Derren Brown: The Power of Magic, Shoplifting, and Having a Favourite Spatula

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, screen rats.

Now, today we have a hell of a guest for you, a heck of a guest.

It is none other than Derren Brown.

Oh yeah, the Derren Brown.

Illusionist, mentalist, magician, whatever you want to call him.

He's a writer, he's also a successful painter.

I mean, this guy does it all, you know, and if you don't know who he is and you're listening to this internationally, check him out online.

He's got specials on Netflix and loads of stuff on YouTube, I'm sure, in the UK, Channel 4, still all on there.

I first became aware of Derren during his first TV show when it came out, I think in the year 2000-ish, and I was blown away by it, and I absolutely lapped everything up that he did after that.

Huge fan, so much so that when my wife moved to the UK, one of the two shows that I showed her as a sort of introduction to British culture was Peep Show and Derren Brown's specials, both of which were made by the same production company, Little Did I Know.

But I was working on this panto in South London and my wife said, oh, I'd love to meet Derren one day, that'd be amazing.

I was like, yeah, good luck.

And it turned out the sound designer who I was working with also did his tour shows and sort of mentioned occasionally over a couple of years, like, oh, I think you'd really get on.

And I was like, oh yeah, amazing if that ever happened.

And then one day in late 2011, he met me and said, look, I've got all this work on the Olympics for you, but also are you interested in working for Derren?

I was like, am I?

Fuck yes, sort it out.

So fast forward a few days and I'm knocking on Derren Brown's door and he invites me in and we have some coffee and I meet the writers of his show with him.

You know, he's got two people that work with him.

And we got on like house on fire and I thought, you know, I sort of did my bit to sort of be charming.

And I was like, I don't know if I'm going to get the job.

And he went, oh, you've already got the job.

It was really sweet.

And I worked on that tour and then I worked with them in the West End on the show.

And then was lucky enough a few years later to then go back and do the Greatest Hits Tour around the UK.

And do that in London as well.

Yeah, so because of that, I feel that we got a little bit closer in that second tour.

And then Derren came up here on tour recently and me and my wife sort of hung out with him.

And it just felt like, oh my God, we're actually friends.

Are we friends?

I don't know, you'd have to ask him.

It feels like it, but you know, Derren's a very famous man.

He knows lots of people, but he's always really lovely to us.

And you know, I love the guy.

He's absolutely fucking amazing.

He has his audiences absolutely in the palm of his hand.

There's no one better than him that does what he does.

He's absolutely brilliant and he's a bloody nice guy.

And you know, when I set up this podcast, I did sort of reach out and ask if he wanted to come on at some point and I didn't think he'd come on this early.

I mean, Derren doesn't do that many podcasts.

He really doesn't and you can even get some exclusives.

I think we have some, maybe, I don't know.

So anyway, here he is.

This is me talking to the amazing Derren Brown.

We'll be discussing television in all its glorious forms.

From my childhood, your childhood, the last 10 years, even what's on right now.

So join me as I talk to people you do know and people you don't about what scared them, what inspired them and what made them laugh and cry here on Television Times.

I'm late.

I'm so sorry.

I was writing your answers to all your questions.

I haven't sent them to a lot of people.

I just started sending them to a couple of people this week.

I just wanted to sort of see what it was like if I gave people a heads up because some people are like, oh, you put me on the spot and they don't like it.

Yeah, I find it difficult if you just ask.

I get into a panic and then you start to panic in your head because you're aware that you're not coming up with an answer.

It's like if you're getting your lines and something, then all you're doing is going, I'm not giving an answer.

I haven't thought of anything.

So yeah, it's definitely good to get the questions.

Anyway, how are you?

Yeah, good.

Thank you.

I saw you about a year ago, but it seems like very recent to me.

It does seem recent.

I like your glasses.

I think they're new.

Yeah, you do.

I'm having real trouble with them.

You don't have any problem with your eyes, do you?

Oh, no, I do wear glasses sometimes.

Do you?

Yeah, I quite like it.

They're quite a handy disguise.

I never wear them, like, when I'm doing anything public.

The show we're about to discuss is called Derren Brown Presents.

It's a magic show called Unbelievable, which he curated.

He's not actually in the show, though, which I just want to reiterate before we start.

So how is the show?

I really want to see it.

Is it going on tour?

No, so it's a show in London.

It's called Unbelievable.

And we opened at the Criterion on Piccadilly.

So it's just been open a little while.

And I really like it.

It's not very Derren Brown-y.

It's very much a family magic show, which might be confusing some people, I think.

I think people think I'm in it.

Has anyone turned up expecting you there?

Well, maybe.

Some people definitely think I'm in it, but I'm not.

So this is written and directed along with Andy Nyman and Andrew O'Connor, who write and direct my shows with me.

So it's a cast of people, actors, musicians.

We wanted to take all that weird ego out of what magic shows tend to be and make something that was just really different and would reinvent...

I don't know, there's just so much weirdness in magic, isn't it?

So much ego, and specifically very male ego.

Very weird place for women, historically as well, just being mutilated.

Some of that hasn't aged well, yeah.

And yeah, it's a strange thing, isn't it?

It's just built on, the bottom line of it is just, look how clever I am, which is strange, because most art forms or whatever you want to call them, performance genres aren't like that.

They're normally about something else, other than, look how clever I am.

They're normally about something.

That must be difficult for you, because all of your shows, all of your TV shows and some of the stage shows that I've worked on are sort of about that, aren't they?

They are about your skill, your manipulation of the crowd, how clever you are, essentially, like you just said.

But I try to.

I mean, yeah, that is the sort of, that's the thing you battle with.

So I try and make the shows more about the audience than about me.

And I think that's, I didn't realize I was doing that until my manager mentioned it.

So it's actually a really unusual thing in the world of magic.

And then when he said that, it kind of like, it clicked.

And that was like a helpful thing.

I said, oh, yes, okay, that's actually a good, it's a good thought to make sure the shows are about the audience.

But yeah, it's a childish and dishonest craft, isn't it?

So it's interesting challenge as a grown up, I think, is to make something that is grown up and honest.

So that's what keeps it interesting to me, I guess.

I remember you talking years ago about like renting a theater and putting on like old vaudeville type magic and getting people that weren't famous and doing a show.

I remember you talking about that years ago.

I'm doing that now.

