was the top 50 magic tricks of all time the only ever top 50 anything (so far) which was actually genuinely gripping?

The space shuttle was great. Not enough Houdini though.

penn and teller = great.

"wiggle yr toes! you fucknut!"

the 2 second metamorphosis!!!!

bad point: jenny eclair.

i liked watching foax who ought to be irredeemable any way up and seeing them do stuff which is just WOW!!

the cigarette guy is like something out of ripley's believe or not c.1935

I was quite strongly inclined to be dismissive about the horrible David Copperfield, but his winning trick was absolutely jaw-droppingly astonishing.

I'd still rather watch Tommy Cooper though - I spent a couple of hours yesterday showing videos of him to my Italian girlfriend who had never come across him, trying to explain why that moment in the dramatic recitation (the one where he keeps putting on hats to represent the speakers) where he loses his place, half turns away and quickly mumbles all the way through the poem so far is the funniest thing ever. She seemed only mildly amused.

***** SPOILERS!! *****

Here's a description of how to perform the levitation trick, found on the Easter Eggs archive site, here:
http://www.eeggs.com/items/21366.html
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JC - to perform the Balducci Levitation, you stand with your audience behind you and turn slightly to the left (or right depending how you feel most comfortable - I turn left) so you are now at a 40 degree angle to your audience. They should be able to see part of your left side and your back. With your feet together you then lift your left foot off the floor by standing on your tiptoes with your right foot, keeping the left foot level with the ground at all times. Make sure the audience is a good 6 feet away from you. Too near or too far and they will see how you are doing the levitation. What happens is the audience see your left foot and right heel rise from the floor giving the illusion of levitation. The back of your left leg obscures the fact that your right toes are supporting you. I've done this loads of times and it WORKS! Especially with girls for some reason. They scream and go mad, it's really cool. David Blaine did this in the street and the cameras filmed the audiences reaction, they then edited in shots of him "floating" 4 or 5 feet in the air on wires and spliced in the audiences reaction to the Balducci Lev. But with a bit of practice you can get a good 6 or 7 inches off the floor. One tip though, the Balducci works best without shoes. If you can do it in your socks (I normally say that to get the right lift I need to be in contact with the floor) then your trouser bottoms will conceal the lift even more.
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For the trick where a magician makes a very large thing disappear over the course of a show, one way to do it is to use a special rotating stage. The sides of the stage are obstructed the entire time, and the audience can only see the stage and what's beyond it. They pull the curtain, show the very large thing, then draw the curtain again. The magician does his show, and during that time, the entire stage including the audience rotates slowly. At the end, they pull the curtain, the thing is gone, hooray.

David Copperfiled is shite. The cutting one you could see the table was much much thicker than it needed to be, certainly thick enough to have him fold in half.