Derren Brown - The Events

[Kieran Child]

For 50,000 numbers, that would be 25,000 sentences.
If you group them into songs, that is fewer than 1,000 songs.
I don't know how many songs you know the lyrics to, but I reckon you could get there.

But surely you only remember the lyrics to songs because they're generally quite simple, follow logically and are combined with a memorable melody? You'd have to write 1,000 songs with good melodies and then attempt to shoehorn in all these meaningless sentences, few of which would make any sort of sense alone, never mind in combination. If you used existing melodies, it would probably be even harder as you wouldn't be able to get anything to scan properly. Can't see it, myself.

Anyone who knows the lyrics to "Life on Mars" by David Bowie will demonstrate that it is easier than it seems. That song is meaningless sentences against the backdrop of "my way". Note that I say "easier than it seems" though. I do reckon that anyone could do it, because it is not anywhere near inpossible. But it also is by no means simple.

[JimBentley]

Anyone who knows the lyrics to "Life on Mars" by David Bowie will demonstrate that it is easier than it seems. That song is meaningless sentences against the backdrop of "my way". Note that I say "easier than it seems" though. I do reckon that anyone could do it, because it is not anywhere near inpossible. But it also is by no means simple.

Although I may be missing the point here, I don't think 'Life On Mars' is a very good example to illustrate your method. Yes, the lyrics are mainly nonsense (probably during one of Bowie's cut-up phases) but they are all short, generally simple lines that rhyme, whereas your lines are going to be convoluted meaningless sentences that don't rhyme.

[Kieran Child]

Anyone who knows the lyrics to "Life on Mars" by David Bowie will demonstrate that it is easier than it seems. That song is meaningless sentences against the backdrop of "my way". Note that I say "easier than it seems" though. I do reckon that anyone could do it, because it is not anywhere near inpossible. But it also is by no means simple.

Although I may be missing the point here, I don't think 'Life On Mars' is a very good example to illustrate your method. Yes, the lyrics are mainly nonsense (probably during one of Bowie's cut-up phases) but they are all short, generally simple lines that rhyme, whereas your lines are going to be convoluted meaningless sentences that don't rhyme.

Then make them short and rhyming... There should be enough words in the vocabulary of people here to be able to add vowels, y's, w's and h's to a consonant cluster and make it say almost anything they want. I learnt my mums and sisters phone numbers in a rhyming couplet.

[Jon Corby]

How many mums and sisters do you have?

[Kieran Child]

Including the imaginary ones?

[Phil Reynolds]

I don't know whether or not Derren uses the techniques I do.

In Tricks of the Mind he teaches you a number of basic memorising techniques (starting with pegging) before going on to explain how "memory mansions" work, and claims this is now his standard technique for memorising very long sequences of information. I tried it for a bit and am pretty convinced it works - memorising the London A-Z would take a little time and application but not be particularly difficult. Whether he actually did so for The Gathering is moot.

[Jon Corby]

FFS can we stop with this "it worked with [considerably less] items, so I don't see why it wouldn't work with [shitloads more] items". That's the thing with memory, the more you try and remember, the harder it gets.

[Kieran Child]

FFS can we stop with this "it worked with [considerably less] items, so I don't see why it wouldn't work with [shitloads more] items". That's the thing with memory, the more you try and remember, the harder it gets.

I'm not arguing that it would work. I'm explaining how it works. Like TERASABOS, I have no evidence for it, because a lot of memory tricks are only ever utilised for magic. Unlike TERASABOS, I don't expect you to try this out, because it would take a lot more effort. "The more you try and remember, the harder it gets." Only true if you aren't doing it the right way. There will naturally be a limit to the amount of stuff you can remember, but with the correct techniques, that limit is so far away that it will not bother us.
There are probably a few songs from your childhood that I could start playing the music and you could sing along perfectly to. You may have listened to a song so much in the last couple of weeks that you know the lyrics to that as well. The key point is that knowing the lyrics to the old songs didn't prevent you learning the new, and learning the new songs didn't force you to 'forget' the old.

