Television Editing In Defence of Fool Us

I notice a lot of talk on Twitter around the time Penn and Teller: Fool Us is on ITV, pretty much every week. Quite a lot of it centres around the discussion of miking up audience members. The usual accusation is that everyone randomly selected from the audience is actually a stooge, and the fact that they're all wearing microphones proves this.

As I was at a recording a few months back, I think it's only fair to set the record straight - there is an awful lot of TV editing during the show but the actual magic is real and live. I think I remember commenting at the time that it's ironic that the magic isn't rigged but everything else is! Basically, if a magician selects a volunteer from the audience they get their applause and walk up on stage. The cameras are cut, and the volunteer is fitted with a radio microphone by one of the techies. They then sit back down and the whole selection sequence is filmed again, and this time it goes straight into the trick. The miking up process is then edited out in post production.

This isn't the only television editing that goes on - ever notice that Jonathan Ross wears the same tie in every episode? The reason is that it's not chronological. For example, the filming I went to had Graham Jolley and Damien O'Brien performing, but both were shown in different episodes when the show was broadcast, presumably so the 'winners' are spread over the series. This of course means that there's about three, maybe four episodes that have me in the audience, even though I only went to one recording. There was also quite a bit of dialogue cut out, one particularly memorable joke during Graham Jolley's act that didn't make TV was Jonathan Ross making fun of Penn's pronounciation of the word 'snooker', only for Penn to jump straight in with "the last person I need lecturing me on pronounciation is Jonathan Ross!". Additionally Penn and Teller get quite a bit longer to discuss each trick than is made apparent on TV.

Yet, I cannot stress enough that despite all these TV edits, every magic trick is shown live, uncut and as performed on the night. So please, while watching Fool Us, don't think it's rigged because it isn't. If you want a show that's rigged, watch The X-Factor : )