Did I miss a thread?

I found his tell, which I am almost certain, he is faking.

Eh?

he has an unnatural reaction when he wants someone to listen.

I am a huge fan, and currently watching Friday's confidence episode. (The quiz show episode was unreal!)

QUOTE:
he has an unnatural reaction when he wants someone to listen.

Eh?

(Sorry, is this just me? I have no idea what you mean.)

ok. I just saw Fridays episode, and that was rather good. Getting family and friends there was perfect for the previously guileless 'witness'.

PM in a moment about his tell.

I like Derren Brown immensely. And if you know anything about his history with his memory and card playing) you will understand what I mean by a 'tell'.

I'm still baffled.

You're not telling us accomplishes his astounding feats by doing tricks are you?

Yeah, come on, this is no time for PM's. Fill us all in.

He double nods his head when he wants someone to do something.

Yes, I know it was weak... but it is, however, true. (It may be an OCD thing, I am not sure)

The man is still the most fascinating/captivating person on TV.

Stumpy Pepys wrote:

QUOTE:
I'm still baffled.

You're not telling us accomplishes his astounding feats by doing tricks are you?

Nah, its all smoke, mirrors and televisual tri... zzzzz

He utilises that wonderful trick of TV, "do something twenty times and televise the three times it comes off".

Last week he did the one of asking two people to draw "something, anything, not a building, or a person, or anything complicated like that, just the first thing that comes into your mind".

As he said it, I thought, "I bet they both draw a cat", and bugger me if they didn't. But I bet he filmed the same trick another dozen times where he'd come across two other random Londoners, maybe ones off OTF, and one had drawn a squirrel and the other a pint of guinness.

Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote:

QUOTE:
He utilises that wonderful trick of TV, "do something twenty times and televise the three times it comes off".

Last week he did the one of asking two people to draw "something, anything, not a building, or a person, or anything complicated like that, just the first thing that comes into your mind".

As he said it, I thought, "I bet they both draw a cat", and bugger me if they didn't. But I bet he filmed the same trick another dozen times where he'd come across two other random Londoners, maybe ones off OTF, and one had drawn a squirrel and the other a pint of guinness.

Um, he's been quite open about that, specifically in the horse-racing one (where that was the whole point).

The horse racing one was great because you thought "yes, of course, they're just filming the ones that worked" but then how the fuck did he get those four people to choose the exact same pictures and stand exactly where he had predicted?

He talks about the nod in his autobiography: it began as a deliberate attempt to influence people, and is now an involuntary tic.

I like Derren Brown a lot, but there's a slightly hair-shirted part of me that's not quite sure about him. Something he does a lot is to use a standard conjuring technique and then claim to be using Mind Control. That's not the same as, and nowehere near as bad as, using a standard conjuring technique and claiming to be using telekinesis, or to be communing with Spirits from Beyond the Grave. But I get a bit sniffy about it in some moods, because I think it dilutes his rationalist message quite a bit.

QUOTE:
The horse racing one was great because you thought "yes, of course, they're just filming the ones that worked" but then how the fuck did he get those four people to choose the exact same pictures and stand exactly where he had predicted?

That's fairly typical of his MO, though. He did one where he simultaneously played a whole bunch of chess grandmasters to a draw (I think lost one of them) and then revealed he had "predicted" the number of pieces remaining on all the boards. The chess part was simple - he just played the grandmasters off each other, but the prediction thing was supposed to leave you dazzled. Unfortunately, you could tell the moment when he switched the envelope with the "prediction" in it.

Of the new series I've only seen the bit where he got the girl to kill the kitten. I totally saw how he did it, regressing her to a childlike state, acting like a kind of teacher authority, leaving her alone in the room, etc, and she was obv young and suggestible and selected for that, but I was still shocked that she actually did it, that the idea of the consequence of what it was she was doing had become so separated from the action. So in that respect it was good TV.

But I really thought what he did in between that one, which was convince a guy who did gymnastics on a tightrope that he was going to fall off, was a bit awful and a bit wrong. Poor guy, will he get his confidence back after that?