The pain is bad magicians ripping off good ones, doing magic badly, and making a mockery of the art.

Like every art form, there are jealousies and angers and competitiveness in magic. But there's camaraderie among magicians, whether you perform it for a living or you're an enthusiast.

To obfuscate the reconstruction of the effect - when a magician is fooled by another magician doing magic. In my career that's not been the major passion, but it's been the passion of a number of my mentors. The crowning achievement for them would be to create magic good enough to fool other magicians.

Dai Vernon, the greatest sleight of hand figure in the history of the art, rarely performed. But he invented magic and had an enormous influence on the whole range of sleight of hand. And so often, the magic he was doing was to fool other magicians.

I was considered a comedy magician. And - how do I put this without sounding egotistical? - it didn't take me long to realize that comedy magicians usually couldn't do comedy or magic.

For me, the most exciting thing is to create good magic that's entertaining for an audience, and it would be lovely if a magician was fooled as well.