Derren Brown: The Experiments

More from DB a week on Friday (21st Oct) as Channel 4 begins showing his new 4 part series 'Derren Brown: The Experiments'. You just know these are going to be good. Here's the trailer:

Flashed Away

Oh, and if you were unhappy about the way Lost ended, you would have also been a little frustrated with the finale of Flashforward (nice little reviews here and here).

No answers there at all, apart from pretty much everyone experiencing their flashforward just as they had seen it (kind of). Apart from those that didn't. It ended with another blackout and of course another flashforward, setting it all up for a second series. The bummer is there won't be a second series as ABC cancelled the show. Ho hum.

Derren 'n' Lou

Derren's final encounter as part of Derren Brown Investigates took him to the US to spend a few days with Lou Gentile, a ghost hunter and demonologist. We were treated to a few ghost photographs which, for Lou, provided strong proof of life after death but, for Derren, provided strong proof that we are very adept at seeing meaningful patterns in 'noise'. Especially when we're highly motivated to look for them.

Much of Lou's 'data' were in the form of Electronic Voice Phenomena, or EVP. As part of an investigation of a haunted house, Lou would ask questions out loud to the spirits thought to be haunting the place, leaving a gap for the spirit(s) to respond. A digital voice recorder placed on a table recorded the questions along with any answers. Typically, no response would be heard back at the time, but when the recording was played back sounds could be heard in the gaps between Lou's questions. Many people, such as Lou, believe that these sounds are the faint voices of spirits trying to communicate from the other side. The difficulty is that these sounds, much like the ghost photos, usually require a fair bit of interpretation to hear what is supposedly being said. What Lou hears as a message from the dead, you or I (or indeed Derren) might hear as unintelligible crackle.

If these noises aren't voices from beyond then what might they be? A useful contribution to the programme was made by a forensic audio analyst who pointed out that the noises are likely to be an artifact of how these digital voice recorders work, particularly those that are voice-activated. As is often the case with claims of apparently paranormal phenomena, a more likely explanation tends to be quite mundane but is often overlooked by people wishing to believe that something supernatural is happening.

A rather poignant end to the programme was the news that Lou had died a few months after the filming. I wonder if he's been in touch yet?

The Ghost Hunter

The final part of the Derren Brown Investigates trilogy is on tonight (Channel 4, 10pm). This time the focus is on a ghosthunter called Lou Gentile. My guess is that on this occasion our man will indeed be convinced that something paranormal is going on. Not.

There doesn't seem to be a trailer as such available for tonight's show, but there is some 'exclusive footage' from the show on our old friend YouTube:



It's a toss up between whether we watch DBI or the final episode of Flashforward, which is on Five at the same time. Luckily I imagine both will be available to watch on the web (or on Channel 4+1 for DBI) so we won't miss out either way!

Lost but not forgotten

So this week saw the end of Lost, one of the most ambitious and complex drama series ever. It spanned six seasons over six years and kept fans glued to the screen right up the final moments.

Many a fan will have quickly turned to the internet to help them make sense of what they had just watched, as well as help them to interpret and re-interpret everything they had seen from Season One onwards! There aren't many TV shows that integrate such diverse topics as destiny, time-travel, faith, philosophy, love, and what happens after we die into a compelling drama.

But, of course, many questions were left unanswered, such as: So what exactly was the island? Why could it move in space and time? What was the smoke monster? Who was Jacob's "mother"? Why did the island need protecting? Etc., etc. If you're a fan of the show you'll know what I'm talking about, if you're not (and shame on you) you won't have a clue or, indeed, give a toss.

The web is abound with discussions and speculation over what it was all about, including its very own Lostpedia. As I browse through a few reviews of the finale and the discussions that follow, it is interesting to notice that those people who seem to be least satisfied with how it ended are those who don't seem to 'get it'. Those that have a better handle on what was going on seem quite happy with how it was brought to a close, despite the many unanswered questions.

It seems there is likely to be a final 'epilogue' to be included in the DVD boxed set that focuses on what happens to Hurley and Ben after they take over as the new protectors of the island. But other than that, that's your lot.

The Future is Google

Or rather the future of TV is Google TV:



Speaking of Google, if you happened to try Googling something today or yesterday you would have discovered that it is the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, and a click on the Google logo would have got you a free game!

