Derren Brown - Jedi Knight

From the minute it started it was obvious that his 'cast' were gullible fools. There wasn't one sceptic. What made me despair for humanity was the idiots who phoned up to concur with what was going on. And yes I chose Jane, but wrote down York for my town. If he had been a bit more honest in the programme and in interviews he gave before hand and said he was going to debunk this spiritualist garbage for the con it is I would have had more respect for him.

Bob

I thought he had made it clear at the beginning of the show that he was a non believer and that the whole point of the excercise was to discredit mediumship?

Regards

Mark ;0)

I didn't see it. On the trailer I saw for the programme he explained that he didn't believe in spiritulism, but not that the plan was to debunk it.
However, just because we know this is a trick, it does not mean that all spiritulism is a trick.
Just because we know Casualty off the TV is a fictional drama does not mean hospitals don't really exist!!
I wish I'd seen it now

My wife and I went to see him in Cheltenham where he did a similar trick, spiritualism aside it was a very clever and brilliantly executed mind trick, I think he great.
Martin

"From the minute it started it was obvious that his 'cast' were gullible fools. There wasn't one sceptic"

Yes as soon as he said "These people have been pre-selected for their suggestibility" I knew the game was up!

Matthew

We booked Derren Brown for a work function and i have to say he was bl00dy impressive.. Whilst it was obvious that we were being tricked, it was clever enough to be quite jaw dropping... especially after a couple of bottles of red into the evening... Maybe that was it!!! He took £50 off my Boss which is no mean trick though, alcohol or not...!?

I'm a big fan as well -- not least becuase he tells you it's all done with psychology and suggestion and reading people and so on. He's a great antidote to all the tricksters and psuedo-science we are inundated with these days.

The best thing I saw him do was the trip to the dog racing where he got a punter to bet on ridiculous outsiders which duly lost and then he went up to the bookies window and said "This IS the WINNING ticket" in a slightly preposterous voice and they coughed up the cash. He even got some member of the public to do it as well.

Matthew

I've never studied NLP, but I've been to a training week where the 'life coach' repeatedly tried to do it. Didn't work on me, but I was deliberately not taking part in the activities he was trying to get us to do. From the research programme I have undertaken, I am certain that if you aren't prepared, your behaviour can be easily influenced by particular phrases without reference to your own motivation.

Derren is great. I'd be interested to know whether there are people with his abilities who use them to perpetrate cons - more than just counting cards...

A lot of what he does is very clever, but I think he does try to imply he is mind reading etc, all the, 'picture what you are thinking of' nonsense. Even knowing that most of what he does is done in the same way as many magicians work doesn't distract from how well done most of it is done.
e.g.IF you assume there are no stooges, then how the hell did he do the one where two footballers sat facing each other and picked 1 of 5 switches to turn on a light and consistently picked the same switch.

PS. What's that bobbins where someone answers the phone then falls asleep (sleeping gas in the phone booth probably )

I loved the one where he put down a wallet full of cash, drew a chalk mark around it and then left it there, untouched, all day.

http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/M/mindcontrol/streaming/dbwallet.ram

For the phone stuff, the channel 4 site tells all: -

"All through the series, people mysteriously fall asleep in public phone boxes. Have they fallen prey to a disease or am I carrying out some trick of the mind on the other end of the line? There are two factors at work here.

First, the group of people subjected to the stunt are particularly suggestible. I know this simply because they chose to answer a public phone that happened to be ringing as they walked past. Most people would ignore it, assuming it was nothing to do with them.

Secondly, once the person answers, I immediately bombard them with a rapid set of confusing instructions and facts. I do this for several minutes without giving give them a break, then follow it by telling them to fall asleep. As seen on the shows, this works.

Public speakers often capitalise on the same response. Have you ever listened to a politician giving rapid-fire statistics so fast that the audience can't possibly take them in, only to end the speech with a simple, memorable phrase? The soundbite comes as such a relief after all those facts and figures that this is all the listeners remember."