[Phil Reynolds]

FFS can we stop with this "it worked with [considerably less] items, so I don't see why it wouldn't work with [shitloads more] items".

That isn't what I said.

[Charlie Reams]

In Tricks of the Mind he teaches you a number of basic memorising techniques (starting with pegging)

I know there's been some brouhaha over Derren's abuse of his powers in the current series, but the signs were there when he started teaching pegging to innocent viewers at home, many of whom are children or pregnant women.

[Jon Corby]

FFS can we stop with this "it worked with [considerably less] items, so I don't see why it wouldn't work with [shitloads more] items".

That isn't what I said.

It isn't? Can you clarify then?

To me your post read:

"He taught me about memory mansions.
I tried it and it worked (presumably you didn't try it by learning the London A-Z, but on a substantially smaller set of data)
Therefore I conclude you could learn the London A-Z like this."

(By the way, is "memory mansion" the technique he explains in his "clearing out a casino at Blackjack" video (which I would link to on YouTube, but they all appeared to be blocked in my country). Again, the video is utter arse - I am well aware of how card counting can be used to gain a slight advantage over the house in Blackjack, but it's nothing like the utter fantasy portrayed by Derren)

Edit: lol @Charlie's pegging post - missed that first time around

[Phil Reynolds]

FFS can we stop with this "it worked with [considerably less] items, so I don't see why it wouldn't work with [shitloads more] items".

That isn't what I said.

It isn't? Can you clarify then?

I said that Derren explained the technique sufficiently to convince me that someone with the right degree of application and the time to practise could learn very (very) long sequences of information. I said nothing like "it works for 100 items, therefore it must work for 100,000". I probably shouldn't have said "I tried it for a bit" as that was strictly irrelevant. It was his explanation that convinced me, not my experience of playing with the idea.

(By the way, is "memory mansion" the technique he explains in his "clearing out a casino at Blackjack" video

No idea, never seen it. Doesn't sound like it.

[Jon Corby]

I said that Derren explained the technique sufficiently to convince me that someone with the right degree of application and the time to practise could learn very (very) long sequences of information. I said nothing like "it works for 100 items, therefore it must work for 100,000". I probably shouldn't have said "I tried it for a bit" as that was strictly irrelevant. It was his explanation that convinced me, not my experience of playing with the idea.

Sure Phil. Your original post doesn't read at all like I summarised it.

Also, I'd advise against being 'convinced' solely by any of Derren's explanations, since he is a proven fibber. If you can watch the Blackjack video, he explains how he uses a mansion in his mind to remember which cards have already been dealt, and then he can judge whether to hit or stand. Which would all be fine, except in the video we see him utterly cleaning up - in a cutaway we hear the croupier's astonishment that "every time he hit on a 16, he got a 4 or 5". We even see in the video him hitting on 16 to get a 5 - while the dealer is showing a 6! No card-counting would ever tell you that statistically that is the optimum play. So we're left with the entire scene being fabricated, a marked deck, only the winning hands being shown, or just basically *something else*. If his explanation as a whole doesn't stand up to scrutiny, there's no reason to accept any component of it.

[Charlie Reams]

That goddamn chess trick is still bugging me.

[Marc Meakin]

That goddamn chess trick is still bugging me.

Was that the one where he played 9 expert players simultaneously and beat 5 of them?

[Kirk Bevins]

That goddamn chess trick is still bugging me.

I think that's quite easy as he only has to remember 5 moves.

[Kieran Child]

That goddamn chess trick is still bugging me.

I think that's quite easy as he only has to remember 5 moves.

Yup, and I think he explained that bit on the show. I'm guessing the bit that bugs Charlie "The Rattlesnake" Reams is the prediction about the number of white pieces left over.

Actually, the playing itself is a known little doubrie on chess sites. Most of them have ways of cutting out players who can give themselves massive ratings by playing high rated players off against each other.

[Charlie Reams]

That goddamn chess trick is still bugging me.

I think that's quite easy as he only has to remember 5 moves.

He has to remember 4 boards, not moves, in order to tell what's changed, although I'm sure that's well within his capabilities. The real killer is that the number of opponents is odd, so he's not just pairing them off.

