Never assume!

It's Mothers' Day and I'm remembering a magic lecture I went to a few years ago. The magician produced a bunch of flowers (or something - I can't remember the effect but it's not the point) and said, "At this point, I always say, 'You can give these to your mom'. Everyone has a mom and everyone's happy to celebrate her."

This is just not true, even in America. I looked at my friend Iain, whose mother had recently died, and along the row to another friend, whose mother is so critical and controlling that it's as much as he can do to tolerate her, never mind celebrate.

As magicians, playing to crowds of people we've never met, we need to remember that everyone is an individual with a story - and how easy it can be to alienate someone with a casual, well-intentioned remark.

Awkward situations may arise when we're ad-libbing, as happened to Michael Finney at the 2008 IBM British Ring convention. He misunderstood what a volunteer from the audience meant when she said she was a carer for her husband, and started making jokes about women waiting on their partners. Fortunately, Michael realised before he went too far but it was slightly embarrassing and a lesson to us all to check, particularly in an international context, what the person means before we start being funny.

This sort of thing has happened to most of us (I've done some awful ones) but what we can prevent more easily is gaffes in our scripted patter.