confusion we talked about. And then we will use time confusion again later when we ask them to stipulate the fairness of the conditions; "Before you called out red the first time, did you ever write that down or select anything from a deck or anything? No? Was this purely a mental choice you made, just before calling it out? And did you change your mind before making that choice?" The audience believe the first time this was called out was the time when they said Red in front of them during the show, because you then went back through the three of them apparently to confirm their choices, asking them to call out their selections again. In reality the 'first time' was before the show.
BA\RN The mystery to the audience is that three people called out the three elements that make up a playing card, and it matched the card on display. To the three people, first of all they are not aware of each other having been prepped before the show, and most importantly, the card was on display while they were making their choice before the show. About that, this is where the spiral pad and envelope come into play, along with the deck of jumbo cards. Backstage or in your room you have the whole deck of jumbo cards. Once the card is named you take that card from the jumbo deck and place it inside the front cover of your spiral pad. The pad should be big enough to contain the card. During the show open your pad as you place it on your table, leaving the card flat on the table, back up-most. Now the envelope has a slit cut along the address side about 3 inches from the top. The slit is the width of the playing card plus an inch on each side (or as much as the envelope's size will allow you). Now, before any of the choices are called out you draw attention to the envelope and take it off the stand. You momentarily place it on the table right on top of the playing card. The motivation for doing this is that you do it absent-mindedly as you look for your first'volunteer' - the person thinking of the colour. You ask her to stand. Now go back to the table after having moved forward to shake her hand, and pick up the envelope and the card as one. Reach into the envelope and remove the card 'from inside; through the slit in the back. It is still back out-most. Now there is no need to worry about this simple load, because for everyone but three of the people in the room, nothing has been called out or choices been made. So there is no heat at this moment. I say, "Oh before I have you callout your choice, inside of this envelope is a playing card, let me show you .. :' and take it out back side out. "I'm not going to show you which one just yet, that'd spoil it:' This gets a laugh, which goes a long way to misdirecting the only real 'moment' of deceptive manipulation. Now place the card on prominent display, exactly where the envelope was. There is an important reason for placing the card where the envelope was, and that is create a mis-remembering in the minds of the audience that it was the card that was hung up there during dinner, in plain sight for all to see, not the envelope. A way to further enhance this mis-reconstruction I've found is to place the same 2.14
BAIRN question-mark on the back of the playing card, as you have printed on the back of the envelope. Don't mention it to anyone when you bring the card out. I've also found the question-mark increases the laugh when the card is removed. The bigger the laugh at this moment, the more likely they are to forget it altogether. For me, this is the very closest I've found to exactly what this effect should look like. I am also very much in love with the idea that we simply ask people to call things out before the show - its so simple it feels like cheating, don't you agree? BONUS! You can see performance clips, receive updates on this and the other routines plus additional, previously unreleased material by visiting: www.mentalunderground.com/bairnbook
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REASON TO WRITE BAIRN "Think of something. Now write it down. Press hard, and write clearly:' The discussions are abound with 'Why do you ask them to write things down?"The truth is, I don't tell them why, I just tell them that's what they have to do and then they do it. However, one consideration would be that there is a process yet to come, and the writing down is integral to that being possible. For example. Have five people stand. Each of them thinks of the name of a city. You hand a business card to the first guy and he writes his city down on the card. You ask him to hand the card to the second guy who writes his city beneath the previous one. You repeat with all five of them so the card now bares a list of freely thought of cities. A sixth person is asked to take the card and circle anyone of the cities. Your job will then be to work out which one city among all of these thoughts you are being drawn towards. I'm not really interested in supplying a method here. Rather just a piece of thinking. I will describe a method in a moment that I have considered for this. It's not a regular method for a book like this, just a mental exercise and I've never performed it. Although I am considering it. The main crux of this thinking is that in order for the presentation to work at all, things absolutely must be written down. Making a list is only possible by writing things one under the other. A way that I do this when doing a centre tear routine (I actually use Richard Busch's Zen Billet Tear) is to draw the box for the peek area and then leave the space below it empty.
