Before we start, if Penn (from revered magician pairing of Penn & Teller) finds this post while googling his shows or reviews I want to make the following statement:
Dear Mr Jillette (that’s his surname btw) I’m sorry I ruined your trick live on stage at the O2 on 15th September 2026. Also while you are here, I recommend you read some other McCannecdotes which I’m sure you’ll love, and might make amends. This blog has been described as “funny in parts” (- a girl I dated), “absolutely the funniest thing ever” (- a bloke I used to know who, to be fair, had a quite poor and simplistic sense of humour, so I wouldn’t pay too much heed to that) and “risky” (several members of the HR department at my employer).
With that out of the way, let me tell the rest of you what happened.
I’d gone to see Penn & Teller’s 50th anniversary tour at the London Palladium last year. I was excited about this for two reasons – I’d been a fan of this magical partnership since I was a young child, eschewing the mainstream magicians of the day (Paul Daniels) for this edgier American duo. I was known at school for performing magic tricks to my peers, and getting particularly shirty when people guessed how it was done (perhaps because a relative of theirs had bought the same magic set.) The second reason was I would finally have options if asked “Have you been to the London Palladium?” which is a few moments away from my workplace. For many years the only answer to this was “Yes, to see Christmas with STEPS“, and not everyone is into music.
I’d got my tickets for this pretty late, as I’d no idea it was happening until a month before, and had assumed it would be pretty much sold out. It was, but there happened to be a few decent seats available for singletons (these were just odd single seats in fairly good positions on account of the fact most people book things in twos, it wasn’t like there was a special offer for single people or anything – but I will take this as a nice boon). The show was great, I was way off at the far edge of the left side, but about 6 rows from the front, and the view was better than I expected. Not only did I get to see my heroes perform on stage for the first time, but I became aware of another situation so distracting I assumed that these magical geniuses had set this up to misdirect the audience from their sneaky ways.
The distraction was the couple beside me. The girl, an outrageously beautiful, nerdy sort; shy and unassuming. The guy, an outrageously scruffy looking beardy fool in a brown suit. Being in the suit actually made him look more unkempt, and that’s a real skill which I was fascinated by. And just to be clear, we’re not talking about those rugged scruffy looking blokes that some hot girls like. This wasn’t like a surfer guy or some kind of chic bohemian. No this guy looked a mess. The phrase “lanky streak of piss” came to mind, and indeed this would have explained some of the strange shiny stains on the suit. For a while I went with the simple assumption that these two were friends or brother and sister (OK that’s a stretch, maybe step-brother and step-sister, the genes could not possible have been so divergent). But some flirtiness between them soon made it clear this was a couple. On realising this I wondered if I had a responsibility to alert the authorities. Such a pairing surely, surely cannot be legal. The whole “see it, say it, sorted” – that’s for things like this right? I would have googled it but Penn & Teller were very clear about people not getting their phones out (something I wholeheartedly agreed with). I looked around for a member of staff with one of those little torches; my aim was to get their attention, point to this pair one by one, and in the torchlight I’m fairly sure that the issue would become clear. They’d be taken away and interviewed separately, with a bit of leniency on the bloke “look mate, we know why you’re going along with this, you must think you’ve hit the jackpot, but you know deep down it’s not right.” The girl would be subject to more searching questions, “do you have a mirror at home, where did you meet this guy, have you seen other couples, you must know why you’re here.”
Only much, much worse.
I eventually came to the conclusion that this whole affair was the result of an extremely niche nerd specialism. They had met at university, studying paleornithological discoveries in 19th century Germany; it’s the only thing they are both interested in. The pool of potential matches was very low and despite her hotness, there’s only so much of her talking about this that other potential suitors could handle. It was not perfect, but it was a rationale I could live with.
Anyway, by this point the Penn & Teller show was almost over. The distraction had worked. I didn’t see how any of their tricks were done. I barely saw the tricks. I’d spent an hour wondering if it would be socially acceptable to tap the girl on the shoulder, wag my finger between their two faces and mumble “what’s this all about?”.
We got to the final trick, and Penn asked for a volunteer from the audience. Brown suit put his gangly arm up, and up he went. I literally said “fuck’s sake” out loud as he got out of his chair. He stood on stage for 5 minutes, did fuck all, just looking spivvish, and returned to his seat with a souvenir in the form of the main prop from the trick, which was a culmination of a bunch of things they’d been building throughout the show. So like the main thing from the show.
