BBC viewers might remember the mentalist and magician Alexis Conran from his role in the popular British television show The Real Hustle, which ran for 11 seasons from 2006 until 2012.
Along with his co-conspirators – fellow trickster Paul Wilson and femme fatale Jessica-Jane Clement – Conran carried out a variety of scams on unsuspecting members of the British public. Jewellery stores were relieved of their wares, big-money security collections were unwittingly handed over to the team, and even helpless students were conned out of their rent money by seemingly respectable estate agents.
This being television, of course, the money or goods were always returned, along with advice on how to avoid becoming a victim of similar schemes from real-life scammers.
Conran was always the tricksiest of the trio. While his colleagues often relied on technology or feminine wiles to achieve their goals, Conran’s main weapons were mind games, sleight of hand and maybe a little bit of magic.
His techniques were very much from the Derren Brown school of trickery, though I feel a little guilty when I put that comparison to Conran. Luckily, he doesn’t take offence as British illusionist Brown is a good friend – which must make for some psychologically torturous dinner parties.
Now, Conran is set to return to television in Discovery Channel's Man V Expert. In it, Conran will be leaving the general public alone, instead targeting an elite group of world champions and experts, and beating them at their own game. From top-notch fishermen and marksmen to the World's Strongest Man, Conran will go head-to-head against all comers – and more often than not, we gather, he wins.
Conran lets me see some of his challenges, and even lets me in on the secrets of how he went about trying to beat some of his opponents.
Without giving too much away, let’s just say that I watched this decidedly average-height, average-build trickster take on the four-time, and current, World’s Strongest Man, the Lithuanian giant Žydrunas Savickas, in a truck-pulling contest, and win. It was cunning, it was sneaky – but it was a completely fair contest. The look of disbelief on the hulking, man-mountain loser’s face was a treat in itself.
It is an impressive feat, no question, but like many from the modern school of “magic”, Conran is realistic about his skills and does not claim to possess any abilities that are not available to every single human being on the planet.
“I was 26 when I started, so anyone really can do it,” he says. “There’s a lot of magic around these days – it’s more accessible than ever. The internet and YouTube have really helped. I had to dig out books and VHS tapes when I was learning.
“The mistake people make with magic is to think that just because you know the secret, you can perform the trick. That’s as simplistic as saying: ‘Just because you can memorise some text you can be an actor.’ The performance is the thing that matters, not the secret or the sleight of hand.
“I know amazing magicians that do very simple tricks you could pick up in a bookstore – but the way they present them is a miracle. Equally, I know people whose skill at sleight of hand is so high, yet they’re terrible performers and anyone who saw them would think they’re rubbish.
"It's quite a dull thing to say, I suppose, but it's just the same as learning an instrument. The skills are all there to be learnt from books that are accessible to anyone that shows the dedication to learn them. Derren Brown was a working magician for years before he started doing [his first television series] Mind Control."
With season one of Man vs Expert about to be broadcast, I ask if there are plans for season two? Could a trip to the Middle East be on the cards?
“I’ve been looking at the camel racing they do with the robots over there. That’s interesting,” he says. “I think Discovery has a really difficult task – how do you make a show that resonates in Mexico, Poland, the UAE? It’s about addressing basic human interests, and that’s what I think we do here.
“There’s such a wide variety in the show – there are three different challenges in each show and a journey from meeting the experts, training and taking the challenge, so there’s potential to keep viewers glued. How is he going to beat him? Is he going to beat him?”
Having spent most of the past 10 years on TV deceiving his subjects, Conran has played a huge number of tricks of his own – but when it comes to his all-time favourite trick, Conran picks a somewhat surprisingly simple example.
“There was a famous Hungarian con artist, ‘Count’ Victor Lustig, who managed to sell the Eiffel Tower. Twice. He sold it to iron merchants for scrap metal. He convinced them it was going to be dismantled after the 1889 Paris exhibition it had been built for, and that he was in charge of secretly selling it on.”
So be warned – if a friendly looking Greek-British chap approaches you offering a great deal to buy the Burj Khalifa, there’s a very good chance you’re being filmed.
• Man V Expert debuts on Discovery Channel on Wednesday, 25 March at 11.40pm
cnewbould@thenational.ae