This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 5, Issue 1, from 1991.
‘That’s a fiddle. It’s sleight of hand’ was Paul Daniels‘ reaction when, in the early seventies, Granada television showed him their film about psychic surgery in the Philippines. Their response was to say that they had watched the surgeon. ‘But l watched the assistant,’ he said. Standing next to Daniels was a leading Spiritualist who wasn’t convinced: ‘No, it isn’t a cheat’ he asserted. ‘But you can see it,’ Daniels insisted, but to no avail. The man just couldn’t be persuaded.
With eleven television series and numerous specials behind him (the twelfth series is currently being broadcast at the time of writing), Paul Daniels is a well-established household name. When I went to interview him for The Skeptic, I knew from previous interviews I had read that he is very outspoken about religion and morality (in its widest sense). However, what I wanted to discover were his opinions about psychics and psychical research, and whether he had originally been a believer in the paranormal. He answered my questions with great enthusiasm.
‘Yes, as a growing lad in the North, I believed that it was probable that people could transmit thought waves to one another. I believed in religious mysticism and I thought, therefore, that as an extension of transmitting thought waves, telekinesis might be possible. I used to sit for hours trying to move a ping-pong ball across a table. It was only when I could afford a wider range of books that I became a lot more logical, and a lot more observant.’
This wider range of books included books about magicians of the past and the history of magic itself. ‘Magic meaning conjuring,’ he clarified. ‘It was Robert Houdini in the last century who said that a conjuror is an actor playing the part of a magician, magic being a thing of fable, fairy stories, and dreams. I realised that religion was a set of rules for society to live by that was operated by a set of guys doing magic tricks. It was an Egyptian guide who explained to me that Tutankhamen was a sentence: “King Tut, son of the sun god”. At that time in history kings, pharaohs, and religious leaders were frequently called “son of god”, and frequently given a virgin birth. I thought: Why wasn’t I told this at school? Within a primitive society you may need a mystical fear to control children, but I believe that now you can educate them as to why those rules are good to live by and that if you break them there’s a pyramid effect of people who are going to get hurt by your action. I really would like to see all schools have religion removed from them. It’s time for the world to grow up. If people want religion they should give it to their children at the weekend’.
These are strong statements, and come – surprisingly – from a man who was once a Methodist lay preacher. Equally surprising, perhaps, is that Paul Daniels is very sympathetic towards Uri Geller. Humanist News once reported him as saying that he doesn’t mind Uri and that he goes up and does his act, adding that Uri ‘is a nice guy’.
Daniels told me, ‘Uri is interesting. On the next series of The Best of Magic [recently transmitted] he comes out of the closet and does a magic trick – a trick similar to one we did a few years ago in which you set a clock up and do certain things while the clock is ticking, and then you take the clock back the amount of time you’ve been busy. We boiled water for example, and although the water has boiled you pour it over your hand and it’s cold again. Oddly enough, rumour has it that despite his paranormal powers the whole thing didn’t work anyway and it had to be reset behind a screen. But he is a great showman. I don’t know where you draw the line. He is entertainment value, but, in my view, he has no psychic powers whatsoever. I don’t believe that he can bend metal by thought waves – or do anything else by thought waves. He’s a good entertainer if you leave it at that. In fact, he goes to a few magic conventions now and David Berglas (President of the Magic Circle) is a close friend.’
Daniels once got a typist to re-type the star sign information from an astrology book, but switched the headings around. ‘Several times at parties people asked me “What star sign are you?” and I’d say “It’s funny you should ask. I’m doing a book on that” and show them the piece marked with their star sign. They’d say “Yes, this is me”. He laughed. ‘When I told them what I’d done I lost so many friends…’.
But why do so many people seem to need to believe in the paranormal?
‘I think that because of bad education – capital B A D – people have a need for mysticism; they’re missing out on the simple fact that what you are is amazing; what you are is wonderful. What you are. No extraneous influences. What you are, inside you, is just fantastic. It really is, and yet they sit in front of the TV and watch David Attenborough going on about some mysterious animal that has developed its eyes so that it can see in the dark and they say “Isn’t that wonderful”. And they miss out on the fact that the thing that’s watching the programme is the most developed animal of all in terms of thinking, and movement, and sense – and yet they look for mysticism, and that just drives me up the wall.
