Those regular readers with elephantine memories might well recall that in November last year I reported how a colleague had purchased for me - from a Clitheroe second hand shop - a copy of Ali Bongo's Book of Magic. It was chock-full of tricks from the enigmatic hand of Pongolia's greatest export, who went on to design tricks for the likes of Paul Daniels and was a mainstay of children's TV in the Seventies and Eighties.

The funny thing about writing these columns is that very often you forget that people out there do read them. You forget, obviously, until someone from the far right/the church/the caravan club writes in with a strongly-worded complaint and the suggestion that I would be best put to use digging ditches (one of my personal favourite missives, accompanied by a picture of a sinister spectre decrying: "We're all doomed, doomed!").

People rarely ever send in a message of support for words in a column (what's that, the sound of the world's smallest violin playing? ) unless, of course, the writer is calling for all unemployed people to be crucified in a public space or for anyone who speaks with a slightly foreign tinge to their accent to be loaded on to a spaceship and sent to Mars - I don't know why, but it's always people of a right-wing bent who are quickest to put pen to paper.

So I was rather delighted to receive a telephone call from Ali Bongo himself last week, who had seen my previous column after it had been circulated among members of the Magic Circle, the select band of prestidigitators of which Mr Bongo is High Panjandrum For Life or some other such lofty title. Presumably the cutting had been folded up 18 times, cut up with scissors, doused in petrol and set aflame and then produced miraculously intact from the ear of a pantomime cow before he was allowed to look at it.

Mr Bongo (I didn't feel I knew him well enough to call him "Ali") reported that he thoroughly enjoyed the piece, though was at great pains to impress upon me that he was still alive and tricking and had not, as I speculated in November, "shuffled off to the great Bunco Booth in the sky."

Although he doesn't do a great many live shows these days, he is in great demand for private parties and often goes off to the States for magician conferences.

Mr Bongo is quite rightly very proud of the book which, I admit, I poked a little gentle fun at (I wondered aloud if the worthy Oriental gentleman appearance he used to adopt was a little politically incorrect in this day and age; he corrected me by saying he was born in India and thus, presumably, quite within his rights to adopt such a disguise) and there's no doubt he's taught a lot of youngsters a few tricks for nimble fingers over the 25 years since it was first published.

He also quizzed me about whether I had mastered any of the tricks in the book and I had to admit that my magician's routine currently consists wholly of a pack of fake cards which, once you've done the trick once, are rendered useless; a bit of an illusion where it looks like your index finger has been separated at the knuckle, and a joke about Russian underpants, the punchline of which is not suitable for either a family newspaper or a children's birthday party.

Thus shamed by the master of magic himself, I have vowed to learn a trick a week from Mr Bongo's marvellous tome, and if you are very lucky boys and girls I shall keep you updated with my progress in the weeks to come.