No, no.

I always liked having my own magic theater.

I think that was the reality of it.

I spoke to Teller, you know, Penn and Teller, I spoke to him about it.

He didn't say anything back, so I wasn't much of a fan.

He does talk in real life.

And you were saying you sort of had a similar idea, but when you actually look into the reality of what it used to run a theater, it's just horrendous.

It will literally cost millions.

I'd have a perfect cafe, like I'd love that, like have a cafe down your road, which was the sort of thing that people like Keanu Reeves or Robert De Niro would do.

They'd just make an extraordinary restaurant or cafe just down the road and then just go and sit in it and use it.

You know when you watch Kitchen Nightmares, they always say something, there's some small restaurant in New Jersey and they say, how much are you in debt?

And they go, two million.

And you're like, what?

How does it cost that much?

I remember a guy that's a friend who started a restaurant in Bristol saying that it takes three years for a restaurant to make any profit.

It might be different now.

This was 20 years ago.

He told it to me.

Three years.

If you break a plate at a table, that's probably the profit gone.

Anyway, we're not here to talk about restaurants.

I was thinking there was three of you at one point for me.

Do you know that?

You might not know this because it's-

I counted five, wait, but go on, carry on.

Well, there was one backstage, yourself, and then there was the man on stage.

But then in 2012, when I did Svangali, I was working on that, I would cycle home and I would cycle up the Archway Road, and there was this enormous poster of you, a billboard.

I think it was Apocalypse, it was about to come out.

And it was just like there was suddenly three of you.

And then the televisual version, I realized was completely, well, not completely different, but somewhat different to the stage persona.

You know those posters aren't actually me, don't you?

You know that it's just a picture.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know, but it's so, you might know what that's like unless you've been in other people's shoes that have worked with you, which is like to work with a person who is, you know they're famous, but they also just, it becomes normal, doesn't it?

For us, it becomes normal after a while until you go out and stage door.

And then when you cycle home and you see that person about 50 foot tall on the road, it's quite strange, I have to say.

Yeah, I guess that, I guess.

You know, it's all I've known you for years, now you're doing a podcast.

And that's an odd, like Steve's doing a podcast.

It's not that big of a jump, I don't think.

No, I suppose it, but it's always a bump, isn't it, when people have different roles, you just sort of, I just say it all as a sort of, I remember when I first started performing, I was such a terrible attention seeker, because I was just so insecure.

And then when I went to university, I started, well, before I started performing, I think I just had all this frustrated need for attention and to be liked or noticed.

I mean, I'm making myself loathe, ironically.

So when I started performing, it kind of like took care of that need to an extent anyway.

And then, so I suppose that's when the split sort of happens, because then like in the rest of your life, you don't, hopefully don't need to be as attention seeking because you've got this job that is doing that.

And then, yes, slowly does become like a slightly separate thing.

And when we were rehearsing for Unbelievable, this occasion, I would, because mainly I was just sitting quietly and letting the other two get on with it, because they're more used to directing and more used to sort of, you know, leading a room of people.

I'm not really kind of like that really in real life.

So I'd often sit quietly.

And I happily work with the performers individually, but not really, not want to be fed over a room of people.

But occasionally I'd get up and say, oh, maybe we should do it like this.

And I'd just get up and do a bit.

And there'd be this sort of collective, wow, you turn into Derren Brown then.

You got up, you became, it's so odd.

Because I just don't, I get it.

Yeah, because like that's the thing.

I mean, we all have stories about you if we know you.

Like I've sat in a, I mean, I can say this on the podcast, because it doesn't give anything away, but I've sat in a foyer of a hotel with you.

I think it might have even been here in Newcastle.

And you've given me a pack of cards and you haven't touched that pack of cards.

And then you've done a trick without touching it.

And I've just been Derren Brown.

And it's like, what just, I don't believe that happened to me.

And it's like, it's kind of a wild story.

I don't know what trick it was.

I don't know if you remember, but it blew my mind.

I went up to my room and going, what the fuck?

Oh, are you okay with me sparing on my own podcast?

Yeah, so I went up to my room and went, what the fuck?

How did he do that?

And I'm still baffled by it, still baffled by it.

But I love that I don't know, I don't want to know.

Oh, no, that's very nice.

Well, sort of as one of the things we're doing, close up magic is the issue, sort of hope.

It just creates like a little thing, like a little memory, because we've all, we all have our version of it, you know, if somebody shows a trick, probably one of the things that might have got us into magic, it really, you know, staying with us, that sort of feeling.

Normally, the thing gets destroyed, because you end up finding out how that trick was done.

I had a, and also the false memory of it is interesting.

I had a, the guy that was a hypnotist that got me into hypnosis, Carson Taylor, isn't it?

So I saw him in my first year at uni.

He did a few tricks informally afterwards, close up tricks.

And I remember him doing this trick where he took a lit cigarette, back when that was, people were smoking, and he was being through, and pushed it through someone's jumper and threw it out the other side lit, without making a hole, you know.

And then a few years later, because he sort of became my role model as I got started, and sort of, I learned to do close up magic, and there was a well-known trick you might do as a close up magician, pushing a lit cigarette into a jumper, but I could never work out how he pulled it through and out the other side, like it would be a different trick.

And eventually I sort of found out a way of doing it.

And then years later, I caught up with him, and he said, no, no, no, I never did that.

I only just pushed it in and vanished, which actually is sort of simpler.

It's as simple as a trick, as a magician if you know what you're doing, but I'd created this clear false memory, like I could absolutely see him pushing it through and out the other side, and it had stunned me.

But actually spurred me on to work out a way of doing it.

And there was me knowing everything about false memory, because that's what you create.

Half of a trick is what people remember afterwards, and therefore what they, as they tell you.

If you want to sell like a great holiday you've had, or not sell, but talk to a friend about a great holiday, you'll, you know, you sort of like beef it up a bit, don't you?

And we do the same thing as we talk about tricks that we sing, because we don't want to sound stupid.

You know, we say, you know, you never touched it, like you just said, I probably did touch the cards, but it was still what you remember, because you don't want to, you know, you don't want to seem like you're easily duped or whatever it is.

And it's such a fascinating thing.

And you learn that as a magician, that half of the trick is not what you're doing, but you create, you say things and plant little seeds so that when the person thinks back, they have a, so, you know, for example, it's a, not referring to the trick I did with you, which I can't remember, which I can't remember, which I can't remember what it was.

