Derren Brown (born 27 February 1971) is an English entertainer, mentalist, illusionist, and writer. Brown began performing in 1992, making his television debut with Mind Control (2000). He has since starred in several more shows for stage and television, including Something Wicked This Way Comes (2006) and Svengali (2012) which won him two Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Entertainment, as well as The Experiments (2011) which won him a BAFTA for Best Entertainment Programme at the 2012 awards. Brown made his Broadway debut with his 2019 stage show Secret. He has also written books for both magicians and the general public.
Brown does not claim to possess any supernatural powers; conversely, his acts are often designed to expose the methods of those who do assert such claims, such as faith healers and mediums. He often begins live performances by stating that his results are achieved through "magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection, and showmanship".
Early life
Derren Brown was born in the Croydon area of London on 27 February 1971, the son of Chris and Bob Brown. He was raised in the nearby area of Purley, which he described as "the epitome of middle-class suburbia". He has a brother nine years his junior. He was privately educated at Whitgift School in Croydon, where his father was a swimming coach, before going on to study law and German at the University of Bristol. While there, he attended a hypnotist show by Martin S Taylor, which inspired him to turn to illusion and hypnosis as a career.
As an undergraduate, he started working as a conjuror, performing the traditional skills of close-up magic in bars and restaurants. In 1992, he started performing stage shows at the University of Bristol under the stage name Darren V. Brown; the "V" stood for "Victor".
Career
Performance
Brown cites magician and comedian Jerry Sadowitz, whom he met at the International Magic shop in Clerkenwell, London, as being instrumental in his rise to stardom. Sadowitz put him in touch with H&R publishers and Objective Productions, a production company founded by television magician Andrew O'Connor. This gave him his breakthrough show, Mind Control (2000), and his work went on to become their first award-winning product. After several further shows with Objective, Brown set up his own company Vaudeville Productions with former Objective executives Michael Vine, Andrew O’Connor, and Paul Sandler, in order to produce his own shows as well as other projects with other performers. Its first show was Brown's TV special, Pushed to the Edge.
In 2007, BBC News listed two of his shows (Russian Roulette and Seance) in a list of examples of Channel 4's "legacy of controversy". In 2013, he said, "Controversy has never interested me for its own sake. It's always been about doing stuff that feels dramatic."
Public complaints that Russian Roulette was distasteful, made light of suicide, and promoted gun culture were ultimately rejected by Ofcom on the basis that the context (a post-watershed magic show) was enough and that the warnings given were sufficient. Additionally, the use of a 15-minute time delay ensured no viewer would have seen the result of any mistake. The police had also warned that the show might inspire copycat acts.
Seance received 487 complaints to Channel 4 and 208 to Ofcom, making it the third most complained about show in UK history. Most were from church groups and came before transmission, i.e. before Brown revealed during the broadcast that his attempt to contact the dead was a hoax. The show was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing.
The GMB union criticised Heist on behalf of security workers, arguing it was "irresponsible and insensitive" in light of increased attacks on staff. Channel 4 responded by arguing that it was made "very clear that attempting any form of robbery was criminal behaviour."
An episode of Trick or Treat caused charity Cats Protection to complain and news reports to label Brown a "cat killer", after he appeared to convince someone to press a button even though they thought it would electrocute a kitten inside a metal box. Brown responded by arguing they had misunderstood the trick (the box wasn't wired up), and he "wasn’t glorifying cruelty to cats. People would have been hard-pressed to recreate the electrocution device at home even if they wanted to." Another episode which saw someone hypnotised into thinking they had been killed in a car crash after not wearing a seatbelt was criticised by a road safety charity, who alleged it trivialised the issue.