BA\RN Hand the card to someone and talk about creativity. One exercise in creativity is that you need to think of at least thirty different ideas before you'll start to really get your mind to the creative ones. Of course you don't have time for them to write thirty or more ideas down so five would be just fine. Have them write the names of five celebrities on the card under the box. Now speak to someone else or do something else while this is being done. Once enough time has passed you return to the lady and ask her to look at the 5 name; she's selected, and to select one in her mind. Your reasoning is that you don't want this to be just the first one that comes to mind, as that might be seen as an obvious or common choice. Once she has one in mind she is to write the one she is going to focus on into the box at the top of the card. Now she folds the card, you take it and have your wicked way with it. A perfect rationale. Something that just struck me upon writing this down is that you could have the card be blank apart from five lines on the card. They write their first thought at the top, their next one on the line below etc. etc. You could then talk about how by the time you get to the fifth thought it's a lot more obscure than perhaps the first one. Now retrieve the card and perform the tear in such a way that you will have to read their writing upside down - or else slightly modify the tear. Worth considering though I feel. I mentioned a presentation right at the start of this, for which I said I'd come back to a method. So ... one way I've considered doing this is with one of those clever electronic gizmos that tell you which of four zones someone has written in - Alone 4D is one such thing. So you'd need a pad that is set up like an add-a-number switching pad. One that can open on either side. You'd have the four people write their things down in one side and then hand the pad to a fifth person. When he opens it, he will be seeing places you have previously written. 218
BAIRN Of course the problem here is that the other people will know that none of those places was on the list when they wrote their place. No problem. When writing, the people each write on a separate page, rather than in a list*. So once they have written their place, they turn their page 'so as not to influence the next person: NoW in your switched in side, each of your force places are written on separate pages, but at different heights on each page. For example the first page has Istanbul written one quarter of the way down. The second page has Barbados written at the very bottom. The third page has Paris written at the very top. The forth page has Newcastle written 2/4th of the way down. In the back of this side of the pad is the Alone 4D technology, so when the fifth person circles one of the places you still get to know (by means of this fabulous tool) which one was circled. That's all theory, and I've no idea if it'd actually work. I do fancy playing with it though. BONUS! You can see performance clips, receive updates on this and the other routines plus additional, previously unreleased material by visiting: www.mentalunderground.com/bairnbook * Thanks to my buddy Colin McLeod for the idea of writing on different pages in an add a number pad. Clever sod.
BAIRN THE DISTANT BET A person is glad to join you on stage. What? Isn't that the most amazing effect ever? Okay ... so once they get there you show three large match boxes. You explain that you got them from a museum and they are the old fashioned way to light a cigarette, before lighters were invented. They're to save you burning your face off when lighting your fag (Cigarette - for our American friends) on the gas stove. The crowd look at you awkwardly. You put on your trousers and continue. Now since your volunteer already agreed to bring with her a pound coin, you tell her that we will risk this pound coin on the following game. A pound is not to be sniffed at, but the prize is greater still. "I will walk over to the other side of the stage and will turn my back. Once I do I'd like you to mentally decide upon one of the three match boxes. Do not touch them at all, just focus on the one box that you decide you want to go for. There! You see already while I am looking at you, your eyes darted to this box here:' you point to one of the boxes, "you were thinking about that one. Please make your mental choice only once my back is turned and once you have, just let me know you have decided': You turn your back and after just a moment the volunteer informs you that she has made her decision. "Great;' you continue, "you are not allowed to change your mind, so I hope you are happy with that selection, and please pick up that box you decided on. Once you have, please open the drawer and take out what you find inside. You'll see that is the wager for the game. It's not a hundred pounds or anything but it's enough to make it interesting yes?" From the drawer the lady takes out a £10 note. "Once you've got the wager out, please replace it with your pound, close the drawer and place the box back on the table from where you picked it up:'