There were many, that was the first one.

I'm sure it was amazing.

But like, maybe you have a deck of cards that's in a special order at the beginning, and there's a point halfway through when the person can safely shuffle them, but they can't shuffle them at the start, otherwise the trick won't work.

But what you would say halfway through is, take the cards, give them another shuffle, but this time do it under the table.

All right, so the person takes the card, shuffles them under the table, but that little word again, shuffle, slipped in.

And then it's very easy afterwards as they remember it, to think they shuffled it.

Because as they're taking those cards under the table of shuffling, they're kind of accepting the fact that they've shuffled them before when they haven't.

In the act of doing it, you're making it very, very tempting to misremember specifically that they had shuffled at the start.

And then the trick is truly impossible.

Another amazing thing that I remember being, I think it was in Torquay, in a hotel in Torquay, and there was this young guy who was very, he was a new magician and he wanted to show you a trick.

And he came up to you sort of, I think, quite nervously and he blew you away.

And I remember watching that and you going, how did you do that?

I'm thinking, oh my God, he's blown Derren away.

And he was so happy that he tricked you and you were so generous with your, generally on the road, I'm not picking you up, but you are quite generous to other magicians, aren't you?

And people showing you tricks and you don't always know how they've done it.

No, not at all.

The best bit is when you get fooled by things that you know exactly how it's done, but it doesn't occur to you that you know how it's done because the trick's done so well that you're just...

One of our guys on the last tour, Bradley, he did this trick that was just like the best card trick.

It felt like the best card trick I've ever seen.

It made me squeal with delight.

I found out after, when I thought about it, I've got to know exactly how that's done, but it was just done with such sort of charm.

And it's all about the feelings, which means it has to be about the other person.

If it is just you want to show how clever you are, you're never going to quite hit the spot where it feels like magic because you're making it about yourself.

When I came to see Showman and you put the ring on the glass.

Yeah.

I'm sure I've seen how that's done, but I couldn't remember.

And the simplest thing like that, I just didn't understand what was happening.

And I walked out of there and that was the thing I couldn't.

It was just niggling me.

It still niggles me.

I still can't remember, but I know it's got to be a trick because you can't do that.

And then it was a person's wedding ring and then I put it on a glass leaf and leave it with them to keep.

You know, like the false memory thing and the suggesting stuff.

So I just want to ask, I just always pull this out.

I'm not actually going to show it, but You Shot My Dog and I Love You, my book available in all shops and online.

So I used to do this thing when I used to get on a bus when I was a kid.

I used to get on the bus in London.

Sometimes I'd buy a red bus rover, which was I think about 60p at the time.

And you could go all over London with that one ticket, right?

And I would then forge it with a razor blade and some pencils.

And just keep doing that or change it for a week, because they were the same color for like a day or a week.

It was just easy.

If I didn't have one, I would do this thing where I, it's hard to explain.

I would get on the bus, I would look out the window and then when the ticket inspector came around because they have conductors then, would come upstairs, I just give him a little nod, which in my mind said to him, you've already seen my ticket.

And it worked every time.

And I don't know what I was doing there, but I think it was taught by my parents to sort of almost, that when we used to see, in my book, it's quite current, as a kid I used to do some shoplifting and stuff.

And the whole thing was to-

Which we share.

That we do.

You'd get to the door and instead of, I'd never walk out, you know like really bad thieves who just like look around and do all that and then just walk out like an idiot.

I would get to the door and then I'd fumble and I'd go, oh, if I could, and I'll just sort of put something in a bag and go, oh no, I'm fine.

And then I'd leave and that fact that I'd stopped and not just stormed out.

Go to the counter and ask a question, which also provides a bit of...

Oh, the what time does the shop close when you've changed the label on the fucking jeans?

You have to do that.

I remember you telling me about switching a pound coin for a penny in your chain.

Yes, I used to keep a penny in my palm and I'd hold it with my little finger.

Because when the pound coin came out, it was just absolutely brilliant for me.

So this is giving you a pound in your chain, isn't it, importantly?

Yes, I used to get, well, I'd do two.

I would hold the penny and then drop the penny under sort of the wall's fridge and then go, oh, I dropped my pound coin.

And then they wouldn't be at a move because it's too heavy and they give me one at the till.

The other one was keep a penny and flip it into a top pocket or side pocket in change and then go, oh, I think you've given me the wrong change and make 99p every time.

Yes, yeah.

I will be taking away handcuffs after this, but it's all in the book anyway.

I was a kid, it's juvenile stuff.

But yeah, I guess what I'm getting at is it's funny how magic and what you do is very akin to thieving.

Yeah, I still have a thing now that if I put something back on a shelf in a shop, I always do a little, slightly magicians display that my hands are empty because I have a residual sort of guilt.

Yeah, I do, it's like...

Just to the camera, just the CCTV.

I just can't imagine that someone's watching, like there's a store detective watching.

So I kind of always show my hands are empty.

I stopped when I set off the alarms in Harrods.

I was stealing a Luther Vandross tape.

And I had it in my pocket.

All the alarms went off.

That was around the time that they started putting alarms like that in shops.

Well, Derren, you should have gone to Woolworths.

It was a lot easier there.

Should have done.

Oh, that's probably what brought them down, actually.

I probably spent too much time there.

But I remember looking around my bedroom as a teenager and pretty much everything was stolen.

Have I ever told you this?

I used to get cassettes from HMV or whatever.

They used to have most cassettes before.

They used to have screws in them, do you remember?

So you could unscrew the housing of the cassette, take the actual tape of an album, move it, and then just put a blank TDK tape in it, screw it back up, take it back to the shop, and go, sorry, I think there's something wrong with this.

It's blank.

And then they'd play it, and it would be blank.

And you'd have the actual album, but in TDK casing.

So I used to sort of do that.

Hang on a second, you're taking the actual...

The physical tape out of the housing of the original cassette.

And then you're winding that into another cassette.

Just place it in.

I knew how to do it.

You just place it in and then put blank tape in the real one and take it back to HMV and get a full refund.

Which is it comes out in like a little thing that you can insert into another...

Yeah, a little spool.

And they'd say, oh, do you want another one?

I'd say, no, I've already got it somewhere else.

