What this blog is about: Derren Brown's MO

Derren Brown is a wonderful showman. His act combines illusion with hypnotic suggestion to great effect. But the cleverest part of his act is when he 'explains' how he did a trick. As anyone who has tried to replicate hit tricks afterward will tell you, these explanations usually don't work, thus showing that he is much more skilled than the rest of us.

Of course, the real reasons his explanations don't work is that they are hokum. Derren Brown cannot predict the future or control other people any better than the CIA (whose mind control experiments went notoriously badly). Instead, the explanation is part of his illusion. He has, along with David Blaine, brought the wonder back to magic, making it seem truly 'magical'.

While I admire Brown a great deal, I dislike the false explanations. Modern magic - illusion, if you will - was more or less invented by Harry Houdini; indeed, he created the majority of the standard stage illusions used today.

But Houdini spent most of his life debunking mystics who claimed to have special powers. Brown comes dangerously close to that state, as does Blaine; both claim to have abilities beyond that of a normal person. Frighteningly, quite a few people believe them.

So in this blog I will try to explain Brown's illusions, where I can, and debunk his explanations, so that people might come to better understand the art of illusion. It won't always be possible; too often his tricks are edited so that the TV audience cannot possibly work out how they are done. But if I can work out a trick I will explain it, and then debunk his explanation.

I am not a magician myself. (I can do one close-up trick really well, but it becomes less impressive if you've seen me do it thirty or forty times!) I am instead a magic fan. But that is different from being a believer.