Be Excellent To Each Other

So, what's the general board consensus on Derren Brown?

Derren's a stupid name, like Darrin and Darren.

His father is aces. Not so sure about him.

Who is his father?

Also, I like the name 'Derren' it sounds nice when you speak it aloud. Strong but smooth, like a good bourbon.









I have no idea what I am talking about now, so I am off to bed.

He is very entertaining.

I love that he doesn't claim it's 'magic', and that he is entirely open about the fact that all he uses is a clever mix of suggestion, misdirection, manipulation, psychology and showmanship.

I'm sure that you aren't seeing the full picture, like any TV, there will be times when it doesn't go right, so he doesn't show it, but even taking that into account it's often very impressive.

It's good TV.

He was apparently our swimming instructor at school. Who was generally awesome. (Mainly as he didn't mind us arriving 50 minutes late for an hour and a half lesson as it allowed him more time to smoke massive cigars in his office)

Hovers around the range from midly annoying to mildly entertaining most of the time, swinging into extremely annoying when he does one of his idiotic stunts that everyone bangs on about as though they're not entirely staged and entirely predictable. That kitten thing the other day for example. Christ even knows what that was about - we flicked over halfway through, and even thoug hI had not the faintest idea what was going on, I described exactly what would happen. And then it did. Golly.

I find him very entertaining when he's doing stuff with random people/'random people' like pickpocketing, and playing heads-or-tails, or showing you how to do 'medium' stuff.

That's the brilliance of Derren Brown. He does the same 'magic' tricks as Paul Daniels et al, but instead of saying 'ooh, it's magic' he goes 'ooh, I have super-cool psychological NLP powers'. No-one believes in magic anymore, so by grounding his tricks in science he brings back that sense of awe we had when we kids and *did* believe in magic.

You think?

Most 'magicians' as I knew them when I was a kid were more concerned with slight of hand - tricks to the eye more than tricks to the mind - making people disappear from boxes and the like. I like Brown's concentration on psychology and 'tells' (to borrow a poker term I have heard) that give people's thoughts and impulses away. I admire his somewhat freaky ability to convince someone to do something against their normal will.

My girlfriend was seriously concerned that the kitten was going to be killed the other day... Tsk, I soon put her straight.

I knew exactly what was going to happen with it!

Still... very, very clever if it is all true.

There's some very weak willed people around.

Generally I think he's really good however some of the things he does make me think that either he is lying and he actually has real magic powers or more likely that he is lying and that some of his participants are stooges. I don't believe that anyone could actually do some of the things he claims to do by "reading them" or suggestion.

That was the exact point, surely?

He has shown off abject failures in the past, but yeah not many, would make for a pretty crap show.

Yes, - I was going to say that - he HAS shown things in the past where he has got it wrong.

I remember one instance where he was walking around a market and guessing how much was in people's wallets, agreeing to match the sum that they had with his own money if he didn't guess to within a pound, or something. he pretty impressively guessed loads of people's purse contents and then asked a boy of about 9. He said something like £4, but the kid was carrying about £300 and on his way to buy some games console or another. Derren was pretty amused, but not as much as the suddenly very rich nine year old.

Oh, he has some new stuff out?

I thought they were still repeating his older stuff?

I was really into his stuff, but I guess I've gone off the boil a bit, maybe you can only take so much of the same thing?

Malc

Seriously, how fucking hard is it to not "kill" a kitten? If I were that girl's bank I'd be having her cards back off her straight away.

I'm a big fan of Derren Brown. I particularly like how he'll do a traditional magic trick, involving some sleight of hand or whatever, and dress it up in the psychological stuff; then switch approaches and do one with a psychology angle but make it look like a sleight. I have a few friends from Bristol Uni who saw him before he was famous (he used to do close-up magic gigs around the Uni) and said he was awesome then, too. I also met a genuine close-up magician at the pub a few months back (feyonce of a workmate of my feyonce, if that makes any sense) and he was a big fan of Brown -- we spent a long time talking about it, and I made some guesses about certain techniques that he reckoned could well be correct. I got the feeling Brown is pretty well regarded in the magician community. Apparantly he was one of the best close-up magicians in the business and decided to pretty much leave that behind and start over, re-inventing his act around the psychology angle. It clearly paid off but it must have been a tough decision to essentially restart his career from scratch.

Also, I saw Brown perform in Cardiff in 2006 or 2007. It was an excellent show, very funny and very clever. Afterwards I emailed the PR contact listed on his web page:


I had a reply sent at 3am the next day, which is a very unlikely time for a PR flunky but quite a normal time for a touring performer. I suggest this may therefore have come from him directly. It's complete text was:

Aawww, that's great!

I've enjoyed all Derren Brown tv shows, he seems like a nice bloke too*. I would say I'd like to have a pint with him, but one half of my brain says KEEP AWAY FROM THE TRICKSY MAN.



*take note David Blane, actually just fuck off.

I hope Derren doesn't join this forum. He'd start getting us to post stuff against our will and would trap Mimi and her monkey inside a quote box or something, all the while accurately predicting what contentious thing CUS was about to say in freaky 1 minute pre-emptive posts.

