If you have a theory about any of the Piddington's methods please click the link above to share with us...
Chris Brinson
Hello, I count myself a bit of an expert! Having written about silent codes and the people who created them. (see "Owen Clark A Genius Forgotten") and "Moritt" both published by Arcady Press. I think it was a very subtle silent code based upon time lapse, so no verbal clues were given,but information could be transferred silently. Created and used originally in a prisoner of war camp in WW2. The mind reading act of Ron & Nancy Spencer approved of my theory. I wonder if it is correct ? Who knows I may win a free copy for the correct solution! M Jans
A series of pauses and audio clicks, carefully choreographed by YEARS of practice, timed perfectly. Example: to telegraph the letter A- a half a second pause then a interuption, heard as a minute click on the receivers end. Terry Herbert:
(Magical Comedian) The information to be disclosed was previously memorised by Lesley Piddington and by whatever method was forced on the subject by Sydney. Larry Lux Says:
I think one of the BBC engineers posing as a microphone handler wrote answers on his wrist or hand and when adjusting or holding a travelling microphone, allowed Piddington to glimpse answers that way. As for the long distance telepathy, an engineer who could hear the studio through his headset, wrote answers in a similar way and allowed Lesley a glimpse of some moments during his duties as a sound engineer. Charles Turek Says: Things were switched. There was pre show info. The art of mentalism was used. |
Nigel Starck writes in the National Library Magazine (March 2013)...
It appears feasible that by drawing on her technique as a professional actress, Lesley memorised the complete text of the book used in those imaginative stunts devised by Braddon. Then her telepathy partner, Syd, used coded dialogue to guide her to the right page and line number. In the verbatim record of their Tower of London exchange, for example, it appears that some words have a forced, pre-determined presence: the use at critical stages, for instance, of complete’, ‘sympathy’, ‘co-operation’ and ‘now’. There is reason to believe that they served as pointers. It was a fiendishly demanding mental exercise perhaps, but demonstrably not thought transference. Heard on disc today, the show is remarkable for its periods without any dialogue at all: there are interludes of 15, even 20, seconds when Syd is purportedly ‘sending’ a selected passage of text to Lesley. Speaking recently on ABC radio, the present-day mentalist Philip Escoffey suggested that ‘a lot of the coding was in the silence’. The Piddingtons enjoyed such a refined degree of understanding, he said, that they ‘could distinguish between quarter-second intervals.’ Read the full article by Nigel Starck, starting on page 27 of the National Library Magazine. In a Black Box interview on Radio Lab with Tim Howard, Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller fame offered his theories about how two of the Telepathy effects were done. Referring to the Stratocruiser broadcast where Lesley received the details of two envelope enclosures, randomly collected from the audience, Penn believes an envelope switch was in play. Theories of the time included, a green man, who sat on Sydney's shoulder, would dart between him and Lesley delivering the answers.
A Morse code transmitter / receiver was disguised as a tooth and could be operated by the tongue to send messages. |