[Marc Meakin]

That goddamn chess trick is still bugging me.

I think that's quite easy as he only has to remember 5 moves.

He has to remember 4 boards, not moves, in order to tell what's changed, although I'm sure that's well within his capabilities. The real killer is that the number of opponents is odd, so he's not just pairing them off.

He has to rely on beating the weakest opponent in a genuine game

[Charlie Reams]

He has to rely on beating the weakest opponent in a genuine game

Well, so he says. But seriously, no way.

[Kirk Bevins]

That goddamn chess trick is still bugging me.

I think that's quite easy as he only has to remember 5 moves.

He has to remember 4 boards, not moves, in order to tell what's changed, although I'm sure that's well within his capabilities. The real killer is that the number of opponents is odd, so he's not just pairing them off.

Surely it's just moves. He could come back to the dude and ask "where have you moved?". Simple. The rest of it, such as predicting the number of white pieces left at the end, is baffling though.

[Charlie Reams]

Surely it's just moves. He could come back to the dude and ask "where have you moved?". Simple. The rest of it, such as predicting the number of white pieces left at the end, is baffling though.

He could do but it would be pretty crappy; I don't think chess players are obliged to tell their opponent what move they made (can anyone who knows about chess confirm this?). I think the prediction trick at the end is another of those "predict it after it happened" type things which we've discussed to death, although I don't remember.

[Kieran Child]

Surely it's just moves. He could come back to the dude and ask "where have you moved?". Simple. The rest of it, such as predicting the number of white pieces left at the end, is baffling though.

He could do but it would be pretty crappy; I don't think chess players are obliged to tell their opponent what move they made (can anyone who knows about chess confirm this?). I think the prediction trick at the end is another of those "predict it after it happened" type things which we've discussed to death, although I don't remember.

They aren't obliged to, but it is etiquette in a simultaneous display for the players to wait until the performer is at their table before playing a move anyway. Unless clocks are being used, but I don't think they were. In order to do this, Derren would need to keep 4 moves in his head, and be replacing one each time. This isn't that hard. I cannot remember who the weakest player was but if they are a non-chess player, then only a couple of chess lessons would give Derren almost a 100% chance of winning - When you're ameteur, the increase in ability you can achieve in a short space of time is quite dramatic.
Yes it was predicted after it happened.

[Charlie Reams]

Surely it's just moves. He could come back to the dude and ask "where have you moved?". Simple. The rest of it, such as predicting the number of white pieces left at the end, is baffling though.

He could do but it would be pretty crappy; I don't think chess players are obliged to tell their opponent what move they made (can anyone who knows about chess confirm this?). I think the prediction trick at the end is another of those "predict it after it happened" type things which we've discussed to death, although I don't remember.

They aren't obliged to, but it is etiquette in a simultaneous display for the players to wait until the performer is at their table before playing a move anyway. Unless clocks are being used, but I don't think they were. In order to do this, Derren would need to keep 4 moves in his head, and be replacing one each time. This isn't that hard. I cannot remember who the weakest player was but if they are a non-chess player, then only a couple of chess lessons would give Derren almost a 100% chance of winning - When you're ameteur, the increase in ability you can achieve in a short space of time is quite dramatic.
Yes it was predicted after it happened.

The weakest guy was British Schools Champion or something - so not GM, but far better than any casual player is likely to be. I really doubt that Derren could beat him in a fair fight.

[Kieran Child]

Looked it up. The ninth guy was Robert Chan. He was labelled the president of Kings College chess society. He plays board 3 for them. Here are some results with him on board 3, not doing very well. Looking at the other people in that tournament, he ends up looking about a 140 rating, but then someone with about that rating refers to him as a "much higher rated player" on this thread.
If Derren is 'shit' as he said, then yeah, he probably wouldn't have put his reputation on beating this guy. A couple of points:
1 - The guy is average. Slightly worse than me it looks like, but I've spent quite a few years getting to this standard. A year of training would not put you in a position of likelihood to beat him.
2 - A decent club player could though. If Derren had a code worked out with a cameraman then this would at least make redundent the use of earpieces that people love to accuse mentalists of having.
3 - Research? It's a long shot but it is definitely possible. People aren't predictable as a whole when it comes to chess, but individuals are. If you look at a database of games from someone (especially if they've played a lot online) then it can sometimes be easy to identify a line that they often go down, but never win from, because they don't realise it's crap for them yet. This was used against me once. I cannot say how much of a certainty it would be though, but it's not an impossibility.