Edit:

Seriously, he does sound a nice bloke, and his acts are quite impressive sometimes. Love that story, Richardgaywood.

Mwah ha ha ha ha.

CUS will say:

"you're a cunt".

I really like his stuff. Apparently, his book, "Trick of the mind" is reet good, like. But I've not read it.

And that message from the PR thing is top-est most king.

Cool, I might go into waterstones at lunchtime and skim read it.

Ha Derren you are the loose!

I have his book, it is excellent. It goes into a lot of detail about some of his techniques, and talks at length about rationalism , and skepticism -- Lave should lap it up. It's also very funny too.

Derren Brown is on my "dream dinner party" guest list. But not my "dream poker night" guest list, obviously. We tenatively booked the magician feller I was on about up there for our wedding -- he does this a lot apparantly, before and after the meal when everyone is milling around or waiting for their food to come out he goes from table to table and does some card tricks and whatnot. Magic is incredibly compelling like that, that night in the pub I watched him do a half-dozen genuinely breathtaking tricks from less than three feet away. Was a hell of a good night.

Oh, and I should add that regardless what you think of most of his stuff, his Messiah and Medium shows (both one-hour special one-offs) where absolutely required viewing and well worth seeking out.

So, everyone here likes him then.

That's nice.

I think his Russian Roulette show was one of the best pieces of TV I've ever seen.

He's able to make incredibly compelling hold-your-breath stuff even though you know you're being tricked and manipulated.

As I read this, the hated Jo Whiley on Radio 1 is saying he's going to be interviewed later this morning.

I like him too BTW. I am easily impressed by clever tricks and his are the cleverest.

I really liked that, and the 'robbing a bank' one.

I enjoyed the 'hold-up' episode, too. Just watching all of the bits come together was quite amazing.

Oh, and the pet cemetary advertising one!

I didn't realise he had a new series on. Clearly Mr Brown does not want me viewing his works anymore.

[EDIT: Oh, and as alreadly mentioned, his book is ace]

There was a really good video floating around [my local video store] in which he explained how he did several of his sleight-of-hand and more simple suggestion and psychology-based tricks. I can't remember what it was called unfortunately, which renders this post fairly useless.

Anyway - he's good. The special with him picking the winners of horse races ("The System"?) was excellent.

Man, he's clever.

Also, I'm currently about halfway through his book, and it's dead good.

Oh, you're here now, Agent Starling. Excellent.

I've just ordered the book from the Book Depository, with all you folks singing it's praises!

Also, Hi Starling - so nice to see you!

I'm annoyed at myself for not realising he had another series on at the moment, but no matter, and I'll swoop on the DVD in time.

What I love about his stuff, is that it sounds kind of silly and simple when explained, and you think, oh I could do that, but really you couldn't.

For example, he'll have a conversation with you and keep throwing in the words "red" and "car", than at the end he'll ask what you want most for Christmas, and you'll say "a red car", even though you don't, not really.

Or Daily Mail, blatantly.

The magician blokey I met in the pub (talked about earlier in the thread) talked highly of this video, and also of a couple of for-magicians books he wrote about his card trick techniques.

That one is awesome.

Isn't it just! I just love the way he winks and smiles to the behind-the-scenes camera when he's saying it at one point.

As others have said, it is dead good. And surprisingly funny; his writing style is very readable.

I went to see him live a few months ago, and he was mind-blowingly awesome.

All the people he picked were done by throwing frisbees out into the crowd, and getting them to pass them on, so no stooges likely. He did one amazing trick which was to get someone to guess a three digit number he had written down, or win £10 if they got it wrong.

The guy immediately got it wrong but Derren convinced him to have another go, and guess another three digit number. He was wrong again, so Derren duly handed over the tenner. Before he went off stage though he asked him to unfold the note and read what was written on it. There was a message saying "I will get him to say this number" with an arrow pointing to the serial number. Yes, it was the six digits he had just guessed.

I know how this one works.

do tell (in spoiler text)

Malc

Yes, the fun of Derren's shows in his his showmanship, not in knowing how the tricks work.

A couple of the others I worked out, but this one I only have half an inkling, and cannot make the final jump as to how the numbers are chosen.

The way I *think* it's done is that somehow the

I've been disappointed with the new series so far.

The thing with the kitten was all a bit too one dimensional, and I don't think we really got to see exactly how they pressurised the girl into pushing the button,though I can imagine...

The previous one, with the the guy apparently memorising every single fact in every reference book ever printed was frankly unbelievable.

I don't see how it could have been done without some sort of collusion (and I'd really like to know if that was the case).

On the other hand, when he's good he's very good.
His best stunts are ones where you can at least half-believe he really has some sort of special powers.

One of the early ones, where he seemed to defeat a whole room of chess grandmasters at their own game was obvious when you thought about it (he *literally* played them against each other), but it was done with a certain panache and required some real skill - it was still impressive even when you knew the trick

You are correct. After I saw him last year (he did a similar, although slightly more elaborate, stunt with the guy from the audience phoning a friend and the friend predicting the numbers) I was surfing and I came across some information on it.