It was for someone's birthday or some lie like that.

Oh, that's very, yes, that's very good.

That's a lot of talk about thieving.

And you're okay to leave all that in.

I don't mind if you don't mind.

It is bad, kids.

It is bad.

Don't do it.

I watched this film the other day called Totally Killer.

Oh, if I mentioned films, I have to do this.

I know the bad thing because they're not TV.

Unless they're watched on television on a video.

Yeah.

If you go to the video, yeah.

What show was it, I should know this, where you got someone, you put them in the photo booth in Marrakesh.

Yeah, that's right.

My favorite ever thing ever on television, I think I've ever seen.

What I like to do is, there's a funny thing watching, so yeah, the thing he goes into a photo booth, falls asleep, and then he's hypnotized and we take him and wake him up in same photo booth in Marrakesh, in a newsagent, in the main square.

When I watched it, the thing I really liked, and it's slightly sort of cut down a bit for TV, but he sort of wakes up and can hear all this sort of noise.

And so he sort of opens the curtain and it's weirdly gone from like, you know, outside of train station in London to, is in this shop.

He closes the curtain again and goes back in, waits a bit.

Then he goes out into the newsagents and then he looks out of the door into the square and then goes back into the New York.

It's like that, what the drunks used to do when they look at the bottle to go, am I?

Yeah, there's this, yeah, there's this, it's the retreat every time back.

It was just like a little telling thing that you wouldn't necessarily know to write if you were writing that in a scene that the person, each time there's a frightening new step forward, you retreat back.

It was a bit like another telling moment for me was we did a zombie thing and it was with an arcade game, you might remember.

Yeah, well, you put him in the game, yeah, yeah.

And seeing what somebody, so they wake up with a gun, which they don't know isn't a real gun and actors in zombie costumes and prosthetics coming towards them in a replica of this nd again, he doesn't know this is for TV, so he doesn't know that it's not real, and he's standing there with the gun and there's somebody coming towards him, doesn't know he's a real threat.

And again, just seeing what the people actually know and this guy just had a total sort of meltdown.

Starting swearing immediately.

Yeah, he was just this We had to cut it down as a channel лишь wir hoch'm動过 who couldn't be more permissiveness and supportive throughout.

It's a bit, let's just have to fall back a bit.

But it was such a release of just sheer adrenaline and fear that lasted about four times the length that you see it on.

Again, you wouldn't write, you'd have somebody in a film, they'd react sort of differently.

So I've collected for some future reference, all these things that people actually do.

The thing I was getting to with the photo booths was they've made a time travel film, and it just reminded me of that happening in your show, because this girl goes into one of those photo booths, and it gets, I don't know, hit by lightning or whatever, and she goes back to 1987 to solve the murder of her mother's killer or whatever.

Like, I just thought when they used that, I was like, oh, that's Derren's.

The only thing I'd say is I haven't watched TV TV for so long, and I've never really been a big TV watcher.

Anyway, I do the streaming Netflix-y type thing.

Is there anything you watch right now?

Is there anything you're into?

I'm actually watching Line of Duty at the moment, which my mum recognized.

Did you start at the beginning?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's terrific.

I really don't like British crime, police-y.

We started watching something the other day.

I won't say what it is, but it was just that awful kind of, Oi!

Where'd you ______________?

It's just all that awful kind of terrible writing and acting.

I can't stand it, and they're all like that.

And you watch so many great American TV things that just, they all seem to be so extraordinary at doing TV acting, and the writing's all so good that suddenly just brought back down to earth.

I generally ______________, but yeah, love line of duty, quite ______________.

My wife has sort of stopped watching that stuff too.

She says, oh, it's just another one of these BBC Sunday night.

I can't watch it.

She thinks it just looks like actors acting.

It totally is.

That's exactly what it is with the British, particularly with the British stuff.

It's just actors acting.

Costumes, fake guns.

It's just, it's all I can see, but you don't think that with the American stuff.

For some reason, it all just seems so much more believable.

It was watching The Bodyguard that everybody was loving.

That really did it for me.

I said, I can't.

All I'm seeing is supporting cast, actors, some people in a room writing script.

I just couldn't get into it.

And it's a bit boring.

It's like going to work sometimes.

It does feel like a reality show that you've gone to work with the police and you're trying to do all the paperwork or something rather than, it's not like Life on Mars or something cool like that.

All I want to see is a good, honest series of a police detective who has a bunch of personal problems and eventually she goes too far and he, she, taken off the case, has to hand a badge in, but decides to pursue the case anyway, still dealing with her personal problems and in the end, catches the villain.

Why can't we see a series like that?

That's realistic.

Okay, I'm gonna delve in here and see what happens.

So, I mean, be careful how you answer this one.

Your phone might start ringing, but Gunn to head, you know about that.

Oh, you're doing that out of order, okay, all right.

I'm not doing them in order.

I'm just gonna pull one out and see what happens.

I don't know, this is a reality show that I'd be on, isn't it?

I think you've gone for the only one I couldn't answer.

Well, I did do ballroom dancing when I was at university.

I don't know if it's a reality show, it's not a reality show, is it?

Strictly.

I'd hate, I would.

Would you do that?

Is this an exclusive, in 10 years time, we'll see you on Strictly.

I think I had been asked and I never quite got to me.

I think maybe my manager said, you don't want to do it.

No, no, no, that was it.

Not quite yet, not yet.

What about, did you do country dancing at school?

I did country dancing.

No, I did proper ballroom.

I have awards for my cha cha.

Well, you should be on it then.

You'd win it, hands down.

No, you're stepping back a bit from the limelight.

You can just go and do Strictly.

One of my fondest memories, a thing that never made TV, but from making the TV shows was in one of the early Mind Control series.

It's the campus thing.

I'm ballroom dancing.

We started to bring in my other skills.

So I'm ballroom dancing with old ladies, a selection of old ladies at the Rivoli Ballroom, which is this, again, sort of camp, dance place at Nudden.

Anyway, and I'm reading their minds about first kiss or what their husband did for a living when he was alive.

And I'm doing a really bad waltz with this lady.

And she's whatever, I'm saying the stuff, you know, and she's just sort of going, yes, that's right.

Yes.

No reaction, no sort of like, no amazement.

Yes, yes, he was a, he was a carpenter.

Yes.

As we've all seen, it was just terrible.

