The only time that I hired a children’s magician, the six-year-old birthday boy insisted on scurrying behind him to see how his dismal tricks were done. “Don’t do that!” said the outraged conjurer in a nasal E. L. Whisty drone. “You’ll break the charisma!” I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. The incident encapsulated the two main problems confronting those who seek to make their living by baffling us with whizzo feats.

1. Despite the fact that we live in an age in which gullible people will believe any old paranormal poppycock you care to invent, and pay good money for the book, nobody actually believes magicians do their tricks by using the power of magic — not even young children.

2. What really matters is your schtick, which has precious little to do with your ability to conceal eight live rabbits up some orifice or other. If your charisma is broken, you are stuffed, sawn in half and drowned in your own escapologist’s tank.

Doing your act on television may pay well, but it only makes both of these problems worse. We are so used to special effects on TV that the medium brings thick new layers of disbelief to be overcome. Then you have to find a way of making it interesting, competing with every television conjurer who has ever appeared on screen to impale a woman in fishnet tights. When Paul Daniels said “You’re gonna like this . . . not a lot,” he really wasn’t joking.

And the options are running out. David Copperfield has taken the big-budget grand illusion to levels that you cannot hope to emulate, while out-cheesing the cheesiest cheese-monger in the history of entertainment cheese. Penn and Teller have taken the niche for arch-demystifiers, although Derren Brown is not averse to a little demystification on the side, while his mind-reading stunts have raised that game beyond the reach of most. And David Blaine has cornered the market in stunts that make you gawp in awestruck wonder at their sheer pointlessness.

But a new breed of magician has spun its own particular brand of charisma by turning magic acts into a branch of stand-up comedy or late-night sketch shows, and the more grotesque the better. So now Channel 4 brings us Dirty Tricks. Forget that nice David Nixon bamboozling little old ladies with clever little card tricks, this is magic as post-pub bonanza, complete with swearing (lots of it), innuendo (lots more), celebrity humiliation (ho-hum) and lashings of gross-out gore.

Each episode is presented by a live animal voiced by a celebrity — Stephen Fry as an owl, Bez as a foul-mouthed lemur or Jo Brand as a sarcastic pug. Celebrity totty such as Mylene Klass appear to watch the magicians stick kebab skewers through their arms or swallow maggots to catch goldfish from their stomachs. Their role is simply to squirm with amused repulsion at the acts of self-mutilation and (apparent) extreme pet abuse. The “Kill a Celebrity” slot at the end, which always seems to involve Neil Fox, involves blood being sprayed around with all the gusto of a Tarantino film. And there is also an “evil” hypnotist who gets his victims to swear or commit sexual acts in public. The lead acts, Barry Jones and Stuart MacLeod, usually end up impaled or converting people into small piles of fresh offal.

Like the fringe cabaret from which the show springs, there is something endearingly homespun about much of the programme. My favourite is Jonathan Goodwin, a DIY escapologist who really does do it at home, and ends up genuinely hurting himself when he doesn’t escape in time.

Anything late on Friday night on Channel 4 will involve swearing and grotesquery. It’s compulsory, and would happen if documentaries about monastic life or Jane Austen adaptations accidentally blundered into the time-slot. But the acts on Dirty Tricks are extremely skilful and amusing, too.

It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but they have their own special charisma and it certainly isn’t broken.

Dirty Tricks, Friday, Channel 4, 10.30pm

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