[Rosemary Roberts]

earpieces that people love to accuse mentalists of having.

In his case my money is on a wrist piece. He spends a lot of time with his hand up to his face.

[Kirk Bevins]

Yes it was predicted after it happened.

How though cuz that Grandmaster had it in his pocket.

[Jon Corby]

Yes it was predicted after it happened.

How though cuz that Grandmaster had it in his pocket.

Picky-pocket-switchy shenanigans.

I'm no expert by any means, and I don't actually like knowing how tricks are done as it spoils it, but I think it's reasonably safe to say that if we haven't been shown the prediction beforehand, it wasn't written beforehand.

Also, with regards the "remembering the moves" thing, bear in mind that he only has to look over his shoulder to see the exact same board without the player's move having been made...

[Charlie Reams]

Also, with regards the "remembering the moves" thing, bear in mind that he only has to look over his shoulder to see the exact same board without the player's move having been made...

Yeah but seriously, how shit would that be?

[Jon Corby]

Also, with regards the "remembering the moves" thing, bear in mind that he only has to look over his shoulder to see the exact same board without the player's move having been made...

Yeah but seriously, how shit would that be?

I don't follow. Why would that be shit? Actually looking over his shoulder would be pretty obvious, but I assume he's free to move around the boards as he chooses - he'll have to, unless he waits at each board for the next move to be played. What I mean is he has the board with & without move available to him. If he even needs it, that is, I'm not sure how difficult keeping track of 4 chess boards would be.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"I don't follow. Why would that be shit? Actually looking over his shoulder would be pretty obvious, but I assume he's free to move around the boards as he chooses - he'll have to, unless he waits at each board for the next move to be played. What I mean is he has the board with & without move available to him. If he even needs it, that is, I'm not sure how difficult keeping track of 4 chess boards would be."

He was wandering around so could check what the other half of each pair had done. The individual he beat was the weakest player by far, but no idiot, (and far better than one would expect a "social" player to be), so I suspect DB was being fed moves either from a good player or the latest version of Fritz, which even then was probably good enough. The prediction thing was probably switched afterwards as usual. The really amazing thing was that all these experienced chessplayers didn't realise what he was going to do (with the 4 pairs of players), as it is quite a well-known trick. One GM did refuse to take part, so I assume he guessed. Adding the odd player did make it interesting though.

In the early 70s a TV "psychic" (I think Romark, though it could have been Kreskin) offered to play Spassky and Fischer simultaneously and score at least 50%. Fischer refused immediately, but probably more because he regarded it as an insult, than because he knew it was a trick. (Romark and Kreskin achieved some success by doing a similar performance to Uri Geller.)

[Gavin Chipper]

Surely it's just moves. He could come back to the dude and ask "where have you moved?". Simple. The rest of it, such as predicting the number of white pieces left at the end, is baffling though.

He could do but it would be pretty crappy; I don't think chess players are obliged to tell their opponent what move they made (can anyone who knows about chess confirm this?). I think the prediction trick at the end is another of those "predict it after it happened" type things which we've discussed to death, although I don't remember.

I hadn't even considered that his opponents might be making moves while he wasn't there. I don't know anything about chess, but from my perspective, the other players making their moves in his absence is not how I would intuitively imagine such a situation playing out at all.

Regarding the prediction of the number of pieces left, I don't know how he did it, but every time he says "I don't want to touch it" he always seems to end up doing so before the piece of paper is revealed.

[Gavin Chipper]

I don't actually like knowing how tricks are done as it spoils it

I'm surprised you spend so much time posting in this thread, surmising about what might have happened. Also when people say this, I think that this is a good example of "mind control" from a magician. Magicians don't want to reveal their secrets as they'd probably quite quickly run out of tricks that still baffle people, but then somehow they manage to transfer this onto their audience and make them not even want to know! It's like when someone I know said she didn't want to know who the Stig was.