BA\RN This is done and you turn around. "We need to number the boxes for our reference. Which end would you like to start at with number one, the end closest to me or the far end?" She chooses number one to be furthest from you. "Okay, there is £1 ° riding on this. I am going to stay all the way over here just because that way I can take in your whole physical response. If I am too close then I'll only be able to see your face or your head and shoulders and there is £10 resting on this;'you say with your tongue wedged firmly in your cheek. "I will ask you various questions, but remember not to give anything away about which of the three boxes you chose to hide your coin in. If I get this wrong, that tenner is yours:' "In a moment I want you to call out any number, either one, two or three. Bear in mind that you might be tempted to blurt out anyone of the two boxes that you did not place your coin in, because your job is to avoid it and keep it from me. However you might also try and double bluff me and call out the number where you pound really lies. Your choice. Think about it carefully and then name any number, one, two or three:' The tension mounts as the lady frowns and weighs up her options. "Three" she calls out. "Interesting. I don't think you went for number three so I think we can eliminate that as a possibility. Now, in my mind (and I may be wrong already) we are down to one and two. "" ask you to call out a number, either one or two and that will give away the location of your coin. Either by telling me where it is not, or where it really is. So think carefully and call out, which number will you say ONE or TWO?" "Great! Really great! The first time you lead me astray and this time you try and double back on me, so open box number two and show everyone the coin!" She does and everyone applauds. "Oh ... where are you going with that? If I got it wrong you were going to win the £10, and you were happy about that weren't you? Of course, so since I won, I get to keep you pound!" Snatch the coin off her and drop it in your pocket with a "clink':
BAIRN THE TRUTH What is new here? Weill really enjoy the presentation which is one of my own, around having the person call things out and that apparently leading you to some kind of strange logic that leads to the correct outcome. Of course it's what Penn and Teller would call 'Bullshit' (technical term) but it really plays well. There is a lovely moment of thinking and tension as the person decides which number to call out. You can see the audience lean in and live the decision making process with your volunteer. The method here is one that requires no marks of any of the apparatus, has nothing to do with serial numbers and in fact you don't need to come anywhere near the table at all. I have done this from across the room even without turning around. However for this presentation I like to turn around and look. Quite simply, each of the boxes (and this can be done with envelopes but they are little flat and uninteresting) has a different bank note in, of a different denomination. From left to right, the first box contains a £5 note, the second a £10 and the right-most match box contains a £20 note. This means the'bet'forthe correct outcome changes each night but as soon as the bet is known you know which match box contains the pound. You can do this with higher amounts, I originally did it with a £ 10, £20 and £50 - but then times got hard and hair bleach prices went up. The economy eh?! If you decide not to turn around, simple use the line, "and of course you are now holding the wager for the correct location of your pound coin, and if I get this wrong you'll be taking home .. :' and simply pause while the person calls it out. When a person does not understand their cue to call it out, I simple turn around and look at them, saying "Twenty pounds, the one you're holding!" and make a joke of it before turning back to face the other way. Keeping my back turned was the original way I performed this, but recently when I picked this routine up again to include in my parlour act I prefer to turn around and look as it's more friendly to be looking at people, than for them to be counting the