As he sat down I shouted “look mate, you can have that, or you can have her, you can’t have both, IT’S NOT FAIR!” Luckily I realised I hadn’t shouted it out loud, I’d just shouted it in my mind so loud it had actually reverberated in my ears.
I left the event mesmerised and astounded by the sights of the evening, and Penn & Teller weren’t bad either. Shortly after I saw the news that Penn would be touring in the UK again in 2026 this time with Piff the Magic Dragon. Piff is an English comedy magician who performs in a dragon outfit with a chihuahua. He had performed on Penn & Teller’s show, gone on America’s Got Talent (and did pretty well) and become best mates with the duo, with his own venue now in Las Vegas. I’d been recommended videos of his for a long time on YouTube, and figured it was just some stupid thing what with the outfit and the dog, but when I finally caved in and watched his stuff he’s actually genius, with a really funny, deadpan style. I quickly became obsessed. So when I discovered Penn and Piff were doing a show together, I had to get involved. Not like last time where I barely got a seat, I was getting in on the ground floor of this one. The front row of the ground floor.
With a downpayment of almost £200 (double what I paid for P&T) my seat was secured, I was middle aisle seat in the front row – the aisle was useful if I needed to wave my limbs around to get the attention of my magical heroes, I’d have all that extra space for flailing and attention-grabbing. Unmissable. I’d be right there in case the performers needed a number picking, or some crowd-pleasing banter with a witty audience member. Fast forward to 15th September 2026, and it was the big night. I was determined to pay full attention to the show and not to the spectators and not to allow petty envy to spoil my night.
I arrived at the O2 pretty early, the doors opened at 6.30pm and I arrived bang on time. Since I was on my own, going so early would not have been my preferred choice, but I had no option as at no point, on the ticket, on the internet, was it ever stated what time the show started. Just what time the doors opened. Does it start at 7.00pm, 8.00pm, 11.00pm? Fuck knows. So with an uncertain wait ahead of me my only option was to get there when the doors opened. When I arrived the first thing that struck me was the diversity of fans crowding outside the venue. Piff was on America’s Got Talent sure, and Penn is a legend in magic, but I did not expect them to have such an enormous fanbase in London, especially in the female cowboy-boot-wearing demographic. Girls were not this interested in magic when I was plying my tricks in my youth. Pschf. I then realised this was because Hilary Duff was playing that night in the main bit of the O2…
I joined the queue and immediately noticed signage about collection of Meet ‘n’ Greet tickets. What the fuck was this now? Basically I had bought my tickets so far in advance none of these extras had been available. Would have been nice if the promoters had e-mailed people who’d paid £200 the day the tickets went on sale, mentioning to them there were now extras, because you know it’s the kind of thing they might be interested in, having paid TWO HUNDRED FUCKING POUNDS FOR A FRONT ROW SEAT.
Anyway I was determined not to let petty grievances spoil my fun. I was so close to the stage the whole show was practically a meet ‘n’ greet.
I got inside the Indigo venue and found my way to my seat. Woah, this was close to the stage. Almost too close actually – I was probably not going to be able to see things on stage if they were at the back. Oh well, stay optimistic. First world problems and all that. I stretched out into the aisle making good use of the space I paid for, and almost punched an old woman in the face. Wait – where was my aisle space? That’s when I realised for the front couple of rows, they’d filled in the aisle with extra seats. Absolute fucking cunts.
Anyway, I was determined not to let petty grievances spoil my fun. So what if I was too close to the stage to properly see. So what if they’d fundamentally changed the layout of the seat I paid £200 for.
Then a couple arrived to fill the two seats to my right…
Now this was a proper couple. She was a glamorous blonde, not my cup of tea but someone very mainstream attractive. Her bloke was smartly dressed, seemed monied and although he seemed a bit of a loud-mouthed knob, he was exactly the kind of person you’d expect to see with that girl. Pretty standard. This was a good sign. An uncontroversial, evenly-matched couple to my right and an old woman (who appeared to be asleep or dead) to my left, and aside from a particularly dreary playlist of depressing music filling the next 45 minutes of waiting, everything started out well.
