And For my Next Trick
(Derren Brown on Practical Interrupts)
"He was leaving a hotel at three in the morning after
attending a magic convention when he was confronted
by a large, drunken man displaying a clear appetite for
random assault.
'I was wearing a velvet jacket and velvet waistcoat,'
recalls Brown. 'It wasn't looking good.'
'What the **** are you looking at?' the drunk asked as he
squared up to Brown's face.
'There's not much you can say to that kind of question,'
observes Brown on reflection. 'But what you can do is
act completely out of context. So I said: '''The wall outside
my house isn't four feet high.''' The drunk's eyes narrowed
in confusion.'
'What?' he asked.
Then Brown hit him with another broadside.
'Ah, you see, when I was in Spain, they were about
seven foot high. But look at them here - they're tiny.'
The fledgling mind-magician took a deep breath and
waited to see if his strategy had worked.
'I was expecting him to get so confused that his mind
would become susceptible to some kind of hypnotic
suggestion,' Brown explains. 'What happened was he actually
shouted out: ''''Oh ****!''' and burst into tears.
I spent the next 10 minutes sitting on the kerb trying to give
him advice about his girlfriend.' "
['The Guide': Guardian, April 3 2004]
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