What do you guys make of Derren Brown?

Saw him last night and must say I throughly enjoyed it and still totally baffled about how he does his tricks.

There is no logical way what so ever he can do the things he does

Logic is like a helicopter spotlight that shines briefly on parts of the complex network of streets and alleys that lie below, illuminating aspects of the various facades constructed during human existence, there is much it doesn't account for.

Seriously though I'm still sitting here 'how did he do that'

I like him a lot, and I enjoy some of the psychological stuff that he does. I will never be 100% convinced that magicians don't use 'plants' sometimes, though. And I don't mean cannabis.

lol some do

My husband took our daughter & a niece to see his show a few weeks back. (My son's too young, so I took him out elsewhere so that he didn't feel neglected).

Th'usband's always insisted that acts like this must rely on plants, but he came away from that saying that if that was the case, pretty much everyone in the audience would have had to have been plants except the 3 of them, which isn't feasible. They were extremely ompressed.

Gilly wrote: When I went to my friend's wedding they hired a magician who was going around from table to table, and he did this trick where a playing card with my friend's signature appeared in a completely impossible position on the other side of the table. And I stood right next to him and watched him very closely, and tried to put him off, because I'm annoying like that. And she is a shit liar, and I would be able to see right through her if she'd colluded. I've got absolutely no idea how it was done. Obviously he can't move matter through matter, presumably, but it was very impressive.

Ha Gilly that's what I was about to type, if there were plants then everyone else must have been a plant except us because all choosing of who went on stage was completely random with frisbee throwing etc

And if it is indeed plants then the excution is flawless

it's the first time I've sen him live and really enjoyed it but also the 'conspiracy' in me was interested in how much he poo pooed alternative medicine and meduimship (he did two tricks to 'prove' there is nothing in them) and there was alot of good/devil/scared numbers references too.........great night though

I like him alot. I find him very calming to watch and he's the only magician I've ever liked.

His social behaviour experiments he ran on TV a couple of years ago were superb and gave a damn good insight into how we tick.

Yeah I really agree Psketti, he's been the closest thing Humanity's had to a "folk shaman"/"mystical" advisor, to me it seems he has obtained mastery of energy in human communication, with deep understanding of esoteric faculties of the conscious and subconscious mind, the words appear often to be of secondary importance to the pacing, tone, delivery and subtle body language..

have you seen the one with the life size mannequin? He get's the guy to go on stage and apparently transplants consciousness from the guy to the doll, very spooky.

Agree there psketti ....I'd just love to know how he does it though!

Last night he got two audience members up to play poker and somehow, somehow, got one to choose a losing hand even though he gave him a choice of each card face up out of ten possible cards and he still dealt himself the losing hand <sctraches head>

He is very impressive.
I started reading one a his books a few years ago but it was pretty hard going.... & eventually got shrugged off. Think I still owe the library a late fine with that.
But it talked in detail about how he does some of his stuff.... stuff like how to remember shit loads of things and some good tricks.
The problem was the level of detail was quite meticulous but mendbending, and probably only worth reading if you were arsed about doing some of it.

Mike wrote:
I agree with your words here Mike, the thing that's bugging me slighlty is how quick he was to poo poo all mystical/shaman like / estorical things as 'simply showmanship'

Seriously last night he put on a show with things that were 'out of this world' but insisted on saying 'this is just showmanship, no one can communicate with the dead or other dimensions, nothing can heal you except modern medicine

I have never seen the guy, live or on tv, but only ever heard about how good he is.

As Mike said "to me it seems he has obtained mastery of energy in human communication, with deep understanding of esoteric faculties of the conscious and subconscious mind, the words appear often to be of secondary importance to the pacing, tone, delivery and subtle body language.." I find this a bit scary actually, how easily we can be controlled, by a (no offence intended) stage magician. Imagine the tricks that are being played with our minds constantly, by "them" to control our lives.

dawnbreak wrote: I've seen him talking about mediums before with Richard Dawkins, he was quite convincing on this topic. But I don't really have any time for the 'put your faith in modern medicine' nonsense, considering Prozac has been shown in controlled trials to be as effective as a sugar pill, for example.jhado wrote: I saw him interviewed years ago, and someone was asking him 'do you use your psychological techniques to attract the opposite sex?', and he said 'of course not, that would be morally wrong' (actually, he turned out to be gay, but that's beside the point). I was thinking 'that would be my sole reason for learning them', but that's just me...

wake_up_bomb wrote:
I remember him doing something on telly where he told this bloke to walk up to the counter in the bookies & say 'here is the winning ticket'... and he got paid out.
it wasn't the winning ticket!
I'd be doing that all day & trying out some good pestering techniques on women.

Derren Brown is one clever man that is for sure. He gets the right result time and time again. Even with the most random of audience members.