James Randi was a great magician – and a debunker of frauds

He was often seen issuing his $1m challenge on Larry King – a cash prize for anyone who could demonstrate psychic or paranormal ability under scientific conditions agreed to by both parties. Many tried, and all failed.

James Randi was a regular guest on the TV shows of Johnny Carson and Penn & Teller. Picture: AAP

This week, a celebration of my late friend James Randi. Stage name? The Amazing Randi – which he joked sounded more like a porn star than a magician, sceptic or debunker. He was a regular guest on the TV shows of Johnny Carson and Penn & Teller. And he was often seen issuing his $1,000,000 challenge on Larry King – a cash prize for anyone who could demonstrate psychic or paranormal ability (from Uri Geller style spoon bending to telepathy) under scientific conditions agreed to by both parties. Many tried, and all failed. Revealed as tricksters or sadly deluded.

James once borrowed a pack of cards from Dick Smith’s secretary and had me shuffle them. “Now close your eyes and deal them into two piles,” he instructed me. “One all reds, one all blacks.” So I closed my eyes and dealt. And abracadabra! A pile of reds and a pile of blacks! Later, James showed me how he’d done it. But I’m sworn to secrecy.

Every TV station had sent a journo and a camera crew to Smithy’s office. And next, James said he would demonstrated telekinesis – the supposed ability to move physical objects using only one’s mind. He snatched a cigarette from my carton, muttered “Filthy habit” and laid it on the desk in front of us. Then he announced: “Now watch this.”

James Randi’s stage name? The Amazing Randi – which he joked sounded more like a porn star than a magician.

And FFS! My fag started rolling around on the desk, apparently in response to James’s trembling fingertips. He then asked the professional observers gathered around him to guess how he’d done it. Vague theories, bewilderment. So he showed them. “While you were focusing on the space between my fingers and Phillip’s cigarette, no one was looking at my mouth. And in between my patter, I was simply blowing it!” Subsequently, I brought James back to Australia and, while touring with him, learned how he performed some of his illusions via magic misdirection. He was always, in effect, blowing.

Dick and I wanted to test water-divining, unsure if it was kosher. We both volunteered $10,000 as a prize; the late journo Richard Carleton, a fellow sceptic, also chipped in. The final kitty? $50,000. Randi asked the divining community to put forward their champion and, in a Sydney paddock, with the help of the local fire brigade pumping water through one or another of ten thick pipes, we put it to the test. Our dowsers using the trad twigs or two pieces of wire. Both sides agreed on the protocols and our testees were 100 per cent confident. But the judges (we’d chosen ministers of religion, despite our atheism) sadly announced the diviners had failed. Utterly, 100 per cent wrong.

Randi had conducted the same tests all over the world – always with the same sad results. Yet he was sad too. “By and large these people are sincere. They really believe in their abilities,” he said. No space here to tell you about the complexities of divination. There’s a useful entry in Wikipedia. Along with one on the Australian Skeptics and, yes, James Randi.

James was the nemesis of the fraudulent Uri Geller, and was famously thrown off the Don Lane Show by its gullible host for daring to reveal the tricks of Doris Stokes’s psychic trade.

James, who came out late in his long life, died in 2020 aged 92. A debunker in the tradition of Harry Houdini, I doubt he’ll be in touch.