It's the most bizarre.

Is this mind control?

Is this the first season?

It's one of those early, I think it's one of the early specials.

When you used to walk backwards through Borough Market, nicking people's watches and finding items, that was just to blow my mind.

I remember watching, I remember seeing you for the first time, actually, just say that out loud.

I was on tour and I was in Milton Keynes and someone put the telly on.

I didn't know who you were.

I don't think anyone did at that point.

And one of your first episodes came on and we just sat there going, what the fuck is this?

And then that was one episode, Derren, and we were all in.

It was simple as that.

We were nicking people's watches in Blackpool as well.

We didn't get them to hand me their watches or wallets and things.

I loved all that.

Anyway, so I can't give you an answer within reality.

No, no, that's all right.

Well, do you want me to cut all that strictly thing in case they call you?

No, I mean, you can do what you wish.

What's the TV show you saw as a child that scared you?

So the things that came to mind on that were obviously Doctor Who and the Daleks, which I'm sure everybody says.

But there were a couple of things that were sort of not exactly scary, but things that really got under my skin and have stayed with me ever since.

And one of them, and I've tried to track it down and find out exactly what it was called, I think it was called The White Stallion.

And there was something else called White Horses, which it wasn't that.

It was a children's TV series and it was color, not black and white.

I'd love to, if anybody like knows this, please.

What was the premise of it?

It was a, the bit that got me was the title sequence or maybe the credits at the end.

It just had this sort of white horse on it in a sort of a green field or on a hill or something.

Yeah.

And it was a very haunting moonlit image of this sort of horse, almost seemed to sort of glow.

And it used to bring me out in sort of goosebumps.

It was something, partly because I cannot find it anywhere.

I've gone through YouTube.

Sapphire and Steel was another one that kind of, I found just that weird.

What was wrong with ICE like that?

What was creepy about it?

I think it was probably just the age.

I didn't quite watch it.

It wasn't really a series I watched, but I would catch bits of it and just found it a bit odd and creepy.

And of course, these are all the things that in my TV shows, like many years later, I've kind of tried to recreate some of those sorts of feelings.

There's quite a lot of like slightly 70s sci-fi.

I love the idea of those sort of primary color lights, changing colors and brainwashing and all of that stuff.

It all takes you back to this kind of memory, sense memory of kind of those sorts of things.

I'm of an age where that was the stuff that felt really odd and creepy and would get under my skin.

My brother, he's younger than me.

He was terrified of nosy bonk.

That came up last week on an episode.

Ben Crumpton, the actor, he brought it up.

I used to watch Jigsaw and I blanked that out.

Jigsaw, wasn't it?

Not Let's Protect.

That's what it was in.

I can still do the tune in my head.

I can still do the tune.

Yeah, very odd.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff.

I guess it's that sort of Tales of the Unexpected sort of era.

Hammer House of Horror.

That's the correct answer for this one.

Hammer House of Horror, the house that bled to death.

That's the one.

Yeah, with the blood coming out of the taps.

Yeah, I remember that.

There was another one where there's this family and they're getting hotter and hotter and hotter.

And on the television, there's been a nuclear attack and they're sort of trapped in.

And every time they go to a window, it's covered in metal and then they can't remember anything and they realize they have no memories.

And then right at the end, there's just this sort of girl in the 21st century in a silver suit goes to the airing cupboard and gets out of her doll's house.

And they've been the people in the doll's house the whole time getting hotter and hotter and hotter.

Oh, you just saw the ending of that one for me.

I was going to watch that.

You've had 40 years, Derren.

Diana Dawes was in one of those as well.

I remember a rabbit.

I always used to hate it when animals would get cut up.

There was some weird children's TV thing as well.

Oh, no, no, actually that was one that made me cry.

That's a different question.

I'll save that one.

Hammer House of Horror, brilliant.

It's funny because you said the pulsing lights.

There's a lot of green light in 70s stuff.

Some mysterious being is just a green light in the corner talking to you.

Yeah, there's a lot of that.

They weren't worried about scaring us.

No, I love it.

And those Christmas ghost stories as well.

The whistle in I'll Come to You and I can't remember.

There's some things that Mark Gatiss has resurrected.

It's really odd, creepy.

What do they do?

I love it.

See, I have a theory.

I'm talking to a few people about this.

I think because it was the children of boomers in that era that they were trying to sort of toughen us up, trying to give us some metal and not make us all, you know, little scaredy cats.

So they were terrifying us for like the entire decade, as far as I can see.

I just think there's more creativity.

There's an odd thing now, isn't it?

There's no sense of a present culture.

Everything is retro.

Everything is a recreation of something.

I don't quite know when that happened, but I noticed it first with music.

Everything was sort of pastiche.

And now everything is like you're going to, you know, design your kitchen.

It's all like recreating whatever it is.

Georgian kitchens now.

It's all like little curtains on the cupboard.

Like everything.

Oh, there's a beautiful rainbow.

It's just appeared outside my window.

Everything has gone retro.

And it's a strange thing.

It's a strange sort of moment to be in.

I wonder if there's a socioeconomic reason for it, that young people not having the money and the ability to just, I don't know.

Where's the next punk?

Where's the next something?

Yeah, exactly.

There's not really a current thing.

I really struggle to...

I mean, there are obviously some things we're going to look back on and go, oh yeah, you know, the kitchen island, for example, might be something that we look back on and find hilarious that we were doing that.

But nonetheless, there are obviously those things, of course, in how we dress and so on.

But even the way we dress is all sort of...

I do wonder whether in terms of that sort of horror thing, whether that's very rare.

You get a fresh, good horror.

We seem to be...

Everything seemed to have started around the sort of 70s.

But mind you, that may be really untrue.

It might just be that's my era, and maybe there's just something about the era you grew up in that just feels unique.

What is a television show that you would remove from history?

No one would remember it.

You would, Men in Black E, press the button, it's gone.

No one remembers it.

All right, I'm going to be controversial here.

I can guarantee you have not been given this answer.

Juliet Bravo, what there would be.

I have not been given that answer because nobody remembers it.

Not Tenko.

No, God, it could just easily be Tenko.

Basically, there is a genre of programs in my head.

Tenko is one, certainly Juliet Bravo is another.

And it also extends into the big match, Match of the Day, Ski Sunday, that are the programs my parents would watch that I had no interest in.

