Topic: Television
Sorry for the infrequent posting lately. I made a decision a few months ago to 'spring clean' my life and eliminate a few things that were annoying me. I stopped playing online poker in January and stopped looking at the Gutshot and Hendon Mob discussion forums in February. Stepped up the physical exercise, lost a lot of weight and started playing much longer hours in live action. I've been a lot happier and more successful, but the blog has suffered a bit as a result.
Derren Brown has a series on Friday nights called Trick or Treat. I didn't see the first one, but I've seen the poker one with Neil Channing, Jeff Duvall, Paul Parker, Nik Persaud and Tony Holden. And I saw another one with a 'trick' involving a dummy. While watching the latter on video this morning, I realised that his 'trick or treat' cards are exactly the same. Turn 'trick' upside down and it shows 'treat' (and vice versa). It means that the 'random choice' made by the applicant is non-existent. Brown makes the choice after the card is selected by choosing whether to turn it over horizontically or vertically. Quite funny once you realise it.
It's things like that which make you wonder though whether Brown does what he claims he does - psychological tricks - or whether it's just standard magic dressed up for a post Paul Daniels era audience. There tends to be only enough room on TV for one famous magician at any time and to break through you need a gimmic ... rude (Daniels), comatose (Blaine) or mind-controller (Brown).
Whatever the case, his show's worth seeing. In one of his shows, he did a trick involving paying for something using blank bits of paper instead of money. The trick worked by having a conversation whilst handing over the 'cash' in which he used the words 'it's fine, take it'. Viewers actually saw the trick fail in one of the three instances shown. It was interesting that this was when he approached a vendor whose English wasn't fluent. For me this supports the idea that what he did there was actually genuine.
I've spoken to all bar one of the professional players selected for the poker show and they all felt that there was something fishy about it.
Channel 4, tonight 10pm