‘Nobody’s promoting the human animal as being it, as being the be-all and end-all. Only Humanists to an extent. But Humanists aren’t really promoting it, are they? They’re not getting out there, writing articles and getting on television programmes. Maybe the answer to the paranormal is an awful lot of practical proof of what you are, what you can do. What we as a group can do without invoking paranormal powers.
‘Although it’s not difficult to find skeptical books, people are not made aware by the media that they exist It’s sad that the people who have written these books which say “Oh, come on! This is nonsense” don’t get much publicity. When you do, you’re the bad guy. When Doris Stokes died, I got a phone call from the press, and I told them it was nonsense before, and it’s nonsense now. I got quite viciously attacked in the press because they said I didn’t pick up on her while she was alive. Well, I did – at every opportunity. So I became the bad guy, although I was telling the truth. And I think that’s the real oddity in human nature. An oddity, but understandable. It’s a truth, isn’t it, that the mass of the people will always be poor, comparatively, and it’s the poor people that need mysticism. The mass press will therefore always promote it.
‘TV people doing skeptical programmes do it in the wrong order. People flip channels and there is research to show how soon after the start of a programme they do so.’ (This research shows that viewers flip from ‘The Paul Daniels Show later than most programmes.) ‘What they should do right at the start of a debunking programme is say “What you are about to see is a programme that will show you how these people cheat, how they play on emotions. The people are fakes”. They should say that right up front, but they don’t. Inevitably they do the programme as if it’s for real and then they do the debunking. It’s at the wrong end of the programme because by then you’ve convinced a major proportion of viewers who have changed over. “Oh well, yes it’s another psychic and we know about psychics don’t we?'”
He picked up a copy of the The Skeptic. ‘This word, “Skeptic”, is going to drive away the people you’re trying to get to. Might I suggest a change of title to The Paranormal? with a question mark?’
In the last few years Daniels has spent two days a week developing and promoting a high speed language learning system which uses an ancient Greek memory technique. Already there are courses in French, German, Italian and Spanish. Using the system, Daniels learned enough Spanish in a week to perform his act before a Spanish speaking audience. Portuguese has just been recorded and Japanese is next in line for the treatment. ‘Japanese is proving very interesting. It is different, not because of the sound, but for the way they speak. But it’s marvellous. Very difficult for the Japanese to explain it to me.’
Daniels strongly approves of James Randi’s work. ‘It’s something that really needed to be done. I think in his life he must have done more than anyone has ever done to raise public awareness – certainly in America – among thinking people. The saddest part is that Randi isn’t young, and that he isn’t on every day doing this as the audience is changing all the time. It should be taught in school. To me, the works of Randi should be taught alongside the works of Shakespeare because it’s as necessary for your quality of life as art or literature’.
For several years, in addition to his series and Christmas special, Daniels also made a special Halloween show which he enjoyed doing. The BBC would only allow a 1990 show if it was made in the middle of his new magic series. This would have meant putting up with the enormous physical and mental strain of doing two different shows in two days.
‘But what I find odd is, here’s an organisation that’s got, arguably, a pretty good magician, and Halloween is a mystical kind of an evening and they don’t use it as part of an annual celebration of entertainment. I think it’s a mistake. Well, come on, it’s hard enough as it is to fill the schedules, and here’s a free gift almost. Funnily enough, a BBC radio producer phoned my manager and wanted me to go on his show and perform a miracle on Halloween. Mervyn said I wasn’t available that particular night, but would be the following week. “Oh, no!” said the man. “You don’t understand. It’s on Halloween. That’s the day their powers are greater isn’t it?” This is a BBC producer in 1989. But come on! In this day and age he believes my powers are greater on a particular day of the year!’
‘Some psychics maintain that I have a negative attitude. But I am a professional magician who has been in love with magic since the age of eleven. The one thing I would love to encounter is somebody who could really do it. This is my hobby, my life. I wouldn’t be offended at all. If I could find somebody who could really do magic, really bend metal, I’d put him on my programme. On the other hand, if you really had that power, would you want to spend your life bending spoons? To say I’m negative is a joke. I want to meet a real psychic; I want to see a ghost. And I would be prepared to pay. Even now, with all the knowledge and the reading that’s in my head, I’d really like to meet one.
Wouldn’t you?’