I wouldn't watch them, but the theme tunes fill me with a sort of dread.

It's like that sort of horrible side of nostalgia, which I do like.

I love the whole nostalgic feeling, but there's that sort of thing, Mum's got that on her back.

And those, I mean, nothing wrong with the shows, but I would have, just to remove that triggering thing for me, I would lose all the things that Mum was watching.

Some of them I would watch with her.

I used to watch Butterflies, Wendy Craig.

Yeah, exactly.

Apart from that, yeah, it's the world of mainly police, the Gentle Touch, the Joel Gascoigne.

You know the tune to that.

Was that something else?

That was something else.

Gentle Touch is...

No, it's not.

Do you want me to find it?

No, that is the first one.

But for me, you saying that, I don't know why it reminded me, but it reminded me of the results.

Was it Grandstand or the afternoon football thing?

You'd have to be quiet while the results were being played.

What it meant is...

Two score draws.

Your parents were out of action, and it's like when your parents had their friends over and you'd gone to bed or whatever, and you'd go down and they'd be like...

Suddenly the parents would be like in grown-up world.

So weirdly, it's that.

It's that feeling as well.

Did your parents play the pools?

Oh, no.

I think my grandparents did.

Because that was usually why people watched the results in those shows to sort of win money.

The pools man would come to the door.

He was always a man, sorry guys.

And he'd come to the door and my granddad would give him money and then he'd give us a spot in the ball and then I would pretend to put the ball in.

And one day, I don't think it was a good idea, but one day they came and there was a little brown envelope and it said, Master Steve Otis Gunn.

And I was like, oh, wow, for me?

And it had two pounds in it, two pound notes.

And I'd won.

Only years later did I realize I probably didn't win.

But he could have turned me into a gambler.

I was about nine.

That's great.

My granddad was always doing that.

He was a bus driver and he used to take me on the bus.

And at the terminus, he'd help.

We'd get up all the seats and we'd find coins under them.

And for years, I thought that all seats in London buses had money under them.

So I would pop them every time I could.

Sometimes I'd find something, but not that often.

Again, placed there by him.

Placed there by him.

Hang on, was this the same grandfather that taught you how to scam the bus conductor with a gentle knock?

No, that would be my mom.

Right.

And is your mom your grandfather's daughter?

Yeah, my granddad was a thief.

Apparently he used to steal carpets.

I watched him steal carpets in the 60s and sell them.

He was an old man.

He wasn't that old.

He was in his 60s in the 80s.

He used to walk into certain supermarkets.

What are the big batteries?

Size D, they call them now, is it?

The big ones?

And he'd get four of them and shove them in his pockets and do all this and then sort of walk out.

I'm like, oh my God, it's so blatant.

You could embody a TV character from television, could be fictional, could be a cartoon, who would it be?

You'd actually be that for 24 hours.

Yeah, Grandpa Flump.

Grandpa Flump, is that the Flumps, which I've erased?

Yeah, he did nothing but play his flumper phone and nap.

So very sedate.

And he might have twiddled his toes in between.

But I mean, that was it, without a doubt.

I'm of an age now, right?

I mean, I'm in a cardigan, I realize, I can't tell that.

Maybe they can tell if they're very astute, but I'm in a cardigan, and I have a favorite spatula.

I'm of an age.

I would take Grandpa Flum for 24 hours.

I was gonna go with Bod.

Bod, yeah.

Yeah, he lived a simple life.

Throw an apple up and it would come back down again and muse on that.

It was life was simple.

But in the end, it was Grandpa Flum, sit by the fire.

You have a favorite pair of slippers then, Derren?

I got a lot of slippers.

You see that?

I got like six pairs of slippers.

I bought my first pair of slippers last year.

You only bought your first pair of slippers last year.

Slippers are the best.

I go out in my slippers.

I get into troubles.

I go out in my slippers and then...

I think I just spend years saying, oh, my feet are cold.

And then, you know, my wife will go, why don't you get some slippers?

I go, I can't buy slippers, am I?

And so I spend decades just making my life difficult when I don't need to.

And then finally I'll discover it myself because they've got like, you know, pulp fiction on them or something.

I think it's like mine says like spud fiction and they're two potatoes dressed up.

And I was like, yeah, I love those.

Cause they're not old man slippers.

They're still vaguely.

Yeah, you kept it young with the vintage film.

I'm gonna go get my children.

Okay.

They'll be fine.

Someone will pick them up.

They would have done in the seventies.

It was Chai the cat when you need him.

Exactly.

They should bring those back.

Terrifying.

Absolutely.

We were talking about that the other day, me and Ben, like when they used to like have a kid just fall on the, on the live rail and just die.

And they'd be like, you know, and now Blue Peter.

So weird.

What's the TV show that would be an embarrassing guilty pleasure that you wouldn't normally admit to?

I don't like watching TV unless it's really gross.

Then I love it.

I would like, I really binge things, but I can't watch something unless it's really gets me.

I hate that.

That thing of like, oh, you must watch, I love that you must watch this series.

It was brilliant.

I mean, the first 18 series are dreadful.

And you will hate yourself for eight months.

Yeah.

And then a story will be enjoyable.

So no.

Yeah, I can't do that anymore.

I mean, I'm starting to be the person that switches things off.

Do you know what though?

One of my answers, I realized it was because of you, it was the one, the show, one of your questions you put on the list was the show that needed more credit than it got.

Okay, what's that?

You may know my answer to that because you recommended it.

Oh, it's-

Yes.

No Sleeves, Thoreau.

Yeah, The Leftovers.

The Leftovers.

What a brilliant, now that is, so you've got to get past the first series is okay, second series is great, third series is visionary.

Yeah, that's a wonderful thing.

I love The Leftovers.

Yeah, what's the first season, Rubbish?

It was Rubbish, it was just an amazing opening and then sort of, it was sort of fine.

Horrible opening.

And then it got better and better, I think, but yeah.

There were loads of shows around that time.

There was one called like The Event where like a certain amount of people died.

Obviously, you know, Leftovers, was it 2% of the population just vanish overnight?

Which is really, it's the baby missing from the car seat that was like, come on guys, don't do that to me.

Yeah.

So now you've re-raised one.

What is the TV show you would like to bring back from the dead?

It's gonna go with Cosby Show.

