Want to impress your friends and scare your enemies? Try this mind-bending trick on them.

Line up three or four people in front of you. Turn your back and ask each of them to put a coin in one of their hands, then hold that hand up against their forehead and concentrate on it. Tell them you’re getting into a zone where you can pick up their psychic vibrations and determine which hand the coin is in. Get them to really concentrate for about 20 or 30 seconds. Then tell them to lower their hand, and extend both arms, fists closed, at waist level..

Now, you turn around, go along the line and nominate the correct hand every single time. “This one, this one, this one, this one…” Rapid-fire like that. Sure enough, each hand is opened to reveal the coin. Once might be luck, but three or four times? Impressive ESP eh?

Well, no. All you’ve done is noted which hands are paler, owing to blood having drained from ‘em while they were held up to the forehead. The veins in these hands will also be flatter.

The secret is revealed in Mysterious Stranger, a new book by the brilliant American street magician turned cult superstar, David Blaine. OK, he doesn’t tell you how he levitates and he really should know better than to have his pic taken with Uri Geller, but Blaine is still the best in the close-up illusion business and his book is an entertaining blend of history, mystery and revelation.