Mundy's Moment: Where is the potato?

MUNDY'S MOMENT

Many years ago, around Christmas time, a stockbroker invited a few of us to a lunch at which we were entertained by a magician named Terry.

Terry was, and still is, brilliant. He specialises in table-top magic, where the audience is just a few inches from the magician, rather than on-stage magic, where trap doors and false bottoms are much harder to detect. Every year Terry kicked off the entertainment with an excellent but simple trick. He came into the room wearing a trilby, placed it on the table and then, every now and again, lifted it up to reveal various items of increasing size. Our favourite, and his final flourish on the trick, was when from nowhere, a huge potato appeared from beneath the hat. Given that he was ...