This looks good from the trailers, and I've already set it to record.

Hopefully the haters can stay away from the topic for a while.

I'm really looking forward to this. Thanks for the reminder.

Derren Brown is ace. Good timing for a new series as well as it gives me a reason to switch the TV on again on friday nights.

So yes: looking forward to this

Excellent, I shall have to remember to watch this.

Derren Brown is one of the best illusionists since... the last big one.

Derren Brown is David Blaine with a Brain...

Sweet, I hope he has plenty of new material.

Dont forget that he plays mind tricks on Simon Pegg tonight.

Cant wait for it.Love his show although the 'Messiah' one was a bit shite.

Wasn't that last week? I definitely saw him perform the mind games thing with Simon Pegg recently, bloody good it was too.

No.New series starts tonight.You must have seen the trailer

Unless, like me, he saw it on E4 on Monday night

Not a bad start to the series, the thing with Simon Pegg is TEH ACES!!11!!!11one

Yeah I did, didn't think it was a week since I saw it. Missed the start, but caught most of it.

RE: The Pegg thing. Especially liked the way it was revealed to you after, when Derren was doing his stuff I picked up on a few of the references near the end but most of them went unnoticed.

Quality! Looking forward to it even more now

Bugger!

At least I can watch the second episode a couple of days after tonights rather than a week!And to think I slagged off E4 in another thread.

Shhoooperb.

Much prefer the celebrity tricks though. The Pegg one was outstanding.

That was genius

Bloody good programme that. The Simon Pegg section was fantastic, I like the way they gave the explanation at the end of how it worked. I had wondered why he said Xbox instead of Playstation during his spiel

I guessed bike probably only because fearbat mentioned that it was explained afterwards so I was looking for it. The circular designs everywhere and clearly hearing the word bike a couple of times was a giveaway.

"A BM or an Xbox". Didn't get that one though, so obvious when it's explained.

Great stuff.

Edit: He's still touring, details here. I'm very tempted to go and see him live, there were a couple of people here who went to see him and said it was a great show.

Amazing. The Pegg trick, especially. I didn't tape it, but I'll have me some of that when it pops up on UKNova.

I really like his stuff but am I the only one who sussed his Bike suggestion from the start?

From the moment he said '...Handle bar none....', I clicked.

I AM TEH L33T!!!

That was fantastic. That bit where he guessed what was in the optician's wallet was fucking class.

And when he made that leather-bound baldy's face go on fire. That was ace.

Indeed. I thought he'd fucked up something rotten there, like in Stir Of Echoes.

Ah bollocks, went out and got wasted instead. I shall download it off UKNova

Some really good stuff he did. I got almost all the references to a bike when he was doing the thing with Simon Pegg but failed to see the imagery in the room....even though there was a reel to reel whirring away in the background!

How he managed to convince him BMX was what he had originally written on the card is beyond me though.

All that's misdirection. I don't know why everyone insists on being fooled by it.

My theory this week. All the tricks this week were achieved by pickpocketing people's wallets and then replacing them. Pegg didn't write "A leather jacket", he wrote a "BMX bike" someone forged his writing.

I think I probably agree with Graham, the BMX thing was just far too obvious.

I got it was a bike from the "two tyred", and a BMX from the "BM or Xbox", what I can't understand is how Simon Pegg didn't pick up on him dropping all the hints, especially as he was trying to spot them.

I also didn't really twig on all the symbols round the room though, I saw a few, and though "that looks a bit like a bike", but didn't spot most, or really think it was part of it (no idea why).

To be honest, I had thought that it was the worst part of the show, rather than the best.


I do like Graham's theory, and think he could well be right.


No idea how the staring stuff wrked though, maybe he'd hypnotised them in advance or something (as he did seem to have to get the bloke to look at him/tap his shoulder, and so on, to recover).


Good stuff though.


I may watch my recording again later (I hadn't watched it when broadcast as I discovered at the last minute that it clashed with the new HIGNFY, and I'd set Derren to record).


What do you think happened with the kid though, do you think his mum gave him £30 after Derren had lifted his wallet, or did he get it wrong on purpose to pretend he didn't always get it right?

You are missing a trick here (pun intended). Brown doesn't claim to have mystical powers....he's the first one to say that he uses misdirection.

The fact is that whatever 'tricks' he employs, they provide entertainment and genuinely seem to fool the people involved.

Set up.

Eh? How's he missing a trick?


Yeah, and pick-pocketing people would be an impressive trick.

What kind of misdirection techniques was he using on t'Pegg?

He seemed kind of spaced (ho ho) out when Derren got him to shake hands, then suddenly took his hand and almost pinned it on the table and started his constant and quickly delivered story about how he buys gifts for people, combined with the arm tapping. Was it all just to get his guard down? t'Pegg's eyes were just going back, forward, back and forward like he didn't quite know what was going on.

The intro to every show explains a combination of techniques that DB uses....misdirection, magic tricks, persuasion etc. He's not claiming to be truly magical but sometimes the outcomes can seem to be.

And if he had lifted all the wallets without the people knowing in order to give the impression of 'guessing' the amount of money they had....well, that's impressive in itself.

Well, it is to me.

