"My father was god," he says of the adulation that was showered on him. And then shrugs: "Magic? Was I able to bring him back alive?"

While he's capitalised on the Sorcar legacy, PC Jr insists he has taken it forward.

Surrounded by newspapers (he subscribes to 27 but not, unfortunately, Business Standard), he clips out anything interesting that catches his eye. A voracious reader, he files away anything he finds even remotely interesting.

The walls of the office are a library of all his father's performances, magic magazines (Le Magician, The Linking Ring, Abra Cadabra, De Magier ...) and books, one of which is titled Bunkum Entertainment.

He has pinned up a chart on inflation, which he says he hopes to incorporate into a stage trick some time soon.

His stage routines are stacked in a shelf labelled somewhat obviously (and importantly) as 'Top Secret'. What if I or someone else pulls out those secrets? "You can only find the information using a special code I have developed," he laughs, "and only I know it." Soon, he adds, he will digitally archive his library and do away with the files.

Nor are his shows restricted to small town, middle class India. Fluent in both Japanese and Spanish, he performs often in both countries, with Sevilla a great favourite (he's performed there on 49 occasions). In South Africa, he included Swahili in his repertoire.

Las Vegas, the Mecca for most performers, enthuses him less because "half the audience arrives drunk". Instead, he cites an instance in Assam where an enlightened audience forced him to perform in slow motion to try to understand how he did his acts.

Image: Sorcar, famous for astonishing thousands by making the Taj Mahal 'vanish' momentarily, plans to give away the secrets behind his illusions in a new course. | Photograph: Diptendu Dutta/AFP/Getty Images