We were minutes into the show when the call for volunteers went out, they immediately came looking (and towering over) the front row. The girlfriend to my right got picked and she sat on stage holding a rope, while Penn did various shenanigans with it (basically cutting it and restoring it but entertaining stuff). Next trick, the guy a couple of seats down from her got picked, up he went, had some banter, then the woman next to him, then a couple of people down the other side of me. Then a guy from the back was selected for a “signing the banknote trick” on account of the fact he had £20. When it turned out he had two ten pound notes and this wasn’t what they had in mind, the call went out for anyone who had an actual single £20 note. I kicked myself for not bringing cash – surely the one “prop” you should always take to a magic show. The guy next to me had it covered, he practically leapt out of his seat with a wad of £20 notes in his hand. Not one, but a whole stack which the performers couldn’t fail to notice. He was exactly the kind of guy you’d expect to have a wad of notes to flash around.
At this point I’m starting to feel bad about laying in so heavily to the Palladium couple, who by all reasonable measures seemed like lovely people. But I don’t quite feel bad enough to go back and rewrite and change the narrative of the story, so it’s going to just have to stay that way.
Fancy couple were having an amazing time, with him flashing his monies and her sitting on stage getting magicked on.
Over the course of the next two hours, most other people sat in the front row got their turn, either being selected to pick a number or an item, going up on stage to hold a balloon, holding onto a card, all the usual fayre. It’s not an exaggeration to say me and the sleeping biddy to my left were probably the only people who hadn’t. I could have coped with not going up on stage – it would be nice, but I appreciate there’s no guarantee. But to be the only awake/alert person in the whole row who was overlooked, this was not acceptable.
We were nearing the end of the 3 hour set (it was a long show, good value).
Penn came to the front of the stage “We need four volunteers, you need to be comfortable sorting cards, so any card players, bridge players…” Wait, I’ve played cards I know what order they go in. Don’t know what bridge is but whatever. He said sorting cards. I was tempted to put my hand up. Then the guy a few seats to my left put his hand up and got picked. HE’D ALREADY BEEN ON STAGE EARLIER! I was not having this, my hand shot right up, and Piff said “yeap you as well”.
Up I went on stage, and was placed right beside Penn, and handed half a deck of cards.
My bravery here was spurred by a) my annoyance over the Palladium brown suit guy, b) my annoyance about the fact everyone else in the front row had been involved. But c) it was also fuelled by the memory of a great success I’d had before by throwing inhibitions to the wind and being bold in the face of a celebrity based audience participation moment. I had put my hand up in the audience of a talk Professor Brian Cox was doing at a work event at Butlins (long story), and made a joke inviting him to play mini-golf with me after the talk (you had to be there). It was a perfectly timed gag, whose audacity brought me plaudits and notoriety (the good type) in the office. I’d gone through a great deal of trepidation before putting my hand up, wondering if I would end up embarrassing myself, but the confidence had paid off and it became a memorable experience. This would be the same, right? RIGHT?
I was still overwhelmed about being on stage, and next to Penn, and part of it, and it was all really happening, when Penn started barking instructions at me. “I need you to keep the cards shuffled, face down, no not like that, face up, don’t sort the cards, I’ll ask you to show them to me, soon, not yet, but you need to fan them out, not like that facing towards me, now show the audience the cards, no other way, hold them up, no face up, don’t sort them yet, keep them close to you, no, other way, when you sort them it’s hearts, spaced, diamonds, clubs, Ace to Kings, hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs, got it?”
I tried to concentrate: fan the cards when asked, easy, sort the cards when asked, OK.
From what I could ascertain – these things are harder to follow when you are a) in them, and b) fucking panicking – the trick was, Piff and Penn both had two people beside them, one each side, each holding half a shuffled deck. We would show the cards to our magician (in my case, Penn) then sort them. He would have “memorised” the two half decks, knowing which person/side had which cards. We then would sort the cards into order, then he would go down the suits and go left or right to get the cards. And Piff was doing the same. Or something.
I was staring at my cards trying to remember what order the numbers 1-10 go in – I was that stressed, and Penn had been looking at the cards of the guy on his other side.
