I was seven years old when my Uncle Mike unlocked the door to the world of magic and ushered me through. I can’t remember the details of that first trick, but I recall exactly how I felt. Like I was coming home.

I probably thought he really was a wizard, that he lived in a realm where the normal laws of physics didn’t exist. Or if they did, he paid them no attention. He’d conjure coins from behind my ears, take a pen and, with a wave of his hand, make it vanish. My eyes were probably as big and round as saucers. That God-like power to astonish was a drug I craved from that moment on. At the age of seven I was hooked.

It took a couple of years to realise that, in fact, Uncle Mike wasn’t a very good magician. He had some decent moves, but if you looked closely you could see how it was done. And once you see that, there’s no going back. Someone once said – I can’t remember who – that if you spot the zipper up the back of the monster in a movie, then the illusion is destroyed and can never be recovered. They were talking about the times when film monsters weren’t CGI but people dressed in costumes. Anyway, I saw the metaphorical zipper up Uncle Mike’s back and as soon as I did I wanted to know how the rest of it worked. I needed the mechanics. To be fair to Uncle Mike, he never told me.

‘First law of the Magic Circle,’ he said. ‘Never reveal your secrets.’

Now everyone queues up on YouTube to do just that, including the secrets of people like David Blaine and Chris Angel and Dynamo. Taking the magic out of magic, without asking permission.

Actually, Uncle Mike didn’t need to tell me his secrets, because his sometimes-clumsy sleight of hand occasionally gave me the information I needed. It didn’t take me long to understand that there are two essential ingredients to the most basic magic – firstly, the motor skills needed to manipulate objects. Cards, coins, pens, anything that can be held. There’s no shortcut to this. It’s practice, then more practice and when you’ve finished practising, you practise some more. While other kids were playing with toys or video games or scrolling endlessly on their phones, I was in my bedroom making a pen vanish. Sometimes dropping it. Sometimes just screwing up. But working. Always working.

The second key is misdirection, or the art of maintaining the spotlight of attention where you need it. The human mind is weird. Our eyes take in information but then filter it, mainly because there’s just too much to make sense of all at once. We’d go crazy if our brains didn’t protect us from the constant barrage of sights, smells, sounds and all the other things we pick up every fraction of a second. So we focus on one thing and blot out the others. And if a magician can get someone to focus on the trivial – say, an empty hand – then the sleight of the other hand passes unnoticed.

Magic is in the mind.

Anyway, one thing that Uncle Mike did really well was his presence. He was funny, he was warm, he was charming. Always smiling. And that makes you want to believe; it would feel rude not to. Another form of manipulation.

I loved Uncle Mike even though he was a crap magician. I loved him because he made me feel a part of his magic. I loved him right up to the moment I understood that he was a thief and a liar and someone who would screw anyone over if it suited him.

The spell he cast dissolved, and I saw him for what he was, what he is. He never misdirected me again.

And that’s part of the tragedy.