The Man With X-Ray Eyes

The second of three documentaries in the Derren Brown Investigates series is broadcast tonight on Channel 4 at 10pm. I wonder if the man in the title will be watching...?

Derren Brown Investigates

Been looking forward to these documentaries since the beginning of last year when I knew they were being made. The first one is to be shown on Channel 4 on May 10th.



One of the subjects under investigation is medium Joe Power. A little over a year ago, when putting these documentaries together, the producers of the show had hoped to conduct a controlled test of Joe's alleged abilities. The testing was to take place at the Psychology Department at Liverpool Hope University, so I was looking forward to meeting both Derren and Joe. Alas, it was not to be... after days of working out the logistics of the testing arrangements, Joe pulled out the night before the testing was due to be done.

Perhaps he would have been more motivated to take part if there had been a million dollars on offer?

The Midlands' Ghosthunter

I watched Eggheads for the first time tonight (BBC2, 6pm). A 30-minute roller-coaster of televisual excitement. I guarantee that if you watched it tomorrow night, you'll be on the edge of your seat within the first few minutes... reaching for the remote.


As I'm sure you know, the show pits challengers against a team of 'Eggheads' who are essentially quiz champions who have won quizzes ranging from Mastermind, to Brain of Britain, to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? One is even 4-times World Quizzing Champion. We're talking quiz freaks here.

Why am I telling you this? Well, by the light of the full moon this morning, I left the house at 6.30 to get to BBC Birmingham for a 9am audition for Eggheads. No, not to be one of the Eggheads themselves (like you were thinking that...). This was as part of a team of challengers.

My friend and erstwhile Most Haunted sparring partner, Richard Felix, had been asked to put together a 'ghosthunters' team for the show. He needed five team members (plus a reserve) who could loosely be described as ghosthunters who were knowledgeable, erudite, well read, etc. So he phoned me... and asked me if I knew of anyone who fit the bill. As I couldn't think of anyone, he settled for me as a team member. Even though, to be honest, I'm not really much of a ghosthunter.

Although we'd need six team members for the show if we were chosen, we got by with four for today's audition. Richard's son, Edd, is also a ghosthunter and leads nightly ghost walks around Derby, and CJ Romer is another expert on ghosts and the paranormal. More importantly, CJ is bit of an egghead himself with an encyclopedic knowlege of the arts and humanities (i.e., the proper clever stuff). I gather one of the Eggheads is also called CJ... something Richard hoped might increase our chances of being picked for the show!

When Richard, Edd, and I arrived (CJ arrived later), we were led into a room where three other teams were waiting. One was a full team of five members, another had three of their team like us, and the other had only two members of their team. It was actually this last team that were the most interesting. It turns out they were a Take That tribute band. Or rather they were a 'fat' Take That tribute band. Yep, they were called Take Fat.

Our first task was to individually answer ten general knowledge questions in 3 minutes. These were not easy. And even the ones I thought I might have got right, I didn't. For example, "For which film did Paul Newman win a Best Actor Oscar?". The possible answers were (a) Cool Hand Luke, (b) The Color of Money, or (c) The Hustler. I was fairly confident it was Cool Hand Luke. But a quick check on Wikipedia tells me it was The Color of Money! (Apparently he was nominated for Best Actor award for the other two movies, but didn't win it.)

Even more worryingly, an hour or so later between us we couldn't even remember half of the questions we were asked! Good job there isn't a memory round. Or maybe there is and I've just forgotten...

The next part replicated (kind of) the format of the show itself. A category is chosen and the team picks one member to answer a multiple choice question on that category. If you got it right then you compete in a head to head with the other teams to win a point. We didn't do too bad in that round (i.e., we did at least as well as the others!).

The final part was a brief team interview on camera. These tapes are sent to the series producer and we were told that the decision of which teams to have on the show is based almost entirely on this footage. I guess the mock quiz rounds are to ensure we're not complete idiots (oh dear...). By this time our fourth team member, CJ, had arrived. Which is just as well as while we were waiting he was able to take the ten question general knowledge test and hopefully get right all the questions we had got wrong (and promptly forgotten). Though I think he went for Cool Hand Luke as well...