“Right, now fan the cards!” Shit, he was talking to me. I fanned the cards out to the audience, “No to me!” In my defence, you don’t usually show the magician all the cards, in most tricks and card games you keep your cards secret. I turned them around and fanned them. I say fanned; this is a lot harder than it looks when you see a pro doing it, never mind when your hands are shaking. “NO THE OTHER WAY!” I turned the cards back around to the audience. “NO! OH MY GOD! Fan them so I can see the numbers!”
This was the precise moment when I realised, despite being familiar with cards from an early age, being a fan of magic and seeing people fanning out cards thousands of times, that there is in fact a right way and a wrong way to do this. If you fan a deck of cards the way I did from right to left, what you get is 26 white corners, which is mentalism of a whole different kind. I almost fucking dropped them as Penn corrected me.
“JESUS CHRIST!” he mumbled, exasperated. Now I had “fanned” them “correctly” this was not the end of the trouble. Like I said this is not as easy as it looks – what we had here was clumps of cards spread out across my two hands, with multiple cards stuck behind each other. “Oh my Lord, I need to be able to see them” he grabbed some of the clumped cards and tried to separate them, “You really are terrible at this…” This was not banter, this was not jokes for the crowd, he was basically delivering these rebukes right in my ear; and with each statement, my nerves got worse and worse and my hands lost what little anxious coordination they had. “Right, now sort the cards, quickly, hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs … hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs, needs to be quick, come on.”
At this point I would like to remind readers of some key points here. I am not a professional magician or card shark. I do not know the trick or how it works. And…. AND…. every other fucking person who took part in the show had to pick a number, hold onto something (a rope, a balloon), sit doing nothing, answer basic questions, or “have cash money”. The curve between all those previous tricks, and requiring audience members to professionally fan card decks and rapidly sort them was STEEP!
Also, I did not have a table to work from here, I had to sort these cards in my hands, which had stopped functioning due to being shouted at by one of my heroes. Sorting cards is significantly harder under pressure or during moments of extreme low self-esteem such as when you are being berated by celebrity magicians. I also only had 10% of my brain power to do this, as the other 90% was occupied going over all the possible scenarios of what life would be like if I messed up this trick live on stage at the O2. Will I have flashbacks of this every time I watch magic videos, every time I see a dragon … a pen? This can’t be happening.
“HURRY UP!” Penn snapped me out of it. Shit I was overthinking: focus, focus, clubs, spades, diamonds, hearts, no hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs. Hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs; herats, sepdes, dimaonds, clbus, I cannot think straight. Did he say Ace to Kings, does the Ace go to the top. Is the ace a one or eleven. Think back to card games, Ace is the best one right, so at the top, but can’t be he said Ace to Kings, if Ace was top, Ace to Kings would just be two cards. Must be Ace at the bottom, but is this ascending or descending, front to back or back to front; fuck I’m doing clubs. Do hearts first, hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs.
After what seemed like an age, it was done. I’m pretty sure Penn had to pad out at least several minutes of unplanned banter with Piff while this Scottish prick got his cards in order. “Ready? Get them ready, focus on the hearts for now.” I grabbed the clump of hearts like my life depended on them, very subtly adjusting two of the cards which I somehow put in the wrong order. The trick then commenced. Penn went from right to left down the cards, taking the correct ones from me and the other volunteer on his other side. “Face down,” he said quietly, I kept handing him the cards as he said them. “Face down, face down,” I lowered my head, “No face down, hand them to me face down so I can flip them up and show the audience!” I didn’t even see what he was doing with them, with the stress shutting down my peripheral vision along with basic motor functions. I flipped my cards so I could give them to him face down, but then the cards were back to front and I couldn’t see what I was doing so I flipped them back up and flipped them as I handed them over with a flick of the wrist.
Flick of the wrist. Absolute card magic right there. Give me a year and I’ll be in Vegas.
But I wasn’t thinking about Vegas, my heartrate had been steadily increasing for the past five minutes; the headlines in magic circles were potentially going from “Scottish idiot ruins show” to “Penn Jillette says man whose heart burst live on stage in London was not part of the trick”. And this is part of the problem because here I was thinking about hearts while I was supposed to be handing Penn the diamonds. Three suits down, it was nearly over.
