The pub around the corner from my office has a table magician every Monday night - a rather comical little chap in a silver jacket and bow tie, who wanders from table to table performing little conjouring tricks and supposed mind-reading acts.

One night last year, a few of us were sitting there on a Monday, and the magician came over and did a few (pretty average) tricks. Afterwards, chatting with him, he revealed that he’d just come out of a hospital after a serious lung operation. We comiserated, and he moved on to trick more punters.

A few weeks later, we were in there again, and he trundled over to the table with the intent of doing some more tricks. We said hello cheerily, but he clearly didn’t remember us, and so he started going through his limited repetoire again, with us playing along as if we didn’t remember what he’d done for us so recently.

We oohed when he chose the right card from the pack. We aaahed when he made the coin disappear. But things went slightly askance when he asked me to write down a short sentence on a pad of paper, which he would then guess.

I wrote “You’ve just had a lung operation”, and put the pencil down. He covered my hand with his, stared deep into my eyes, and started to guess the words, as if mind reading.

Clearly there was some trickery there - reading the impressions of the pencil on the sheet beneath, or whatever - but in any case, he correctly divined the sentence I had written, as we knew he would. And then he went ashen as he realised exactly what I’d written.

“H-how did you know?” he gasped, dropping into an adjacent chair.

I told him I was a psychic. He gulped, and told me it was true.

I said “I know”. He moved off to the bar, looking confused, and was last seen nursing a large whisky.

Honestly.