I think we did ok with the team interview. Apart from fact that I was asked who my favourite Egghead was. This was a problem as I'd never watched the show! Fortunately, I had remembered that one of the Eggheads was Judith Keppell the woman who had been the first person to win the million pounds on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? "Yes, she's my favourite!" I enthusiastically told the researcher. I also felt a bit of a fraud shouting in unison, "we're the ghosthunters from the Midlands!" Not only am I not much of a ghosthunter, I'm not from the Midlands.

Anyway, we'll see if we get chosen to be on the show itself. If you really want to know more about the Eggheads quiz programme, Wikipedia has an astonishingly detailed page, which is probably more interesting than the show itself, which you can watch on BBC iPlayer here.

From TV History to TV Burp

In case you missed what Derren Brown regarded as being an "anus-invertingly unpalatable" idea and what the Guardian called "the worse single hour of television produced in 2009", here is the first part of Michael Jackson: The Live Seance:



Those willing to risk your anus being inverted can catch the rest of the show on YouTube.

It turns out they did, indeed, have a parapsychologist on as an observer. A rather pallid young man who sat in the background on a bar stool and, well, observed. He seemed kind of lost for words as he watched Derek Acorah lead four sequined (and perfectly well-balanced) Jacko "superfans" through the seance. At the end of the show he seemed genuinely concerned, along with many of the viewers no doubt, for the emotional wellbeing of said superfans. One superfan in particular, himself called Michael, had sobbed uncontrollably as his idol (or rather, Derek) spoke to him.

I guess both Derek and superfan Michael have recovered... I gather they are to appear on Harry Hill's TV Burp on Saturday night.

Television history

Tonight, the medium Derek Acorah will attempt to contact the spirit of Michael Jackson in a live seance to be broadcast on Sky1 at 10pm. Here's the trailer:



I wonder if they'll have a parapsychologist on there as an observer...?

You do the math(s)

So that's how it was done! Deep maths. Should have guessed really, shouldn't we? All that stuff you did at school... that was shallow maths. If only we'd had a few double periods of deep maths and we might have been able to win the lottery!


Of course DB wasn't going to reveal how he really did it, but he did give us some plausible sounding 'explanations', including a strenuous denial that he did NOT fix the lottery machine. All of this feeds the ongoing debate over how he really did do it. What amazes me is the number of people, in particular journalists, who seem to be so pissed off that he didn't reveal his actual method!

After Friday's show, Channel 4 aired a show featuring that other DB that seems to get under people's skin, David Blaine. This show included more examples of Blaine's street magic where he performs close-up tricks with things like cards and coins and focuses on the wild reactions from his audiences. The exception was the final item: A bullet catch. Traditionally, this has involved catching a bullet between the teeth and is (surprise, surprise!) usually achieved by some kind of trickery. Blaine's version seemed to be a little different. He didn't attempt to catch the bullet in his teeth, but instead held a small metal cup between his teeth and stood there while a fellow magician fired a .22 calibre rifle at him. The high speed cameras seemed to show that is what indeed happened!

Blaine's show was titled What Is Magic? This question is fitting for both Brown and Blaine as they both do a fine job of blurring the line between what is real and what is not.

How did he do it?

Still wondering how Derren Brown predicted the lottery numbers on Wednesday night? Supposedly all will be revealed in The Events tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm. If you missed the live broadcast on Wednesday night you can watch it on YouTube.


From the moment he revealed his prediction there has been much debate over how he achieved it. Theories range from camera trickery (i.e., the use of a split-screen) to laser technology (a laser beam somehow projecting the numbers on to the ping-pong balls that formed his prediction). Some have even suggested that Derren spent the last year recording all of the possible combinations and splicing that together with the live broadcast. However, I have a feeling it would take longer than a year to pre-record the millions of combinations that could come up! Some of the more common theories have been collected together here.

No matter how he achieved it, Derren Brown and Objective Productions have again produced an amazing effect that has got us all scratching our heads wondering how on earth he might have done it. I know I'll be watching tonight to hear his explanation, whether it be the truth or some other fantastic deception!

Brown knows

Psychological illusionist (i.e., magician) Derren Brown is up to his old tricks again. Or rather, he's up to some new tricks. He has a new series called The Events starting on Channel 4 this week. He's opening the series with a rather audacious stunt in which he plans to predict the winning numbers in this Wednesday's National Lottery.