[Jon Corby]

I don't actually like knowing how tricks are done as it spoils it

I'm surprised you spend so much time posting in this thread, surmising about what might have happened.

Ooh, bitchy

Nah, the only thing I'm interested in debating/debunking is the "OMG Derren's a freaky mind genius who uses suggestion/NLP/reading etc etc" plop. His downright hypocrisy in exposing phony science while promoting his own bland of baloney is beginning to offend me.

[Sue Sanders]

Ha Ha - hope the roulette croupier is more skilled than me - I took a course in fun casino croupiering. My ball spin skills were random - I 'd do a few really good ones and then a few crap ones - sometimes being only able to do a forward spin and sometimes only a backwards one.(You're supposed to alternate) so I would very much expect no-one could predict where a ball I spun was going to land - other than maybe in someone gin and tonic!

[Jon Corby]

"Wow - one out. That's still pretty impressive. If it was a trick, he'd have got it bang on, so it definitely wasn't, and he was just calculating it all like he said, but it's obviously really difficult, so he's done really well. Cor."


That's what I'm meant to say, isn't it Derren?

[Matt Morrison]

Yawn, Derren, yawn.

[Sue Sanders]

I didn't watch it all, well hardly any of so didn't see if he actually showed the chip laid. Betting on 'neighbours' might have been worth a punt - that covers five numbers - the number picked and two either side of it as they appear on the wheel , as opposed to covering consecutive numbers. Maybe he'll reveal that to us next week as his facesaving 'twist'??

[Jon O'Neill]

"Wow - one out. That's still pretty impressive. If it was a trick, he'd have got it bang on, so it definitely wasn't, and he was just calculating it all like he said, but it's obviously really difficult, so he's done really well. Cor."


That's what I'm meant to say, isn't it Derren?

Fuck off.

[Jon Corby]

"Wow - one out. That's still pretty impressive. If it was a trick, he'd have got it bang on, so it definitely wasn't, and he was just calculating it all like he said, but it's obviously really difficult, so he's done really well. Cor."


That's what I'm meant to say, isn't it Derren?

Fuck off.

Haha, touchy. What's your problem Jono?

[Jon O'Neill]

I don't much care for reasoning, logic or justification, but you're talking shit.

[Jon Corby]

I don't much care for reasoning, logic or justification, but you're talking shit.

What am I talking shit about? The fact that that was the planned ending? The fact that the casino scenes were neither genuine nor live? That Ben hadn't been hypnotised into handing £5k over and then forgetting all about it?

[Jeffrey Burgin]

I reckon he 'lost' it deliberately as well- he was close enough that it looked as though he had supposedly 'calculated' it, but by losing it he was trying to show that all of his tricks were similar and that they could have gone wrong, and so he is a 'true' magician.

This of course probably fooled nobody, and everyone knows the previous ones were foolproof. Or were they...?

Oh, I feel sorry for the guy who handed over 5k, he must have thought he was nailed on for 180k!

[Jon Corby]

Oh, I feel sorry for the guy who handed over 5k, he must have thought he was nailed on for 180k!

I also feel sorry for him, because he was such a bad actor. Answers phone to Derren. Appears on TV in his own living room. Doesn't actually even look at TV, nor then out of the window to locate the camera staring at him, until explicitly told to do either.

[Jon O'Neill]

Yawn.

[Matt Morrison]

Oh, I feel sorry for the guy who handed over 5k, he must have thought he was nailed on for 180k!

I also feel sorry for him, because he was such a bad actor. Answers phone to Derren. Appears on TV in his own living room. Doesn't actually even look at TV, nor then out of the window to locate the camera staring at him, until explicitly told to do either.

Yeah that was one of the worst bits of the show.
Stands in front of the TV for 45 seconds, even including a bit where Derren asks "you're watching the show yeah?", and then still has to be told by Derren he's on TV? Awful.

