The thoughts behind MentalTheft came quite recently. It was actually while I was doing a magic gig, you know the thing, I was walking around and doing close up magic for people. This event I was at was a full on black tie event, there were about 200 people there and they all looked gorgeous! (I felt quite out of place!)

I went over to one particular table and was doing a few tricks for them, during my time with them I did some “Mind Reading” which meant that I ended up knowing one guys PIN, his first pets name and his date of birth. These guys were lovely and when I left their table they were clapping and having fun.
I walked away from the table and one of those guys followed me, he tapped me on the arm and said to me

“How much of that was real?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, you just got my PIN, my date of birth, even a pet name, so I want to know if mind reading is real”

Now, I’m used to this kind of question and the truth is that mind reading ISN’T real, we use a mix of psychology, body language, magicians cheats, trickery and showmanship to create the look and feel of mind reading. I never like to kill the showmanship in these situations so I responded with this:

“Ok, let me put something to you, tonight I had to go through security to get into here so I couldn’t bring anyone with me to help. I’m also sure that you know all of the people that were at your table and it’s fair to say that I have never met any of them before?

So, can you tell me any way that what I did could not have been real?”

His jaw dropped and he looked a bit more serious.

He then said something that made me realise just how serious my skills and experience really are.

He said – “Do you realise that if you did that at my company you would have access to all of our network and we wouldn’t even know that you’re in there”

That was the moment that MentalTheft was born.