BA\RN creases in the back of your jacket. Just to re-cap. If the wager for the game is £5, you know the £ 1 is in the first box, if it happens to be £10 (as in the example given above) it's in the middle box and if the wager is £20 it is in the right-most box. Another idea I played with, but have never used as I think it could hint at the method, is having slips of paper and comedy prizes written on them. For corporate performers these prizes could be related to the company you are working for. Finally, you could insert real miniature physical prizes. Maybe a miniature figurine of yourself, because I really am that vain. Do bare in mind that you shouldn't put something such as a valuable watch in as the prize, simply because the presentation is that there is the same thing in every single box, and this is not as logical with a valuable watch. I prefer the money out of all the options though as it is simple and direct (simple and direct, sounds like something Looch would enjoy eh?). BONUSl 2.2.4 You can see performance clips, receive updates on this and the other routines plus additional, previously unreleased material by visiting: www.mentalunderground.com/bairnbook
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AS YOU DO BOOK BAIRN It's Christmas eve. Your wife is out at work - she's a nurse. And like any good parent, you've left the kids at home in the care of a babysitter you hardly know. You've got a gig. Well that's what you tell the wife. You're actually at the pub with your mates. Your wife isn't at work. She's left you. Christmas is a happy time of year. Upon getting home you find the note, she's left you. The drink starts to flow, and before you know it you're rolling around the street outside Singing 'Hi Ho Silver Lining: It all goes dark. Then you wake up. It's obviously been a busy night down at the station, because you're sharing a cell with what looks like a guy, wearing a tutu. Under your head you feel something hard below the pillow. It's a book. You open it randomly somewhere near the middle. "Hey, Billy Elliott ... " The tutu-wearing fella on the other bed rolls over and grunts. "What?" You smile and show him your Jazz Hands, "This book. Is it yours?" "It is:'
BA\RN "Right, well I've thought of a word from one of the pages. What do you think it is? Here, take that note pad and write what you think It is on a scrap of paper" Mr Ballerina looks confused. "Alright, I'll give you a clue. It's got more than six letters:' "What?" You can hear the guard outside the door giggling. He's a good audience. "Okay, it starts with the letter M. That's all you're getting. Think about it and write it down. Once you've written it, tear it out and fold it in half:' This is done, Mr Ballerina looks like he might puke. "Great, my turn now. It's not that easy is it this mind reading thing?"you jest. "You take the book, flip to any page you like and like me, think of any word with more than 6 letters. 7 or more:' "Now I did give you a clue, so you do the same. The first letter of my word was M, what's the first letter of yours?" "e" comes the reply. You scribble down an answer on to another piece of scrap paper. "So which word did you think of from the book?" "Candlestick:' he says with apathy. You unfold your piece of paper to show you wrote 'Candlestick: The audience outside the door has grown. You can hear at least eight guards applauding like crazy. "So you tried to guess my word, didn't you?" "I was thinking of the word "Milestone" what did you get?" Ballerina looks amazed and has to be reminded to unfold his paper and show you that he figured you out, he wrote MILESTONE! 2.2.8
BAIRN THE TRUTH I've never been in a police cell. This account is based on what I learned by watching The Bill as a kid. This is a really fantastic piece of mentalism that plays equally as strong close up as it does on stage. I came up with this piece when asked to do an additional show and I was lying in the bath (as usual) pondering over the illusive book test. I quickly got the things together to perform this and the response that night was so strong that it's now a contender to be added into my main show, and will often make an appearance in it if I fancy spicing it up for my own enjoyment. You may have worked this out, but what we have here is an interesting presentation for the 'Mother Of All BookTests' (the pocket version currently available through all magic dealers is the one I'm using right now, but this can also be done with 'Economicon' or any test where the key to the word is in the first letter). I won't go into detail about how MOABT works, however any book test will work and I'll even give you a method for one you can simply make yourself at the end of this section. Let's go through the important steps of this routine that help bust the method as being even remotely possible, and support each other into a fully justified performance piece. You open the book first, before introducing the clipboard or pen (in close-up you can use a business card) and pantomime thinking of a word. Now you give instructions that the volunteer is to try and work out your word. Pause for effect. To assist him from his frozen state of panic, you offer him a clue, "I'll give you a clue. It's got 7 letters or more .. :' Of course this is not much help at all. "And it begins with the letter M" - you can say any letter here, but do remember to be kind, yet not too obvious. An 'X' would obviously yield the response 'Xylophone' or