I doubt this was a factor in deciding whether to win or lose, but of course it's also worth noting that its much easier for a bad actor to fake being grumpy about losing £5k when he hasn't, than it is for a bad actor to fake elation at winning £180k when he hasn't.

Really disappointing. I wonder if it'd been less disappointing if this show had come first in the series rather than last, but it was certainly a weird one to end on.

[Michael Wallace]

Haha, just caught up with the casino one, that was pretty funny. Definitely in the fake casino camp. The thing with the car speeds was believable, but then he had to go and ruin it by saying he was going to do it by sound alone, and needed to know the make of car (!), ridiculous. Similarly the squash ball thing - I don't like saying things like "there's just no way that's possible", but really, there's just no way that's possible - look at how long something like Hawk-Eye takes to calculate trajectories, for instance.

Anyone else think the guy who won the £20 should've given it to the girl who lost? The whole thing seemed a bit harsh on her.

[Kirk Bevins]

Anyone else think the guy who won the £20 should've given it to the girl who lost? The whole thing seemed a bit harsh on her.

That was pretty shit as if the guy ended up with the £20 note then it would have been game over but since the girl had it they asked her to open it. Winner either way as long as the bloke didn't open the note in front of the cameras. The car speed thing baffled me though.

[Alec Rivers]

Anyone else think the guy who won the £20 should've given it to the girl who lost?

Yes.

[Jon Corby]

Anyone else think the guy who won the £20 should've given it to the girl who lost? The whole thing seemed a bit harsh on her.

That was pretty shit as if the guy ended up with the £20 note then it would have been game over but since the girl had it they asked her to open it. Winner either way as long as the bloke didn't open the note in front of the cameras. The car speed thing baffled me though.

At least that the £20 was actually a "magic trick" though, in the traditional sense. Same with the paint cans. I enjoyed those bits far more than anything else, because at least I'm watching and judging the effect for myself. When you start a trick with "I've hypnotised one of you to hand over £5k and then forget all about it", there's nothing else to think other than "um, no you haven't." So then you're basically just watching someone act. Who knows what their incentive is, he could actually be an actor (probably not as he was terrible) or someone who applied for the show as he described. I mean, if I'd been chosen, I'd have gone along with it as it looked like a guaranteed £175k. So while Ben may not have been an actor by profession, he was acting. Badly.

(The casino was definitely fake as well - when Derren first approaches the roulette table, we hear the croupier declare Red 16, and indeed place the marker on Red 16. When we see the wheel just after through "Derren's camera", it's coming to rest with the ball in black 13. Oops)

Dunno about the car speed thing, but the only things I would offer about that is that they were perhaps filming above a 50mph speed limit road, with a very visible police car and policeman pointing a camera at them. Hence everyone was going roughly 50mph. It's possible that they filmed more than we saw, and we saw the exactly correct ones (who were both within a few mph of 50), but more likely is that somebody from Derren's crew could see the readout, or even that he had another pal under the bridge clocking the speed. As for the age of the Ford, everybody seems to forget that when an object passes under a bridge, it doesn't materialise in an alternate universe. Derren was facing away from the oncoming traffic, and would have been able to see the car going away from him when Westwood took his fingers away.

[Rosemary Roberts]

... fake ...

That just about sums it up for me. Derren Brown is a highly skilled conjuror, and I enjoy watching conjurors (bring back Geoffrey Durham!), but this whole series has only pissed me off because of all the totally pointless flannel. I don't believe he used any complicated memory tricks and certainly did not learn maps and books by heart, even though it might conceivably be possible. There was slight-of hand, redirection, bait-and-switch, stooges, camera trickery and just plain editing. All very cleverly done but ultimately disappointing because he kept claiming to explain or demonstrate what he had "really" done and instead merely spouted yet another chunk of pointless pseudoscientific mysticism.

One thing does still puzzle me, though: Derren Brown does not need to use inept stooges: anybody who came across as inept was meant to be inept. The puzzle being "why?".

[Gavin Chipper]

It was also mighty convenient that when he gave the year of the car it was 93/94 rather than just 1993 or 1994 considering that the age-related bit of a number plate spans two years.

