THE baffling Derren Brown will make you believe the unbelievable at the Victoria Hall in Stoke-on-Trent next Wednesday. The magician was catapulted to fame in 1999 when Channel 4 spotted him and immediately gave him his own show, Derren Brown's Mind Control.
Whether he is getting bookies to pay out on losing tickets, telling people astonishing details of their lives on first meeting them, or appearing to read people's minds in impossible circumstances, his act is compelling and, at times, disturbingly brilliant.
In his last high profile TV special, Derren literally gambled his life on his ability to read someone's thoughts by putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger, stopping only when he believed he'd reached the chamber in which the volunteer had placed the bullet.
'It was exhilarating,' says Derren. 'I looked quite calm about it, but my leg was just shaking all the way through it, I remember that vividly.
'I was trying to get it right but trying to balance that with a sense of drama, and what would look good on television. It was an incredible experience.
'There was an outcry at the possibility of seeing a man kill himself on television, which was never going to happen because we had enough of a time delay that, if it had gone wrong, the screen would have just gone blank.'
Derren says there is no massive secret to his skills.
'There's suggestion, misdirection, psychological techniques and blagging. A lot of it is about performance.
'It's not a documentary, so a lot of it is about creating the impression that I'm doing something that I'm not always doing.
