 Randi often skipped classes and, at 17, dropped out of high school to perform as a conjurer in a carnival roadshow.He practised as a mentalist in local nightclubs and at Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition and wrote for Montreal's tabloid press.In his twenties, Randi posed as an astrologer and, to establish that they were actually doing simple tricks, he briefly wrote an astrological column in the Canadian tabloid "Midnight" under the name "Zo-ran" by simply shuffling up items from newspaper astrology columns and pasting them randomly into a column.