Coincidentally (!) I took part in a psychic lottery experiment yesterday as part of an ongoing study being run by Mick O'Neill. The aim was also to attempt to predict this Wednesday's winning lottery numbers. No trick here, Mick has spent a few years collecting data in an attempt to see if it is possible to predict the numbers using psychic means. For what it's worth the numbers I 'predicted' were: 3, 4, 8, 9, 17 and 38.

The draw is broadcast on Wednesday 9th September on BBC1 at 10.35pm. Mr Brown will be on Channel4 at the same time.

I can't decide

I'm currently enjoying reading Dave Gorman's latest book, America Unchained (another birthday present from Rachel!). It chronicles his attempt to drive across the USA avoiding all the big Chains. This means he doesn't allow himself to stay in any of the Chain motels and, more of a challenge, he's not allowed to fill up his car at any of the Chain gas stations.

The trip was inspired by an earlier stint in the States in which Gorman had lamented how the big Chains had taken over America at the cost of independent owners of motels, gas stations, and so on.

As I say, I'm really enjoying the book but was distracted from its pages the other evening when I heard Dave Gorman's voice coming from the TV. He was providing the voiceover for an ad for Sainsbury's Homebase, a large chain of DIY stores in the UK.

I couldn't decide whether that was a little ironic or a tad hypocritical...?

Too sarcastic for my own good

As I was adding the blog entries from our holiday in Italy, something made me a little uneasy and it's been niggling away at the back of my mind for the last few days. So I thought I'd just set the record straight... I do NOT find Stavros Flatley funny. I was being (too) sarcastic (for my own good). There, I've said it.

Comic genius

I think I might have had a sense of humour bypass without realising it. Last weekend I caught the result of Britain's Got Talent having managed to skilfully avoid the whole thing until that point. It wasn't so much the shock defeat for Susan Boyle that caught my attention, rather the phenomenon that is Stavros Flatley. YouTube won't let me embed the better quality clips of their Final act (which you can view here), so apologies for the poor quality of the clip:



Each time I watch this clip, my sides ache with pain as I guffaw at the sheer comedy genius that this father and son display with their moves in time to the Riverdance music. You read that right folks, they dance to the Riverdance music! And they're a fat father and son! It's funnier than a whole weekend of The Vicar of Dibley crammed into a minute and a half.

Flowery Twats

After their recent attempt to kill off the nation's brain cells by broadcasting back-to-back episodes of The Vicar of Dibley, G.O.L.D., the nation's favourite comedy channel (apparently), have redeemed themselves. I just caught the repeat of Fawlty Towers Re-Opened, a two-hour documentary about the truly classic sitcom in which John Cleese, Connie Booth, and others from the show talk about why it was so successful, how it was written, what inspired it, and so on. Excellent stuff.

Fans of the show will remember that at the end of the opening credits of each episode, the letters on the hotel sign were re-arranged by the paper boy to spell out different words like 'Fatty Owls', 'Farty Towels', etc. In fact only one of these was an actual anagram of Fawlty Towers...

Death by Dibley

This weekend the TV channel G.O.L.D. (which apparently stands for Go On Laugh Daily...) is showing back-to-back episodes of The Vicar of Dibley. Sadly I won't be able to watch these as I'll be too busy sticking forks in my eyes.

Blind leading the blind

What do you find yourself thinking about on those occasions when you wake up at 3am and can't get back to sleep? Sometimes it's the strangest things. Freya is teething at the moment and so tends to wake in the night crying. After getting up to settle her, I found I couldn't get back to sleep as my mind starts to ponder some of life's questions. Tonight my mind decided to mull over this little engima...

Those of you who also have young children will more than likely be familiar with the BBC channel CBeebies. One of the more recent additions to the fine range of programmes on CBeebies is called Me too! set in the fictional city of Riverseafingal which is a kind of composite city made up of bits of cities from around the UK. Amongst the array of characters is Rudi who runs a fruit and veg stall on the market. Now the first time I saw Rudi, I thought "he's not a very good actor! He's not even looking at the woman he's supposed to be talking to...". I then I realised there was a good reason for that. He's blind. But what confused me is that at no point do they refer to him being blind. He goes about his business, selling fruit and veg and exploring the confusing hybrid town that is Riversea Fingal as if he can see perfectly well. This confuses me (it's even keeping me awake at night!) so surely it's going to confuse pre-schoolers.

I wish I could get back to sleep.