BEN HANLIN is a magician. He wouldn’t want to be called anything else. Some magicians can sometimes be “quite a pretentious bunch” and call themselves illusionists, but this 27-yearold from Birmingham is happy to be labelled a magician.

“I don’t have magic powers, I can’t fly, I can’t read your mind, but I can do lots of things that make it look like I can do that. So, I am tricking you, I am cheating you, I am lying to you, but I’m letting you in on that I’m doing that, so now let’s enjoy what that all looks like,” says Hanlin, whose debut ITV2 show Tricked proved a ratings hit.

“Some people think they have to hold all that back and say they’ve got special powers.

I’m just as normal as anyone else. People are smart and if you go around telling them that you can do really extraordinary things they’re probably not going to believe you.

“I just say I can’t do that, but I’m going to make it look like I can now and you can try and figure it out if you want or just enjoy it.

The hidden camera spin on it makes it look completely different in our show.”

The way he sees it, magic is a form of entertainment. There’s no point in being an amazing magician if you’re boring everyone, is his view. “My style is quite light-hearted so I always err on the comedy side of it. I’m going to do a live show next year and I’d like to think it would be as natural to come and see a live magic show as it would to go and watch Jack Whitehall or another comedian live. In theory, if they can stand on stage for an hour or two and tell jokes, and I can be lighthearted and do tricks, it should be the same thing really and have the same kind of feel.”

Before going on the road, Hanlin returns to ITV2 with the second series of his show Tricked, to play pranks on a fresh batch of celebrities including Kym Marsh, Joey Essex, Dan Osbourne, Tinchy Stryder, Kerry Katona and The Vamps.

In the past, he’s made Helen Flanagan think she’s seen a ghost, persuaded Stacey Solomon she was in a cage with a gorilla and convinced fellow Blue band members that Simon Webbe had gone over a cliff in a car. At a party in Cannes he left reality star Kim Kardashian awe-struck by swallowing a dozen needles and a piece of thread – and then bringing them back tied together.

He knows there’s a lot riding on the second series of Tricked – “the tricky second album, some would say”. The show is very fast-paced in terms of a magic show, and he gets through a lot of material, about 126 tricks a series.

After reviewing the first series he set a goal, for himself and the two guys who write it, to make it funnier and the magic more visual.

A year of planning and execution has gone into the second series. A big stunt might need several days of preparation. “We’ve kept the formula the same in the sense that it’s hidden camera and me winding up members of the public. But we’ve watched the first series and just tried to streamline it and make the bits that were good better really,” he says.

An additional challenge is that people know he’s coming. Last time, he didn’t disguise himself, wear wigs or make-up. “This year when we do stuff with the public I slick my hair back, whack on some glasses on and change my outfit. But when people go to their local shops they aren’t expecting a guy from the telly to be working there. The only time it’s more pressure is when you put all this time into tricking one big celeb and if he spots you in the first ten seconds your whole day is ruined.”

Choosing his victims – he calls them marks – takes time because there’s only a limited number of celebrities and limited time he can get with such busy people. “So, there’s loads of boring logistics. We have to work out who we can potentially get and what I want to do. If I want to do a trick on the Thames, then that limits the kind of people we might be able to get there in the first place. We look at celebs and based on what we know about them, think who will give us a reaction?

“For example Louis Spence. For a reaction he’s brilliant. He gives you everything you need. Same with Joey Essex, everyone knows who he is and he gives a great reaction.

Sometimes we have thrown names out of consideration, even if they are great names, because I don’t want to take the risk of them giving the wrong reaction. For example someone like Piers Morgan, I don’t think he’d give you the reaction you want.

“When I’m watching celebrities I’m always thinking in the back of my head, ‘I wonder what you’d be like to trick’. It sounds a bit weird, but you look at them and think, ‘Simon Cowell? Probably not right.’ You want someone who naturally expresses themselves, somebody like Holly Willoughby.

She’d be amazing to trick because she’s so expressive. She’ll be on my trick list for the future.”

It was seeing David Blaine on TV that got him into magic. “He was cool,” says Hanlin.

Then his parents bought him a magic set and he followed that up by buying a beginners book of magic. “Instead of growing out of it, I kept learning and learning,” he says.

There’s no doubt that Hanlin knows a trick or two about furthering his career. He has more TV shows he’s trying to get off the ground. They’ll be different to Tricked because he doesn’t want to keep going over the same ground. He does want to remain on the light-hearted side of magic, with the goal of having a live touring show next year where “people can come and have fun”.

  • Tricked, ITV2, Tuesday, 9pm