BA\RN 'X-ray' which is not the outcome we want. Now hand the volunteer your clipboard or whatever impression device you use (I personally favour an idea by Paul Brook on his handling of the 'Buma Board; or the improvement on same by Chris Rawlins) along with a pen. Now he is to write the Word down. Here we're going to use a bit of real life psychology - Robert Cialidini's Reciprocity. Do NOT ask for the board back. This implies that you need it in order to do something. Rather, say something like, "Now it's my turn, here, take the book:' with one hand pass the book, and have the other hand in a gripping gesture that non verbally says 'gimme the clipboard'. Now you have the clipboard but do not look at it yet. Peeking is all about timing, and right now the timing is awful. Instruct him to open the book to any page, and just as you did, to think of a long interesting word. Now I request the first letter, the way I gave it to him. Using the MOABT this now gives me everything I need to know about his word so I look bemused as if it doesn't help much at all. Pause and do a bit of thinking. Then suddenly as if a flash of inspiration has just hit uncap the pen. Now look down at the board and get your peek*. Write the word you know he must be thinking of (due to the book test method you've used) and you're all done. The revelation of this is very important and it's something I mused back and forth on for a while before deciding which way round is best. I find a better theatrical presentation is for you to reveal you got the volunteer's word first, even though you just wrote it. And then announce the word you peeked him writing, pretend it's the word you looked at in the book and have him reveal that's what he wrote, second. Additional Ideas Tru Test - A great idea by Nathan Kranzo was to use the MOABT principal and apply it * If using the Buma Board and the Rawlins idea, you will have already done the peek long ago. 2.30
BAIRN to a page from a magazine. Grab this and you'll have a very sweet word-test routine, without the books. Take the special page Kranzo provides you with and paste it into a magazine. To begin with hand the magazine to the volunteer and ask him how many pages are in the magazine. He turns to the last page and calls it out. For example it's 65. "I'm going to think of a word from one of these pages, please turn to any page and then hand the magazine to me:' He does so. You now feign thinking of a word. Proceed as per the above routine, peeking the words he writes etc. Then you will do the same, you turn to a page in the magazine and hand it to him to think of a word from. Of course the page you turn to is the special Tru Test page. CHEAPO BOOKTEST If you don't own one of the book tests that I've mentioned, remember anyone that allows you to know which word someone is thinking of works perfectly, then you can have a go at this classic and simple method. Get a paperback book. Flick through until you find an interesting word at the very top of one of the pages. Take the pages that come after it and cut them short (I cut 6 pages short because I don't want to take any chances). Now you can hold the book, riffle through the pages and have someone call stop. The short pages allow you to stop on the force page which you know the first word on. Have them think of the first word on that page. Now you know their word and can do the routine above. This is the original way I did this routine when I came up with it in the bath, because my MOABT was at home. Handy eh?
BA\RN NO BOOKS It struck me while writing this out that in fact you could do this without books at all and just peek both bits of information. I'll leave it down to your creativity to work on an exact handling, but it's possible. BONUSl 2.32. You can see performance clips, receive updates on this and the other routines plus additional, previously unreleased material by visiting: www.mentalunderground.com/bairnbook
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BAIRN BREAKING NEWS I've been fortunate to be asked on to a local commercial radio station with some degree of regularity. Metro Radio is the most listened to radio station in the North East of England and presenters Stu and Kelly took a shine to me after I revealed intimate details of Stu's first kiss the first time I joined them on their show. As with anything of this nature, with each appearance comes an expectation to perform something more amazing, impossible and surprising. I decided to perform a headline-style prediction, but one with a really nice little twist that makes the concept of a switch (appear) impossible. Here is how it looks and sounds on air: A week or so ago Kennedy, the freaky mind reader guy sent presenter Kelly a parcel in the mail. Inside was a DL size window envelope. Through the window she could see there was a second envelope, probably pay-size and completely opaque. She brings this with her on the day of the show. "Kelly, I called you to make sure you had the envelope, and where were you when we spoke?" "I was at home." "Great and you confirmed that you had indeed received the envelope and I told you to bring it with you to the studio on the day we were scheduled to do this?" "That's right:' "I also asked you to tear open the envelope and take the smaller one, sign it and seal it into a larger envelope, to make sure no-one could do anything sneaky with it, and you have that envelope with you now, yes?" She agrees. "Please tear open the large envelope and take out the small envelope. Can you place
