James Randi - you're my favourite human being on the planet.
I'd like to tell you a story about something that happened to me about 10 years ago now.
I used to work in a call centre back in 2004-5. I'd get picked up by one of my workmates in the morning and he'd drop me off at night. He'd pick up a few of us - usually there'd be four of us in the car. We used to talk about all sorts of stuff, and sometimes the conversations could get pretty interesting. I'd been an out and out skeptic for many years already by this point, and was very familiar with you and your work (as well as the likes of Richard Dawkins, another of my heroes).
Anyway, at some point, Gareth, the driver of the car, started talking about psychics. He told me stories about how his aunty had been to see a psychic and the psychic had "instantly said you were here because of your dead father", and stuff like that. I knew all about cold reading so told him about that.
These conversations went on and on for some time. Gareth was always something of a believer, with me being the skeptic all along.
There was a point a month or so after our first conversation about this stuff when I was at his house. I opened up the computer and found a video of yours, where you talk about the fraudster Uri Geller. In the video you also showed how people could be fooled by spoon bending tricks and stuff like that. I remember seeing his face at the point where you bent the key and said something like "I could, perhaps, have taken the key and bent it under the table as I moved just now... which is exactly what I just did..."
I remember the look on his face at the time. He had this wry little smile... like something had just clicked.
A couple of weeks later he called me up. He says "Yeah, remember all those conversations about psychics? Well... yeah, you won. I see it's all bollocks now."
He'd gone on to read all about you and had watched any video he could find about you. He's still a massive skeptic to this day.
You never met me or Gareth, but your influence stretches further than you might imagine. Thank you James Randi - the world is a much better place with you in it.
For those interested, I found the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9w7jHYriFo