Sounds Cosby.

Um, actually, I thought, remember Monkey?

They have brought it back, Derren, it's already done.

Oh, you're kidding.

No, they remade it.

It's full of young, pretty people.

No trippy-tucker.

Well, that's a shame.

I mean, not a shame it's full of young, pretty people, but yeah, I suppose it had to be done.

Okay, I'll go back to the Cosby Show then.

Original cast.

What happened to that?

What happened to that?

Is there a TV performance, you've got one for this for sure, is there a TV performance that you saw probably as a kid or a teenager that influenced your career?

Yeah, I used to watch Paul Daniels a bit, and it wasn't so much Paul, but he would have this guy called Max Maven, who was a mind reader, who passed away very recently.

We knew each other, but he was a tremendous man and performer.

And I remember perhaps the similar feelings as you were describing when you said you watched that episode of mine of like, please, what is this?

Why isn't this man on the news?

Just this sort of extraordinary thing.

And that was such a great feeling that sort of stayed with me.

Although it didn't then make me think, oh, I should do this myself.

But when I looked back, I remember that very sort of seminal sort of, well, yeah, experience of watching those, well, I'll say those, watching performers.

There were a couple of others, a guy called Chan Kamasta, who I didn't see back then, but have since discovered.

He was a Polish mind reader, but performed in England and in English around the 50s and 60s, so he's on YouTube.

Weirdly also, I'd have to include Jeremy Beedle in Game for a Laugh.

He used to love Game for a Laugh.

Game for a Laugh.

And again, just that whole thing of like the big practical joke and candid camera and all that, that's definitely, yeah, that's definitely been there.

I can see how that would have influenced you for sure.

The weird microphone he had when you could hear him perfectly well when he wasn't holding the microphone, the meaning was Mike.

The Terry Wogan, the tiny one, do you remember he had it?

Yeah, he did.

I think it was the same one.

That wasn't on.

That was not on.

And the funny little policeman's hat always.

But yeah, I used to love that.

And the bleeps, and you find out, he's like they were putting bleeps in for swearing when no one was swearing just because it was funny.

Oh, really?

Yeah, they just had bleeps.

Why not?

Couldn't do that nowadays, I'm sure.

But back in the day when you could add a bleep.

I love Paul Daniel's show.

Like somebody brought this up already.

Apparently there was an episode where he sort of does this trick where he goes in sort of a box full of spikes or whatever and it goes wrong and then they just cut.

Yeah, I remember.

And nobody said anything for a week.

And you just had to wait to see if the show came back on the next Saturday.

Is that what happened?

Yeah, I do remember that.

I do remember that.

And I think Chank and Asa did a similar thing of shutting down everyone's TVs across the country.

Oh, really?

Yeah, what a lovely...

They're proper little cultural reference points, aren't they?

Can do it now with the internet and everything.

I just saw him walking out of Pratt.

He's fine.

It's good to be that, isn't it?

That's what I wanted to say.

You still call yourself a mentalist?

I've never really used the word because it's sort of funny, isn't it?

It reminds me of Alan Partridge every single time.

Yeah, I know, exactly.

Another vintage series.

Yeah, my partner's quite a bit younger than me and I remember saying to him, oh, let's watch...

What was it?

I think it was Back to the Future or something.

I said, obviously, let's watch that.

I don't really feel like watching an old film.

It was just like, oh, that's an old film.

Gone with the Wind.

It's basically gone with it.

Yeah, it's gone with the wind.

Well, that's the funny thing.

My son keeps saying to me, he's got an inkling of what South Park is.

He's like, how old do I have to be to watch South Park?

I'm like, 18.

Yeah.

100%.

18.

But when you're 18, that will be a 32-year-old movie.

So will you care about that?

I wouldn't have watched a 32-year-old movie when I was 18.

I had South Park on my list, actually.

Did you?

What for?

Funniest thing that made me cry with laughter, which was the Mr.

Hankey, the Christmas Poop episode of South Park.

I think it was, yeah, just extraordinary.

Unbelievably, South Park is advertised as being OK for ages 13 and up.

Something I cannot believe.

What do you think will be the top show on television in 2050?

You had a top genre, and actually...

Well, I don't know.

I think there'll be a complete lack of cultural reference.

All these things you're talking about, the moment with Paul Daniels or the whatever, those things, and Charlie the Cat in those public service things.

As everything gets personalized and all the...

We're not watching TV anymore.

My history is putting on these TV events shows, and that's an odd thing to try and do nowadays, isn't it?

Really?

Because that's not how people watch TV.

I mean, a large number of people still do, but that's not quite how people watch TV.

Well, yeah, because you come up all the time when I say, what's the last big event TV that you can remember?

It's you.

Oh, that probably was about the last time that meant much.

So that's nice to know that, thank you.

So I kind of think that, I don't even know what genre will mean.

I think I just wrote that because if you'd have asked me in the 90s, what are people going to be watching in the mid 2020s?

I wouldn't have said ballroom dancing, people skating around on ice or baking and cooking all the time.

You would never have guessed that.

Yeah, it's the phenomenon of the sort of cars with wings.

I remember looking at sort of Victorian images of what London will look like in 100 years time and it was sort of cars with wings, not cars with wings.

Sorry, it wasn't Victorian, it was, what was it?

It was basically whatever that era was, it was that technology.

It's like going, well, the cassette tapes will be really tiny in 100 years.

Or whatever it is.

And it's the same thing, we just can't really step forward.

You can't conceive of something you don't know about.

Yeah, yeah.

I used to draw futuristic watches when I was about 14, really detailed, and they come with tiny cassettes and a tiny little needle that would press all the buttons, because I couldn't conceive that there wouldn't be a physicality to it.

And that's an odd thing, isn't it?

It's an odd thing now, growing up as a kid now, you sort of have no intrinsic sense of how music happens, how a thing creates a sound that you might listen to, or how a camera takes a photograph.

It's just a sort of a digital output on one thing that does everything.

That's odd, isn't it?

That's an odd sort of subtraction.

It's like a minus, not to have a sort of...

Something tactile that you can touch.

I really love my old school audio and I took an amp in to get looked at today, and I was taking my speaker cables in because I couldn't...

And I've been hooking up all my amps and CD players, and I just love all that stuff, and it's a really nostalgic...

I've got it all to hand, Derren.