[Michael Wallace]

Finally caught up on the 'psychic spy' episode (yeah, we watched them out of order). I'd already been accidentally spoilered about the concentric circles, so I couldn't do it (thought it was fun watching it knowing what was going to happen, but I'll get to that). CF (who I had managed to avoid spoilering) drew a boat, because when he met up with the girl he was near a river/canal, and when he was doing the mental journey to the science museum he started on a river, or something, but he (CF) acknowledges that once you start trying to second-guess it you're doing it wrong (inadvertently or otherwise).

I thought the ending reveal with the newspapers thing was very bizarre - he seemed to be trying to have both outcomes. On the one hand he was saying "hey, isn't it amazing how subliminal messaging works?" but then he was all "well I don't know why everyone here drew concentric circles too!". I think this is another example of how I've been underwhelmed by him this series, he could have explained all the tricks and that would have been really interesting, or maybe he could have pretended it was all genuine and left it to us to figure out, but instead he goes for some weird halfway house.

Finally, I didn't see anyone comment on this thread on how they managed to get people in the museum to guess correctly (although I'm probably just being a blindy), but I noticed this:



Coincidence?

[Kirk Bevins]

I also noticed that the railings that Derren stood by (the iron ones) were concentric circles (from memory).

[Matt Morrison]

Another fuck up from roulette show - seems silly to make a point of how all casinos these days can detect if you are wearing even the tiniest of electronic devices (which tend to be concealed inside a pocket or the heel of a shoe) and then also show us the size of the "tiny" camera you're going to 'conceal' up your sleeve. It was the size of a healthy dildo and having it up his sleeve made him walk round like a paraplegic zombie.

And that green ball in the squash court was so badly CGI'd. I was sure the bounces didn't look quite right when I watched it the first time, but on a second viewing they didn't even do the reflections in the walls very well either (not bothering with some entirely, it seemed). When they do show a real shot of the ball afterwards, it's also a noticeably different shade of green (although that seems a pretty stupid mistake to oversee so that might be for some other camera-y reason).

[Phil Reynolds]

Another fuck up from roulette show - seems silly to make a point of how all casinos these days can detect if you are wearing even the tiniest of electronic devices (which tend to be concealed inside a pocket or the heel of a shoe) and then also show us the size of the "tiny" camera you're going to 'conceal' up your sleeve. It was the size of a healthy dildo and having it up his sleeve made him walk round like a paraplegic zombie.

And that green ball in the squash court was so badly CGI'd. I was sure the bounces didn't look quite right when I watched it the first time, but on a second viewing they didn't even do the reflections in the walls very well either (not bothering with some entirely, it seemed). When they do show a real shot of the ball afterwards, it's also a noticeably different shade of green (although that seems a pretty stupid mistake to oversee so that might be for some other camera-y reason).

I agree about the size of the "hidden" camera - it made Susie's pencam look hi-tech. And having been told there were two cameras in the casino, we suddenly (and conveniently) had a third camera angle giving us a close up of the ball going round in its slot as the wheel came to a halt.

But the squash ball wasn't CGI'd. What would that achieve? Especially when the same "trick" can be achieved simply by some cunning editing? She throws the ball, watches where it lands, then he shows her his written "prediction" - all standard stuff; and all they do to cement the illusion for the viewer is dub on his voice calling out where it's going to land, and have an inset shot showing him marking up the card - apparently (but only apparently) before the ball has come to rest. I too thought the ball's bounces looked odd, but when I saw it again I realised that was because the camera angle was higher than it seemed.

Overall, the most disappointing episode of the series I thought (and for some reason not available on 4oD).

[Michael Wallace]

(and for some reason not available on 4oD).

Ooh, how odd, it was up last night (or whenever it was I watched it), but it's gone now.

[Phil Reynolds]

having been told there were two cameras in the casino, we suddenly (and conveniently) had a third camera angle giving us a close up of the ball going round in its slot as the wheel came to a halt.

