At first glance, Lennart Green may seem like an unlikely candidate for my list of favourite magicians. Don’t let his Maths-Professor-like appearance and his apparent clumsy handling of playing cards put you off. He’s widely revered amongst magicians as one of the great living card workers. So good in fact that in 1988, he was a competitor at FISM (the World Championships of Magic) and the judges were so fooled that they thought he was cheating by using stooges to shuffle the cards. He was disqualified. He re-entered 3 years later in Switzerland with the same act, this time insisting that the judges shuffled his cards. This time round, he won the competition.
For most of Lennart’s life, magic was a hobby – he studied medicine and became a Doctor, but gave that up after becoming the “World Champion of Magic” and became both a performer and lecturer. Here’s his performance at TED in 2005. It’s half an hour long, but well worth watching, so put the kettle on and enjoy the magic of Lennart Green