Yeah, they looked like they were hypnotised to me. Nothing wrong (according to the magician's ethics that biglime talks about) with setting that up and editing that bit out.

He states he doesn't use actors or stooges, and according to biglime that means he doesn't. That doesn't mean things aren't "set up" to a certain extent, obviously.

Oh I agree. I think he's very good. I just don't like the way viewers insist all of that "BM or Xbox" stuff is really the way it works. It annoys me because it's plainly not true. Fair play to him for fooling people with it, it's a good bit of schtick.

When we went out for a City Meet the other day, the magician at the cocktail bar was a mate of Derren Brown's. He managed to put a folded playing card with "Graham_S" written on it between my wrist and my wristwatch without us noticing.

But Brown takes that sort of trick (picpocketing skills), fairly unimpressive on its own (no-one would blink if he just brandished their wallets in their faces and said "Ta-da!"), does it in a whole load of different ways and builds an amazing half hour programme around them that has you baffled. Hats off to him.

What's Simon Pegg then?

You know what I mean.

I also missed this due to the same reason as Strawpedo.

Anyone spotted the torrent anywhere?

EDIT: Just checked the UKNove forums and they'll be on there within a day or two.

I saw his live show in Salisbury last month. It's truly the greatest thing you'll ever see and if you get the chance to go, don't even think twice, just find the money and go see it.

Yes, and?


I don't think anyone is denying it is impressive. It's just that we think all the "BM or Xbox" stuff is misdirecting us as an audience.

I agree with Graham, the trick was probably based on pick-pocketing or something, then through his amazing showmanship and misdirection he convinced us as an audience that he got Simon Pegg to change what he was thinking, and then to top it all off he got Simon to believe he'd had his mind changed too, and to believe that he'd changed his mind so much that he had no memory of writing "Leather Jacket" - the reason for that, is that he probably didn't; Simon was utterly convinced that he'd written "BMX" in the first place, probably because he had.

The only thing that I'm a little surprise by though, is that Simon didn't pick up on any of the BMX hints, or symbols.


Derren Brown is a GOD! (and I really should get round to watching the DVD).

Part of the way the 'implanting' is done means that Pegg wouldn't have been able to pick up on the visual and aural clues as clearly and you or I might when watching it back. The technique (and I'm not an expert) involves misdirection, and is also partly a kind of hypnotism. The handshake for example is the means by which he initiates the 'control', by involving Pegg's brain in the task of returning the gesture so as to sideswipe it with the hypnotism when it's least expecting it.

Derren Brown is an astonishing illusionist, perhaps the finest there is. The TV show however makes him look immortal, whereas the unedited stage shows reveal him as merely superhuman (not quite sure what my criteria for distinction are, but forgive me )

The current stage show is quite good, and I'd recommend it to those who've not seen him live before. The pace is much improved on the previous stage show, though it's not quite as heavyweight in terms of spectacle. The seance from the previous stage show is a finely crafted ensemble of the various techniques Derren uses and as such is a much more impressive piece, whereas the newer show has a mixed bag of new tricks, a couple of which really aren't that amazing if you have a little background knowledge.

As Derren is keen to stress in interviews, the key to his appeal is his presentation and performance, and the way he introduces his techniques in novel and compelling ways. The staring competition from last week's show requires some very simple hypnosis, but the context of a staring competition immediately makes it more than a parlour trick, and the audience enjoys it so much more.

Now if he could just stop looking so self-satisfied in those eccentric links between illusions, he'd be a genius

Oh, and the torrent is on UKNova now.

I wish he explained ALL his tricks. He annoys me because he can do things I can't and can't explain. Half of me wants to burn him as a witch.

Depends how deep you want the rabbit hole to go. Most of his illusions are pretty well documented, in magic circles. The reason he's succeeding with the public is not just because he's a fine talent, but because his presentation is aces.

Ah okay.

Last night's (this Friday for regular C4 folk) was great too.

Word up.

Heads best be checking this tonight.

Did nobody watch it?

It was a pretty good episode. Not quite as good as last weeks smashing opener, but still pretty impressive.

It was great, the wallet thing was brilliant. Best of all - the second guy who went after Derren and then got himself conned again

Yeah, that was quality

I'm determined to learn how to do that and use it for evil. I can see exactly how it works - you get the person nodding their heads to obvious questions enough then their brain just switches off and they'll agree to everything.

Theories on the Johnathan Ross trick?

It's obvious that it's based around a card force. Just like last week, he did the trick in a room which would plant shapes into the mind of the victims (and come on, Johnny's wife was ALWAYS going to go for a red suit) so Derren knows they're going for a specific card.

The next part is how does he get them to pick that card from under the table?

I reckon the forced card is either a slightly different size (like the "thick and thin" packs you can get) or a different texture. Notice how, at the end they're allowed to look at the cards they picked as much as they like but not in the context of the pack.

Oh! No it's obvious!

When they put the deck on the table, they put the pack face-up so that a face-down card shows up. What if there was already that card hidden in the deck face-down, but all the other card had their faces on both sides? That way, no matter what card they turned over, it will still only be the forced card that showed up.

Saw him live in Liverpool a couple of weeks ago. Brilliant.