Conjurer and rationalist known as The Amazing Randi
James Randi was a magician and escapologist known as The Amazing Randi. An otherworldly figure, with piercing eyes and a bushy beard, he decapitated the rock star Alice Cooper on stage, and escaped from a straitjacket while being suspended upside down over the Niagara Falls. But Randi did not claim to practise magic, and he devoted much of his career to debunking the faith healers, psychics, mind readers and others who did purport to have supernatural powers.
Randi showed that with preparation and dexterity, anyone could bend spoons like Uri
Geller, and he exposed the tricks used by the TV evangelist and healer Peter Popoff. Popoff’s wife, it turned out, was feeding him information about congregants via a device hidden in his ear. A scientific rationalist, he also took on homeopaths, and even chiropractors. “People who are stealing money from the public, cheating them and misinforming them – that’s the kind of thing that I’ve been fighting all my life,” he said. “Magicians are the most honest people in the world: they tell you they’re going to fool you, and then they do it.” He wrote several books, including Flim-Flam! The Truth About Unicorns,
Parapsychology and Other Delusions (1980), and for 19 years he sponsored The Million Dollar Challenge – offering $1m to anyone who could, following scientific protocols, demonstrate the existence of the supernatural or paranormal. Hundreds applied, but the prize went unclaimed.
Randall James Zwinge was born in Toronto in 1928. He had an IQ of 168, and showed early signs of a sceptical mind. At Sunday School, he recalled being read stories from the Bible. “And I interrupted and said: ‘Excuse me, how do you know that’s true? It sounds strange.’” At 15, he exposed as a fraudster a preacher who claimed God was revealing to him information contained in sealed envelopes. He joined a travelling carnival; he performed mind-reading tricks in nightclubs; and so impressed local police by his ability to get out of handcuffs, they invited him to break out of jails. He started focusing on debunking after breaking two vertebrae while trying to escape from a locked, water-filled box. It led to several legal actions: Geller sued him for millions. In old age, he enjoyed doing tricks for local children, which he’d conclude by saying: “You understand, I am nothing but a charlatan.” He came out as gay at 81, and later married the artist José Alvarez, who survives him.