Wow, is that a mini-display?

That's a CD player.

There's a mini-display.

We've got everything here.

I remember looking at records and wondering how the music was in there.

It's kind of weird.

It reminds me of that Calvin and Hobbes cartoon when the dad is saying to Calvin, look, you've got pulling a record player and saying, look, two points, one on the outside, one on the inside of this record, both traveling at the same speed, but taking the same amount of time to travel two different distances.

Something like that.

It was a real...

It was a real headache.

I had this...

I got it when I was 10, so I don't know if you remember these, but they used to have...

It was a horse racing game, but it was on vinyl.

And it had different grooves that it could go down.

So you'd put it on and a different horse would win every time.

So you could take bets on the horse.

Again, a gambling game for children.

But it was really interesting.

I've never seen that since or any version of that.

You ever see anything like that?

I'm just trying to work out the record thing in my head.

Is something I've started asking.

Your perception of it, what's it like to be famous?

Ooh, that's a good question.

I can ask that very often.

What's it like being famous?

I mean, some nice things get nicer, and horrible things get horribler.

So there's a sort of a slight intensifying of things, but I don't think there's an overall, much of an overall sense of it's much better than life before or worse.

I think whatever your sort of general attitude towards life is will just will become intensified too.

But you know, nice things get nicer.

So the fact that people, not everybody, but might be more interested in you or what you've got to say or find your jokes funnier or decide that they like you before you've made much of an effort to do anything.

I mean, that's kind of nice.

There's a nice aspect of it is good, but on the other hand, you have stalkers sometimes or your private life might be in the papers or stuff like that that could be a bit horrible or sometimes you're just trying to go out and buy plasters.

There's a big thing or someone wants a picture and someone else wants a picture and someone else wants a picture and just sometimes you're really feeling miserable.

But those all feel like really stupid things to complain about for all the nice stuff.

So I think it just sort of, there's an intensifying around the edges.

I like some of it.

I think there's a, we all like the idea of life becoming a bit more sort of exciting and being a sort of, the idea of transcendence is important to all of us, which is why I think religion, even though I'm an atheist, and there's a million reasons to sort of diss it nowadays, but it's pointing back at something which is important, which is our need to experience transcendence in some form, in just a very ordinary form.

Life is something we all would like to be better, and I think unless we know where to put that, we tend to put it on things like fame, or having more money, or things that we think will give us that feeling of a better life or a happier life.

And they don't, they don't, and it's worth knowing that.

I mean, some things get better, but some things certainly get worse.

And do you feel the pressure to constantly come up with things?

Because obviously you've got your books, you've got your boot camp podcasts, you've got your theatre shows.

Are you taking a little break from some of it, or are you writing a show for yourself?

I am.

I'm taking a proper break now.

I had a real burnout.

So I was doing the Showman Tour, which was the last show I did, which was like a year and a half or something.

But then at the same time I was writing and working on this new show, unbelievable.

So it's sort of been, it ended up being a bit too much.

So yeah, something I'm really not very good at is hobnobbing with other famous people and meeting up.

I'm terrible.

I seem to always mess...

I blanked.

So I did this last time this happened.

Sorry, I'm not going to ask you to tell your Hillary Clinton story.

No, God, no, no, it won't be that.

I was on this James Corden show out in the States promoting my Broadway show a while back and I was in the dressing room next to Charlize Theron.

It was amazing.

And we had an adjoining door.

When I arrived early and thought the door was to the loo, thought there'd be a loo attached to the dressing room and walked through and realized, oh no, someone else's dressing room has came back in.

But then when I was there, sometime later, she burst into my dressing room, obviously making the same mistake, and screamed and so I'm like, oh no, don't let me stop you.

But so she screamed and went back in and it was kind of funny and sweet and then we both did our interviews.

And then afterwards, I'm sort of in the green room a bit.

And Joel Edgerton, that you may know, is an actor.

At the time, I didn't know him.

I think he had directed the show, and maybe he was in it, that Charlize had been in.

Anyway, he comes over and is chatting to me with someone else, a friend of his.

And I didn't know, is he someone in the crew?

Is he part making the show?

I didn't know who he was.

I introduced myself, but I didn't quite catch it.

So anyway, I think I'm just chatting with a regular member of the public.

And in the middle of this conversation, Charlize walks over, because of this hilarious, embarrassing thing that had happened earlier on.

So she comes over and very sweetly says, Hi, hello.

And now I'm thinking, it would be really rude of me now to stop talking to these, in further commas, ordinary guys who may be on the TV crew, or maybe they're studying food, I don't know who they are, to talk to Charlize Theron.

So I sort of smiled and just carried on talking to Joel and the others.

I basically blanked Charlize Theron, who then just walked away.

I'm really overthinking it.

And that has stayed with me.

I replayed that.

That was years ago.

These things haunt me.

So I decided I'm really not very good at hobnobbing.

Well, if it's any consolation, if that's the episode where you're counting the rice, that is one that gets played a lot in our house, because it blows my son's mind.

It's his favorite bit of rice.

That's nice.

That is just not my memory of that day at all.

But it's nice as it is.

Well, I've got to go and do boring old practical home things.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you very much for having me on, Steve.

We'll see you at some juncture.

We'll come to your part of the world at some point.

That'll be lovely.

There he is, Derren Brown.

For your listening pleasure, how was that?

We talked about Sully, and we really sort of skirted around.

We talked about his shows a little bit here and there.

And I loved that little chat at the end, his insight into being famous, something I don't mind asking people I feel comfortable with.

Be sure to check out his TV specials on Netflix, Channel 4, and if you can, go and see him live.

And even if you've seen everything, watch it all again, because he's bloody amazing.

Beep, beep.

Now to today's outro track, it's a song called She's The One I Miss.

Now, this song is often mistaken for a love song.

It is sort of, but it's not in the conventional sense.

It's a song for my friend who was helping me through quite a difficult period of time where I was convinced I felt certain feelings for two different people, and I couldn't really work out what to do.

And when I ended up recording the album, I didn't miss either of those people.

I actually missed my friend.

So here we go.

It was written by me, recorded in Ireland and America in 2008 from the album After the Fireworks.

Okay, that was Derren Brown.

I hope you really enjoyed that episode, and come back next week for another one.

It's gonna be another good guest.

See you then.

Thanks for tuning in.