BA\RN confirm your signature is still on that envelope it hasn't been tampered with and it has never left your possession?" Agreed. "Now just before you do open the envelope, Stu, has the Newcastle Vs Sunderland match finished yet?" Stu looks and says, "It's just a minute to go:' "Brilliant:' you reply, "Lets wait until it's just Full Time before we open this envelope. Keep hold of it Kelly. I'll stay over here and get a pair of scissors out ready .. :' Stu looks up, "Right it's Full Time and Newcastle won:' - a miracle there in and of itself. "Okay Kelly, look at this envelope you cannot see through it and have no idea what is inside. It's been with you for 7 or 8 days now, your signature is all over it. I don't want to let my hands go anywhere near it so let me snip open the end of the envelope. There, the envelope has fallen to the table and I do not want to touch it so please pick it up, reach inside yourself and remove the card that I put inside:' Kelly begins to read, "Newcastle just won the match a moment ago .. :' her face is a picture of disbelief, her jaw is open and her eyes are wide, "the front page of today's Chronicle will deal with a local person doing work for charity, someone in a pink t-shirt will be holding a flower and the word 'Breath' will be important': Stu grabs the front page of that day's Chronicle and confirms there is a child doing a charity run for Breast Cancer has raised £10,000 for the charity, she is in a pink t-shirt and is holding a balloon made into the shape of a flower. The headline is 'Sarah Just Catching Her Breath: THE TRUTH This is a really interesting and exciting piece for me because it combines a few methods, it combines some dual reality double-speak with a switch and then a multiple out. Which together go a long way toward disguising the truth. I must credit Richard Himber, who I think had the idea for this type of two-way out. The good news is that there is only one piece of card in the envelope, the volunteer removes it from the envelope herself and can keep the card and the envelope from 2.36
8AIRN which it came. First of all let's jump back to what really happened. Basically the card in the envelope on the day of the revelation was switched in just before the show. But it has been done in a very calculated way. First of all, take a small pay envelope, seal a piece of card in it and in turn seal that inside of a DL-size window envelope. I mail this to Kelly. I call Kelly on her mobile phone at a time I know she will be at her home. I ask if she received it and she confirms she has. I tell her to keep it in a safe place. Now what you don't know is that on the morning of the radio performance I buy that day's newspapers and look for a suitable set of aspects to predict. I think it's important to predict elements of the front page and not the whole thing. So: a word from the headline, perhaps something about a picture, but making it obscure - are all good things. I write the prediction and seal it inside of an identical pay-size envelope to the one I sent to Kelly. I ask Kelly to meet me outside of the studio building thirty minutes before show-time and it's out there that I do the work. I ask her to open the DL envelope and take out the small pay envelope. I explain that I don't want to get accused of switching it later so want to make it bigger so less easy to do anything 'funny'with. So ask her to drop it inside of this large (5 size envelope. Of course this is when the switch happens. I use a flapless envelope and a 5haxon Flap envelope to allow her to drop the envelope inside the (5 and then hand her the envelope with the now switched-in small envelope inside. Now as an after-thought I ask her to hold her hand out while I tip the envelope out, and say, "In fact how about you sign it?" Hand her a pen, and as she signs it I turn the pile of (5 envelopes over so I now have a totally normal (5 envelope on top of the pile. I hand her the normal (5 envelope and have her seal this now signed pay-envelope inside of the (5 one herself. Now a few things have happened. Physically, we have switched the dummy envelope that we sent a week ago for one we wrote this morning containing today's headlines, now psychologically Kelly is committed to the fact that this is the same envelope. How is she committed? In the self same way we commit to anything important and binding, with her Signature.
