Maurice Fogel

MAURICE FOGEL d1981. British magician and mentalist who described himself as "the world's greatest mind-reader". In 1948, on BBC radio he made the claim that he could read peoples minds. This intrigued the journalist Arthur Helliwell who wanted to discover his methods. He found that Fogel's mind reading acts were all based on trickery and he relied on information about members of his audience before the show started. Helliwell then exposed Fogel's methods in a newspaper article. Although Fogel managed to fool some people into believing he could perform genuine telepathy, the majority of his audience knew he was a just a showman. He also became well known for performing the famous bullet catch where six rifles were used in the routine ; five with genuine bullets and one with no bullet.