Derren Brown sadly disappointed on this one – in Derren Brown’s How To Win The Lottery show he actually failed to deliver on the fundamental promise made earlier in the week.
He entertained as usual – the guy is a great showman – but he didn’t actually tell us how the trick was done. All was NOT revealed. Which is fine. Except that this is exactly what we were promised!
He did of course misdirect and entertain, which is the nature and fun of the show.
Derren tells a small group of people they can predict lottery numbers, and they become genuinely impressed at being ‘one out’. Being one out is also known as being wrong of course. Nobody wins a prize for nearly matching a number! (But even letting them get ‘close’ is pure Derren at work of course)
The important facts to remember are:-
- Derren is not a psychic or mystic (he actually debunks people who claim to be!)
- Derren cannot predict lottery results.
- It’s a trick, that’s what he does.
Derren ended the show as ‘whatever you choose to believe is up to you’, but we were cheated on the promise of him giving us the real answer. And that was an unusually flat and diasappointing ending to the illusion.
There was no ‘reveal’ and then further twist to leave us confounded and impressed.
Instead we’re simply left with the reality of ‘oh, so it was just a cheap camera trick then’.
Bit of a shame that.
[P.S. If you want to know more about how Derren does his crazy mind voodoo check out this video]
Sorry DerekH – but I wasn’t offering a WARRANTY or GUARANTEE from myself for anything -where did THAT come from? (duh)
Lets just say that Camelot and Derren Brown won’t be any the poorer after this bout of publicity. I thought that was the point I had made (..obviously not..)
AND I certainly was not duped – of course it was a trick – I simply offered an explanation of how it MAY have been done.
Whether or not it was a”set-up” such as I described – and rubbished by DerekH -matters not…. HOWEVER, it may be DerekH who has been duped, or is certainly gullible, if he truly thinks that ANY “powers that be”, have NEVER operated outside legally permitted boundaries for monetry gain!!
Get the roof tiles down – hope you are hungry Derek (lol)
Maxine wrote “but I wasn’t offering a guarantee”. Well, if you read my post more carefully, you’ll see that you did indeed use the word “guaranteed”, and I spent the opening section of my response trying to work out who was the guarantor. I went through all the possibilities, and deduced that it must be you. Now you’re saying it wasn’t.
Ah well.
Anyway, I’ll certainly be looking at the jackpot figures for recent and (when they’ve happened) for forthcoming lotteries, and yes, you may be right that lottery takings will go up. Ironically, it won’t be the *wisdom* of the crowds at play there 🙂
You are quite right that I would be guilty of being naive if I stated that powers that be never operate outside their permitted boundaries. I wasn’t clear that I was being specific to this draw, which will obviously have been watched much more carefully than most others.
You’re right that the real winner was Derren Brown, and “being glued to the sofa” (his next trick) might simply be “feeling compelled to watch” to see what next he’s up to… In which case up go his viewing figures again.
In the circumstances, we should perhaps stop bandying words around, call it a draw, Maxine, and share out the tiles 🙂
“I’d like to order some food please – put it on the slate…”
The Wisdom of Crowds dupe for lottery numbers may increase sales of lottery tickets as many people don’t realise that lottery numbers have no actual mathematical value, they are effectively a ‘picture’ to differentiate the balls from each other. If you had a lottery that drew balls with photographs of Hollywood actors’ faces on them, how could you get averages of faces? The numbers are effectively images, not real numerical values.
DerekH, read that again:
“follow the money as they say… a guaranteed result for all parties.”
i.e., the lottery people make even more money than usual, and even more people than usual buy lottery tickets that don’t win.
That’s what is guaranteed.
Derren didnt use weighted balls, it was a split camera trick!
That was a year ago 🙂
Although it is true that Derren Brown is not a psychic and that it’s only a trick, yeah, but it takes an awful lot of skill to hypnotize somebody. It takes an awful lot of skill to hypnotize somebody to the point where they have no recollection as to what happened, if we believe the subject that he hypnotized, and I do. He predicted which Square the ball would land in, he is amazing at his craft. He has complete command over what he’s doing, and I think it’s amazing. When he went to New York and paid people with blank sheets of paper, any game we have to trust these people are not stooges but he says they’re not. He’d have to be lying about a lot of things and a lot of people would have to be very quiet about those lies and we don’t see him being a bunch at all, at least not here in America. So I think he’s amazing.