When I first started researching magic, I called myself a magician. This went very well until I was talking to a friend of mine and mentioned that I was a magician.

“Oooh,” she said, “I love Jerry Sadowitz!”

“Yeah, so do I, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

So I started calling myself a wizard. I had a brief period of doubt later on when Antony Mackie in “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” said that “a sorcerer was just a wizard without a hat on“.

Should I be wearing a hat? Or should I call myself a sorcerer?

No, and no. I don’t have the beard to go with the hat, and if ‘wizard’ seems pretentious, then ‘sorcerer’ kicks it up a large notch.

I’ve been in progressive rock bands so I know a bit about pretension.

A couple of friends of mine got quite annoyed at me calling myself a wizard. Probably because they thought I was going off my head. Impressed that, so far, no-one has said “What, like Harry Potter?”

“Harry Potter is fictional. Real wizards are not as exciting as pretend wizards.”

Best moment was a friend of a friend, who, when he saw a picture of me breathing fire, said “Is he a god?”

“No,” my friend said sadly, “just a wizard.”