Never try to trick a trickster, mind reader and mentalist Alex McAleer tells CHARLES HUTCHINSON, ahead of a spot of magic showmanship coming to the York Barbican later this month.

ALEX McAleer will reveal why you should never play cards with a mind reader when he lines up with the Champions Of Magic at York Barbican.

“It’s an opportunity to have some fun with the audience,” says Alex, looking forward to the March 28 show. “I’ll also be playing my own mind game, Guess What’s Under The Hanky, but I won’t reveal too much about that as I’d like to keep it a surprise, but it’s one of the hardest and largest-scale stunts I’ve ever done.”

Mind reader Alex will be joined by four fellow Champions Of Magic: illusionist Edward Hilsum; Fay Presto, who has a lovely time with chocolates, jelly babies and a huge balloon; and the show-closing Young & Strange, with their large-scale stage illusions that carry a genuine element of danger.

Alex has a section in each half. “I’m on second in the first half, doing a 20 to 25-minute set in a cabaret style, including the bit where I say ‘never play cards with a mind reader’... and we have a toy chimp, the ‘Chimpion’ of Magic, that I throw out into the audience,” he says.

“I can’t talk too much about my act in the second half but I can say it involves the whole audience, so it’s an opportunity for me to mess with them. No one will come up on stage but everyone can be involved.”

Magic shows have undergone a revival on television, ranging from Penn and Teller to Glaswegian comic Jerry Sadowitz and Darcy Oake, from Britain’s Got Talent. “Magic does have a big profile now but within my lifetime it’s always had peaks, like David Nixon; then into the Nineties with David Blaine; Derren Brown’s illusions in the 2000s and now Dynamo [Bradford magician Steven Frayne],” says Alex.

“It’s also become popular again when done live, and I think live magic is the future, it’s where it began and where it works best. We’ve all seen those guys on TV do the impossible, but that’s just TV, on which the impossible happens all the time. But live on stage, before your very eyes, is where magic works best.

“Live, it’s much more thrilling than on TV; someone performing in front of you.”

When he was a child, Alex used to say he wanted to be either a magician or a shopkeeper. “Maybe I watched too much Mr Ben,” he says. “What I’ve since learnt is the ability to present. A magic trick on its own could be boring, so it’s about adding your own personality. That means finding your own voice and I’ve found that in the last few years.”

Mind-reading is not so much a gift as a “definite skill with techniques”, reckons Alex. “I was always into magic and as I grew older, I became interested in psychology, and then I saw Derren Brown on late-night TV, working with people, and I thought, ‘that’s what I want to do’ – and it is something you can have a knack for.”

He has no qualms over the inevitable comparisons with Derren Brown. “He’s the biggest illusionist that’s been on TV in the past 15 years, so I feel fine about it,” says Alex.

Instead, he focuses on putting his own skills to the test.

“Mind-reading and mentalism is a form of magic in the same way that hypnosis is a form of magic,” he says. “I’ve lectured to both magicians and psychology students about mind-reading, and with magicians it’s about how I use techniques to entertain; with psychology students they were more interested in mind-reading for psychological profiling.

“For me, it’s more that my skills are geared to entertaining and I do prefer that as what I enjoy is performing and entertaining.”

He also enjoys interaction with the audience. “With mind reading and mentalism, you can only rehearse a routine on your own so much. You can theorise about how people will react and respond but you can’t know for certain until you’ve tried it 100 times with genuine living guinea pigs...I mean humans...I mean people.”

Let’s finish where we started, with Alex’s promise of advice on never playing cards with a mind-reader. Does he have a poker face?

“The look of an honest liar, you mean,” he says. “I certainly used to try that, though I’m not really into card games, but I like watching them late at night on TV when they wear those silly sunglasses.”

• Champions Of Magic, York Barbican, March 28, 7.30pm. Tickets: £19.50, £16.50 under 16s, £65 family of four, on 0844 854 2757 or at yorkbarbican.co.uk