BA\RN Finally, the step of having her seal it into the larger envelope herself sells the fact that she is in complete control of every single element of it. She now has the envelope and you never touch it again. In the studio we can now say, that she's had the envelope a week, she signed it and sealed the small envelope inside of a larger one herself. And since you make a big point of'standing a good distance away at all times so I am no-where near you' you can also have her agree that you were nowhere near her while all this occurred. So the main headlines for that day are taken care of. However the most beautiful part of all of this, that really sells the fine accuracy of your predictive abilities is the prediction of the football (soccer) match that literally happens while you're in the studio. The card inside of the small pay envelope that you've switched in actually reads like this: TEAM A JUST WON THE MATCH A MOMENT AGO the front page of today's Chronicle will deal with a local person doing work for charity, someone in a pink t-shirt will be holding a flower and the word Breathe will be important ANDTEAM BJUSTWON THE MATCH A MOMENT AGO I hope you can see that this can be read in two ways. The first is starting at paragraph one and ending at the end of paragraph two. The second is starting at paragraph two and ending at the end of paragraph three. Basically if you cut off paragraph three, you will predict Team A being the winners. If 138
BAIRN you cut off paragraph 1 you will predict Team B being the winners. And this is exactly what you will do. When you snip open the envelope with the scissors, you will do so in such a way that cuts off the irrelevant prediction and only leaves the accurate one. The way to do this is take the card with the prediction written on it and insert it into the envelope. It should be cut to a size where it will slide up and down inside of the envelope easily. Now I hold the envelope up so that the card inside falls to the bottom. Open the envelope so you can see where you'd want to make a cut to remove the bottom prediction, and simply make a pencil dot at that point on the back of the envelope. Now turn the envelope the other way up and let the card slide the other way and mark the envelope again. In performance, if the outcome you want is Team A to win you hold the envelope up the right way and allow the card inside to fall to the bottom. Now pinch the card through the envelope as your turn it over. Now you shake the envelope as if causing the card to fall down, when in fact you're pinching it to the top through the envelope. Take the scissors and cut along where you made your pencil mark. If you want Team B to show as having won you turn the envelope upside down, allowing the card to fall inside, then pinch it again, turn it the right way up again pantomime shaking the card to the bottom of the envelope while maintaining your grip on it through the envelope and then snip along your mark. It reads fairly complicated but believe me it is this tiny subtle 50/50 choice that happens a moment before the prediction is opened that throws them off the scent of it being anything other than real. It really gives credence to the rest of the prediction and makes everything utterly unfathomable. BONUSl You can see performance clips, receive updates on this and the other routines plus additional, previously unreleased material by visiting: www.mentalunderground.com/bairnbook
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BAIRN TOSSEDOUT DEATH You're running through woodland. Puffing and panting. You struggle to breathe, but you're running for your life. As you turn your head you can see the masked men are gaining on you. You've got to find the energy to speed ahead. You turn to look where you're going only to your horror you come face to face with one of them. Frozen with fright, the others catch up and surround you. "One limb at a time. We'll tear you apart:' "What do you want, I'll do anything!" "Limb by limb, piece by piece:' "Tell me what I can do, just let me go?!" "There is only one thing that can save you:' You hold your breath. "Show us a card trick!" Cards in mentalism. There are a few instances I use cards, and many of my ideas are here in this book. What do I feel about the use of cards in mentalism? Quite simple really. So long as they are used as cards, with a context of cards then I am cool with it. I am radically against the '52 different objects' presentation. If you wanted to present 52 different objects, I'd hope you could be more imaginative than a deck of bloody cards. I present card mentalism as memory - memorising a deck of cards, that seems logical
