I’ve decided I need a party trick. This thought occurred to me at a recent dinner party as I watched my mother effortlessly tie a cherry stem into a knot with her tongue. So ensued 20 minutes of entertainment as everyone thought that they too would give it a go. No one succeeded, and my mother remained the undisputed champion. But when the floor was opened to any other demonstrations, I had nothing.
My failure to inherit any sort of skill is a bit of mystery since my father also has an arsenal of party tricks. While most of his peers spent their early twenties in clubs and at parties, he was at circus school. He can juggle countless random objects with ease and balance all manner of household items on any limb.
The art of the party trick is a precise one. There’s a fine line, I’ve realised, between a trick that wins over the crowd and one that makes them hesitant to invite you back. Anything too common – basic card tricks or wiggling ears – and you risk fading into the background. But aiming for originality comes with its own risks. And though I will not soon forget the time a friend by the name of Dave Ashman ate the entire contents of an ashtray (another win for nominative determinism), it is not a trick I would ever like to see replicated.
Some tricks just require a time and place. One friend wowed the crowd with a shocking display involving a condom inserted up one nostril and pulled out of his mouth. James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan can breathe fire. He once demonstrated this on The Muppet Show, where an unfortunate mix-up with kerosene left him with blisters inside his mouth. Since then, he’s reportedly been less keen to show it off.
Tricks aren’t new, of course. The ancient Romans enjoyed cup-and-ball routines from conjurors called Acetabularii – though the ‘trick’ often ended with the audience short a few coins. By the Renaissance, sleight-of-hand had grown more sophisticated, blending magic with early science. Unfortunately, not everyone saw the fun. Tricks became so suspect that entire books had to be written to help people distinguish party trick from witchcraft: Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) and Thomas Ady’s A Candle in the Dark (1655) can both be credited with preventing party magicians being burned at the stake.
But regardless of the risks, party tricks have always found a way to survive. There’s something deeply human about the impulse to entertain. Why else have tricks stood the test of time? In fact, they are one of the few things that resist modernity. There is no way to digitise magic or juggling, so past and present alike remain united by them. Even King Charles III took a page out of the Romans’ book, mastering the cup-and-ball trick.
Victor Hugo was known for his lively social life, reportedly entertaining dinner parties of 30 every night. His party trick involved cramming an orange into his mouth, filling his cheeks with sugar cubes, churning the lot into a revolting pulp, then swallowing it down with two glasses of kirsch. At his death, it is said the brothels of Paris closed for a day of mourning – though I suspect his party trick had little to do with that honour.
Comments