My mistake - it wasn't a third camera angle, it was the second one that zoomed in on the wheel after we saw the chips being placed. Still pretty clearly a fake set-up though - if it was genuinely a hidden camera, the camera operator wouldn't have been able to monitor what he was filming and so wouldn't have been able to follow the ball round in the wheel so precisely.

[Jon Corby]

But the squash ball wasn't CGI'd. What would that achieve?

The same thing as doing a split-screen with the lottery? I haven't actually watched the squash bit back - in fact that was probably the best bit of the whole show in terms of the effect we were seeing. The problem I (and I think many others) now have with Derren is that I'm not particularly left wondering how he did it, as I can think of several ways you could end up with that footage (two being mentioned above by Phil and Matt), and I can no longer rule any of them out as "well he wouldn't do that, because that would just be pointless". As Matt said, if he can use CGI, then why not? As Phil said, if he can edit it so we're seeing a grossly distorted version of what actually happened, why not?

I definitely don't agree with you Phil though about it being the worst of the series, I think I actually enjoyed it the most, especially the more I think about it now. I've read elsewhere (I think it was in the comments of The Guardian) that there was an audition process for Ben's role (written by someone else who attended, but went out at the first stage) Ben obviously excelled at being "suggestible" (this guy wrote that while he was there Ben went for everything, forgetting his name, thinking his name was Susan etc). Clearly Derren has a large fanbase of willing volunteers who believe in him so completely (Jono?) that with a click of his fingers they will do anything he says (after all, you know it's never going to be detrimental to you, and you'll get to be mini-famous for a bit, plus in this instance it looked like a good chance of big cash!) And clearly by the end of this audition process you are going to be left with somebody who really will play the role as you want them to. And you can still validly claim he's not a stooge or actor, because he hasn't been explicitly prepped beforehand or scripted, but he definitely will do exactly as he's told.

Of course, Ben claimed never to have met Derren, but he clearly had even before the VT of him handing over the cash supposedly on Monday. I don't personally believe you can make people genuinely forget such things with hypnotism anyway, but think how it unravels further when you're presumably expected to believe he's forgotten all about attending the audition etc (which he would have told friends/family about beforehand). Derren perhaps got a bit unlucky with Ben in that he wasn't remotely convincing at acting (he was sure sweating a lot though for somebody sat at home leisurely watching TV!) I chuckled also when Derren asked him after watching the VT "do you remember that now?" and he stuttered and stumbled as he wasn't sure what answer he should give before going with the safe "no" option. Derren then assured him it was okay if he did start remembering bits, kinda like a dream.

Then again maybe Derren didn't get unlucky with Ben, in that nobody at all seems to have liked him, or wanted him to actually win the money. So if we take the whole thing as I've outlined it above, the trick is really wholly on Ben. He really must have thought he was about to win £175k. And then didn't. And that really does make me lol. I probably would upgrade this to a-lol if they had omitted the bit about giving him his money back, and just gone "ooh ouch, bad luck mate. Hope you won't miss that £5k too much."

[Phil Reynolds]

But the squash ball wasn't CGI'd. What would that achieve?

The same thing as doing a split-screen with the lottery?

What I'm getting at is, why complicate things unnecessarily? The split screen explanation for the lottery trick is not just the one that is self-evidently true once you examine the footage closely; it's also the simplest way of doing it given that there was no audience in the studio to witness what really happened. With the squash ball trick, he had a volunteer there throwing the ball for him. What do you suppose she saw at the time, if the footage we saw was CGI'd?

Either he called out the number of the square the ball was going to land on as she threw it or he didn't. If he did, then adding CGI footage in post-production to make it look as though the ball did actually land on the predicted square isn't going to convince the volunteer, at the time, that he got it right. So we're left with the alternative that he didn't call out the number when it appeared he did, and he used some sleight-of-hand to fool her, and some manipulative editing to disguise the ruse from us. And if that's the case, there's no reason to go to the hassle of creating CGI effects.

The bit I did a-lol at, as the camera pulled away from the OB van at the end, was the assistant saying, "Don't worry Ben, we'll get your five grand back" - quite clearly on cue and with the sound guy conveniently holding a boom mike over his head.