BAlRN because in order to memorise a deck of cards, you need a ... deck of cards. I talk about playing poker and wouldn't it be good if I could work out which card you are thinking of, willing to be dealt next? I even talk about magicians and their tricks, and how I can use my skills against them and their sneaky sleight of hand. Oooerr. Like many performers, I've performed a version of ' Tossed Out Deck' in my act for a while now. While I do have my own unique method for this routine, what I want to share here is not mechanics, but rather rationales and scripting to have aUdience members do what we need them to do. The biggest fears when performing a Tossed Out Deck'that uses a bank of force cards is the person who you 'toss'the deck to flicks through the cards and sees that they are all the same. Like so many, I worried about this for a long time before strapping on a pair of balls and performing the thing. Since then I have developed two very different strategies for pushing the volunteer into just prizing open the deck at one place. One is for your general mentalism performance, the other is if you prefer a darker style - which I sometimes perform too upon request. I love each of these equally and hope they will be of use to you. Before reading on, I do hope that you understand the subtlety from this and that I'm able to communicate with you the ways in which the little elements stack together in a way that has allowed me to enjoy a great many successful performances of my'Tossed Out Deck' (J call mine 'Passed Out Deck; for reference). We will start with the general mentalism approach. That is I have just performed a mentalism piece that display my credentials. "Now please give me a wave if you play any sort of Poker, okay any card game? Give me a wave if you have ever been outside of your own house before? Ha. That's it. Great:' I now choose three people from the front row and ask them to stand. Note that I do NOT have the deck of cards in my hands at this point. That is important. "I'm going to have the three of you think of playing cards in a minute. However I realise if you get a playing card in your mind right now, you may be likely to be influenced and consider the Ace of Spades and the Queen of Hearts. Yes, yes don't worry:' This scripting is not only suggesting that having people merely make up a card is unfair, but goes some way to proving it. Look at the language, I literally say'get a playing card 242
BAIRN in mind right now'which acts as a description but also begins their minds into carrying out the action of thinking of a playing card. I then announce the two common cards, and use a very old dodge where I look between people as I apparently get confirmation from them, saying 'yes, yes don't worry: This proves it to everyone that this is NOT a fair way of having people think of things. "So to make it is really fair, I'm going to have you thinkof one single card from an entire deck. But we are going to do it in the fairest way. You will not take your card out of the deck, you will just prize the deck open and take a peek at one card. Just like this, take the deck open it up somewhere and think of that one card you can see:' You say this as you demonstrate. Now the important part. "Now, for your own sake do NOT flick through and see a bunch of cards, because in a moment when I ask you to focus on one card you'll get confused and be unsure of which one to focus on and I don't want you to feel like that. If you just see one card and think of that one card then you can't get confused, does that make sense?" The three people nod. This is it. This is my little, simple and subtle discovery. Rather than make the reason for them doing things my way for my benefit, I make it for THEIR benefit. I do this by appealing to something that is a greater fear inside of them. Especially in a mentalism show. That is, their fear of looking stupid in front of a room full of people. TOSSED OUT DEATH This section was named after this concept, and I really quite like it and it always plays very well when I've used it, which admittedly has been less than the scenario I just shared. During a more macabre performance, or moment in your performance you begin to talk about your lurid interest in death. In particular in murder. One particular set of murders that interest you is the unsolved Jack The Ripper murders that happened in the Whitechapel area of London. "As time went on and Jack not having been caught the British police starting
BAIRN considering what we might consider to be desperate measures to find the notorious serial killer. One such area of interest was that perhaps an image of Jack's face may have been the very last thing these women saw, and so could it be possible that this image would have been burned on to the retinas of these women before they died. I want to impress an image on the retinas of three of you tonight. The image of a single playing card. When I hand you the deck, please just open it to one place so you see one image, allow that one image to burn on to your eyes and then immediately close your eyes before closing up the deck. Keep your eyes closed so that we don't contaminate or smudge the image:' This is a really chilling presentational angle on the tossed out deck, and as ever the justifications for some of the more unusual moments in the routine are covered by presentations so are never questioned. BONUS! 244 You can see performance clips, receive updates on this and the other routines plus additional, previously unreleased material by visiting: www.mentalunderground.com/bairnbook
-- BAIRN
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