Derren Brown - the events - predicts lottery results

[persephonesnape]

here

oh happy! it's been far too long since Derren was on TV - and now...twice in one week!

he did say he would reveal all tonight though and he didn't

well in theory he has - he's told us that 24 people in the right emotional state will collectively predict the lottery. Just that we all think that's a load of bollocks

Yes, I wonder if you could sue the little shit for wasting an hour of your life under false pretences

you know I think part of his mystique is that half of your brain's always thinking "Do you think his parents meant to call him Darren but made a mistake on the birth certificate?" so it blinds you to some of the other stuff!

IMO that was the illusion - trying to confuse people with deep maths and pseudo-statistics.

Was more impressed by the knife / mouse thing - any theories?
As it started I actually wrote down my number and so did DH - I picked 17, and he picked 13, which was knife/mouse!!

There really wasn't ever any knife OR mouse, and Mr Stomper was an actor...

right. Again, the dull explanation.
Either that or tiny mouse trapdoors under all the cups.
DH thinks they did it hundreds of times and showed the one where it worked - I pointed out that would raise some interesting ethical issues

I was willing him to stab his foot, but amazingly it never happened

I was meaning all the squished mice

Did he really say the bonus ball was "for women and gays" ?

that's certainly what I thought I heard!
Wonder if we could request all those bits of paper (from the 24 people) under the FOI act.

look UQD I was relying on you to explain this!

Sadly I think it was a split-screen camera trick and what we have just seen is an hour of misdirection.

Disappointing, especially as the horse-racing one really did reveal how he did it (and it was the simplest, most rational, least woo-y explanation possible).

They are all probably taking up lots of beds in a little mouse hospital somewhere.

Re. the cups thing: am I the only one who was convinced all the way through that it was under no. 6 - because he said "You stamp on 14 and leave 6 untouched" - twice?

Thought I had him sussed.

But that was surely fixed up, no?

Well, the paper cups is easy - you've only got to be sure there is ONE number the stooge won't pick, & that's got to be ye olde NLP suggestion, as on The Heist.

I like him actually. His book's v interesting on memory techniques - he doesn't do anything new, but he presents it engagingly.

sadly I agree with you, and have already said I do think tonight was the misdirection - the psychological trick. So the only explanation for the other night is high tech, low psychology Paul Daniels style "magic"

LC, and been bribed never to utter a squeak about it to the Sun

You don't even need the power of suggestion when you've got full control over actors and a TV studio.

well ravenAK you obviously know a lot more about it but I still don;t get it, maybe need to learn more. More than that though - he predicted the 6 the guy would initially leave ont he cheque. That's just the "sealed envelope trick though" (whcih in fact is all the lottery one was too) - I have no idea how it's done but loads of magicians seem to do it.

I also don't think Mouse Woman was a genuine musophobe. DW is a genuine arachnophobe and nothing in this world would have possessed her to get up on stage and put her hand in a box with a 1 in 4 chance of finding a tarantula. She would just have said "no, I'd rather not."

Love the idea of little mousey trap-doors

Oh & one rigged mouse cup/trapdoor - if that cup does get stomped presumably you just bin that film & repeat until you get a stooge suggestible enough to avoid #6...

All the other cups could have a 'I knew you'd leave me!' message on the inside in case it went wrong, too.

yes, I thought that, for a mouse-o-phobe she wasn't very convincing. Just thought she was like me with spiders, don;t like them, would rather not touch them but could do it so as not to lose face on national TV

No - she was far too unperturbed. Most likely an actor - or giving him the extreme benefit of the doubt, he subliminally suggested to her that there wasn't actually going to be a mouse there (which it was fairly obvious that there wasn't going to be).