I love when comedians "do magic", and the late, great Sean Lock's prediction effect in the video below is an excellent minute and a half of TV comedy that is well worth your time.
Do magicians take themselves too seriously? Why don't we put moments like this in our shows?
Sean reminds us that if the goal is to entertain, we hardly have to do anything- and we definitely don't have to "get it right" all the time.
This clip is from a British game show called "8 Out of 10 Cats does Countdown", which is a letters-and-numbers quiz show that has been running for many years. Hosted by Jimmy Carr and starring "team captains" Jon Richardson and Sean Lock, a pair of new celebrity contestants each week have to solve anagrams and math problems under the pressure of a thirty second clock. A spinoff of the longer-running "Countdown", this version of the show focuses more on comedy than the puzzles, making it a great show for puzzle-minded magicians to binge on YouTube.
In the clip above, Sean unscrambled the nine letters into a word- "beamrules". Not finding it in the dictionary, he claims that it matches the prediction he made at the start of the show, which was given to co-host and mathematical genius Rachel Riley for safekeeping. Hilariously, she then reads out the contents of the envelope.
Sometimes, it's better to miss. RIP Sean.