Just the clubs to go. I fanned out the cards to myself confidently, it’s amazing how easy it is to fan out just five cards, I felt like a pro. So I had these clubs and obviously the other guy had the rest from the other half of the deck.
I’d almost started to think I’d done pretty well in the circumstances. It was a high pressure situation, and I’d made it. Just needed to hand over the Four, Six, Eight, Jack and Queen when prompted, all cards done, round of applause back to my seat. OK don’t mess this up at the last moment, remember it’s high to low, so the first one is the Queen of Spades, I’ll get that ready, then the Jack, Eight….
Wait…
My eyes were playing tricks, surely. Maybe my eyes were the ones going to Vegas.
The Queen of … Sp… no…. no no no no. what the fuck is the Queen of Spades doing here, among the clubs.
Time stood still. (Very possibly it didn’t and I just stood there frozen for five minutes while Penn & Piff did more unplanned banter waiting for me).
How had this happened? They were sorted (albeit cackhandedly), I handed them to Penn on demand, we’ve done spades already. More importantly, what happens next? Penn is about to go down the clubs, taking them from me, showing the audience until there are no cards left. This trick ends with having no cards left, what do I do? He’s going to shout JACK, EIGHT, SIX, FOUR, and done… And I’m going to be left holding a spare card.
I slightly rotated my hands, trying to let Penn see the cards I had (at this point I had no idea whether or not he was ‘allowed’ to see the cards, I didn’t care, I was panicking). Maybe if he sees, his 50 years of magic can kick in and he can improvise. He was busy gearing up the banter with Piff for the end of the trick, I wasn’t conscious of him noticing. Hang on, I could hide the Queen behind the Jack and hand him both at once. Yes… here I was, AFTER ALL I’D BEEN THROUGH, seriously considering doing sleight of hand to conceal a card to fool the audience.
But…. what if the Queen of Spades is part of the trick. What if that’s the gag, what if there is a bit where a giant Queen of Spades comes down from the rafters, “And is this the card you have left!?” round of applause, back to my seat. I didn’t think this was the case, but what if I hide the Queen and ruin the trick. What if I show the Queen and ruin the trick.
I DON’T KNOW THE TRICK!
It’s astonishing that I did not pass out with the panic.
The next thing I heard was “And this side’s got the remaining Jack, Eight, Six, Four! Thank you!” Penn turned to me and instead of taking cards, he said “You can keep those. You did a great job, thank you” and extended his hand. I shook it, and sheepishly returned to my seat. The trick had been abruptly ended before the finale. He had, thankfully, figured out that it was ruined and improvised a finish where he shouted out the cards and didn’t reveal them. He’d gotten away with it. WE’D gotten away with it.
I couldn’t think straight when I got back to my seat, I had definitely ruined that trick, I went on stage to take part in a trick by a man who had been a magic hero of mine since childhood, and I fucked up his trick. It actually happened. Then a call came out for volunteers for the next trick – “we need someone who’s a bit of a comedian and likes jokes”. Fuck’s sake I thought, why didn’t I wait and go up for this one, in the 45 minutes of waiting for the show to start I’d even thought of some fun banter to say, why did I go up for card sorting when this moment would have been perfect.
Needless to say, I did not put my hand up. But actually it was quite lucky I didn’t – as the person who went up was asked to go up to the mic, and “tell us a joke”. The guy fortunately had one but telling jokes is absolutely not my thing. I do anecdotes (I do lengthy anecdotes), I do off-the-cuff gags, I do quips, I do one-liners. I don’t tell jokes, I don’t have a favourite “joke” and for the remainder of the show, and all the way on the train home, I could not think of a single joke I could have told if I had indeed gone up for that trick instead.
And I feel like this is the one positive thing to take from the experience of ruining Piff & Penn’s trick. I ruined it because I’m clearly shit at holding, fanning and sorting cards – which is fair enough. It would have been much more embarrassing if I ruined it by being shit at comedy.
Actually there was one more positive. If the trick had gone to plan, all the cards would be on the floor, and this would have been one of the only tricks of the night where the audience participant didn’t get some kind of prop or souvenir to keep. The other three who were up on stage with me didn’t get anything, but because I fucked up the trick, and had cards left, I got to keep them … including that Queen of Fucking Spades.
