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I can assure you, anyone that's devoted their life into studying mentalism can do exactly what you have described... I can but no, I'm not going to outline methods.

I've seen but little of DB working in that BBC American has yet woken to the fact that they are cutting us out of some dynamite entertain on that side of the pond What I have seen of Derren, coupled with what I know of Derren a few years ago (before celebrity became part of his life), simply says the guy is pure genius.

On a different forum someone was asking about a bit Derren did in a show and I pointed out to them that it was "Corinda 101"... they screamed that this would be impossible.. then Luke Jermay pointed out that he developed the bit for Derren and was in fact, in Corinda... the moral of this story is -- STUDY!

Evil wizards like Derren and many of the other "names" that are out there, are fooling you younger guys by using that "old out of date stuff" you keep complaining about and claiming wouldn't fool anyone...

Those who saw Derren's Séance programme might recall the part where a batch of photographs of various people were sorted by specs into two piles, those they felt were dead and those they felt were still alive. When this was completed Derren made some comment about how that was 'Just out of this world'. Now that's what I call truly evil !

Actually, one of those weird coincidences that mess with your head has just happened to me. On Sunday night I dreamed that I was at the Cheshire Show. Brown and a camera crew came up to my friends and I and started doing some spooky convincers. He tried to induce me into a trance but I explained that I would be a bad subject because I knew what he was doing and was more interested in observing him at work than joining in. So he asked me to play along to convince the others. On the command "Sleep!" I dutifully slumped, trying not to laugh and sat there realising that for the sake of the act, I was only able to hear his routine and not see it! Talk about protecting secrets! Then last night, I dreamed that I was in a friend's kitchen chewing the fat and Brown was there (wearing glasses, as it happens). He did my Jumping Matches gag, so I said I could do it too and showed him. He asked me if I could do it another way and showed the match backflipping while lying undisturbed on the kitchen table.

The above is best read with the theme from 'The Twilight Zone' playing in the background!

Mandrake wrote:The above is best read with the theme from 'The Twilight Zone' playing in the background!

It blummin' well is! The really strange thing is that I've had my best two night's sleep in ages!

Tomo wrote:It's just a personal opinion, but bear in mind that, though he tells you the tools he uses at the start of his shows, he never says in what proportion they play a part in each effect. A lot of people, for instance, discover NLP and decide it's the way he achieves all of what you see on screen. Because of that, the best place to start, it seems to me, is with his own books rather than someone else's and work outwards back to the underlying principles.

Exactly. Yesterday I've worked myself through an NLP book that was essentially written for the corporate life. Not really useful, although there are always things that help you creating a sort of framework in which to place other things.
I think you're right when saying that Brown's books are probably the best resources as to where to start. At this moment I've got quite a lot of books that are dealing with these issues, so I am checking them out rapidly in order to continue with a few good examplars.