The Derren Brown Show

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

This is just one of those placeholder threads I desperately start late at night when I want to remind myself of something the next day. I acquired a few episodes of one of his recent television shows. I love British TV: an entire season of shows fits on a single floppy disk, practically.

Anyway, he was a big hit around here the other night. I managed to hook up one of the computers to the TV and we went through the Youtube vid of him doing the Chess Thing on Chess Masters. Dayna then suggested Criss Angel (I may be spelling that incorrectly) who we did not dig as much, but it's Youtube, so you can't believe what you see even when it's not involving magicians.

I just hope, if I ever get into a wiki somewhere, that I get as good as photo as Derren Brown does for his Wikipedia entry.

[Vitriola]

Criss Angel was pretty lame, but looks EXACTLY like one of my female friends. Same hair, similar face, same wardrobe, it's creepy. In fact, I gotta get a picture of her before she changes her hair.

[Lex]

Because I am British I have realised most of my posts require citation so you know what the hell I'm on about. Henceforth, Wikipedia will be Hyper Text Markuping my posts.

I know Darren "Derren" Brown, on his last two tours he has hung out at my flat. He is one of the first magicians I met when I was learning, and he's the guy that turned me off making plastic balls disappear and onto convincing people their hands are stuck to tables.

I met him in a really long-winded way. There is a television show over here called Faking It, it's very popular and really quite incredible. The premise of the show is that they take an individual and in four weeks, turn them and their career into something utterly different. The classic examples are the choir girl who became a punk rocker, and the aristocratic art student who became a street graffiti artist.
At the end of four weeks the protegé must go up in front of 3 pro judges who are at an event featuring several people doing performing their craft, after which the judges are informed that one is a faker. If none of the judges guess the person with just 4 weeks experience, they "Win." Wikipedia says American got a version of this show in 2003.

Faking It did this to my mate:

>

Kevin McMahon was working on his PhD in Display Technologies at Herriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. Faking It took him in and kicked the shit out of him for four weeks until he could fool Paul Daniels, Britain's most famous magician, and two other well-known magician judges. In four weeks he went from an adorable bumbling nerd to a man with massive stage-presence and charisma.


Part of that was being flown to Vegas and being trained up by Penn & Teller. Massively emabarassing to watch because he was completely incapable and cringe-inducingly nerdy. Not anymore, obviously.

It worked, he quite his PhD and is now a professional magician.

Anyway, when I was getting into magic I read Derren's first book, Pure Effect, and noticed that it was dedicated to Teller, as well as having lots of correspondence between the two within its sleeves. I got contact details throug Kev, and then got Derren's through Teller. Pretty fun.

I last saw him at theFringe, he didn't have a show on but was in town visiting the other comedians and magician who descend on Edinburgh every year. I got to hang around the Super Celebrity bar at Potterow with my favourite comedian Jimmy Carr and some Australian guy called Ross Noble who I'd never heard of. It was pretty fun.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Criss Angel was pretty lame, but looks EXACTLY like one of my female friends. Same hair, similar face, same wardrobe, it's creepy. In fact, I gotta get a picture of her before she changes her hair.

Who is/was this?