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Penn and Teller: ‘We compare death threats with Richard Dawkins’..

Penn and Teller: ‘We compare death threats with Richard Dawkins’..

By Craig McLean in the Telegraph..

What kind of trickery is this? First of all, Teller struggles to unscrew the cap on the bottle of fizzy water plonked on the hotel boardroom table. Having a couple of decades on the diminutive 66-year-old magician, I give it a go. Failing miserably, I hand it to his hulking partner, Penn Jillette, 59, who is twice the man of each of us. Or, he’s the two of us combined. He can’t open it either.

Penn and Teller quietly harrumph. The temperature in the over-air-conditioned conference space drops another notch.

The magicians have travelled from Las Vegas to a hotel in central London. Also on their schedule: a trip to the BBC’s Manchester studios to visit Blue Peter. They’ve been trying to think of a kiddie-friendly trick. They think “maybe the muffin trick. But adults are very good at underestimating children’s ability to make choices,” says Teller with a hint of reproach, “so they often try to make us do things that seem absolutely innocuous.”..

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