Zi Teng Wang thought an under-skin chip would spice up his act, but the whole concept turned out to be a train wreck from the very start.

Zi said: “It turned out that pressing someone else's phone to my hand repeatedly, trying to figure out where their phone's RFID reader is, really doesn't come off super mysterious and magical and amazing.”

Some punters did not even have their RFID readers enabled, and using their own handsets lacked the necessary magical wow factor.

He tried making the chip spit out a person's Bitcoin address, but it didn't work. In the end, he rewrote it to link to a meme, announcing, “If you ever meet me in person, you can scan my chip and see the meme.”

The gag only stayed funny until the Imgur link hosting the meme failed. With even UK access to the service abruptly scuppered on 30 September thanks to age-verification rules, the magician’s digital sleight of hand looked more fragile than his patter admitted.

When Zi attempted to reprogram the implant, he was horrified to realise I had forgotten the password I had set.

The link eventually returned, yet left Zi’s routine hanging by a thread because once it dies again, he cannot update the chip without some drastic measures.

Zi said: “Techie friends I've consulted with have determined that it's too dumb and simple to hack, the only way to crack it is to strap on an RFID reader for days to weeks, brute forcing every possible combination.”

Surgery remains the alternative if he fancies an uncomfortable encore.

Zi, who performs as “Zi the Mentalist” and calls himself “an accomplished scientist with a focus in biology. I'm living my own cyberpunk dystopia life right now, locked out of technology inside my body, and it's my own damn fault. I can honestly say that I forgot the password to my own hand.”