Derren Brown

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.

Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine was published on 22 September 2016 by Bantam Press. (ISBN 978-0593076194).

Brown created a new virtual reality dark ride at the Thorpe Park amusement park, which opened on 8 July 2016. "Derren Brown's Ghost Train" is set aboard an old train carriage in an abandoned warehouse. It is expected that the experience will last around 13 minutes and is Thorpe Park's most expensive ride experience. The ride has live action actors and holograms while passengers are strapped in wearing VR headsets. The attraction added new experiences to the train and 'Rise of the Demon' to the name.

Brown has recorded some audio extracts from Tricks of the Mind. In them he expounds on the three subjects essential to his performance—Magic, Memory, and Hypnosis. The extracts last around 40 minutes each, disclosing tips and techniques Brown uses in his acts (as well as day-to-day) and narrating the highlights of his book.

In January 2013, Brown was featured in a Channel 4 Deal or No Deal special, where he appeared to have predicted all the correct boxes, to win the big jackpot of £250,000. This was filmed as part of the Channel 4 Mashup.

Brown states that he uses a variety of methods to achieve his illusions including traditional magic/conjuring techniques, memory techniques, hypnosis, body language reading, cognitive psychology, cold reading, and psychological, subliminal (specifically the use of PWA – "perception without awareness"), and ideomotor suggestion. Others additionally ascribe methods to him that he denies, ranging from the pseudoscience neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to paid actors.

In January 2011, to celebrate ten years since his first television appearance, Channel 4 held a special Derren Brown Night. As well as re-showing The Heist (which won a recent poll of favourite specials) and one of his Enigma Live shows. The channel screened a special documentary; Derren Brown: Behind The Mischief, a personal and candid film about Brown. The documentary included the story of how he met his co-writer (who was featured in Seance), his mother's feelings about his involvement in Russian Roulette, and an emotional visit back to his old school, university and the Bristol bars where he first began his close-up magic. Celebrity contributors included Matt Lucas, Jo Whiley, Stephen Merchant, and Simon Pegg.

Ofcom received 11 complaints and began an investigation relating to the safety of a scene in Hero at 30,000 Feet, in which the subject was shown chained to a railway line in order to escape from an oncoming train. The complaint is listed on Ofcom's Weekly Broadcast Report, Tuesday, 28 September 2010 to Monday, 4 October 2010, and Ofcom's Broadcast Bulletin, Issue Number 167. The show is listed in the "Other Programmes Not in Breach" (p. 38) category of their Ofcom's Broadcast Bulletin, Issue Number 168, without any explanation as to why it was decided that it is not in breach.

In an October 2010 interview, Brown conceded that Singh may have had a point, explaining that at the start of his television career "I was overstating the case, overstating my skills. I thought there'll only be one show, there'll never be a repeat, so I might as well go for it." In his book Tricks of the Mind, Brown writes,

In 2010, Brown appeared in a special Comedy Gala for Channel 4 and Great Ormond Street Hospital. He appeared with Kevin Bishop, who played his jealous annoying twin 'Darren'.

In 2009, a book, Portraits, was released containing a selection of Brown's paintings and bizarre caricatures of celebrities.

In 2008, Brown made a guest acting appearance in BBC Four's Crooked House as Sir Roger Widdowson.

In 2008, Brown provided caricatures for "The QI 'F' annual".

Many of Brown's shows have generated controversy. In 2007, BBC News listed two of Brown's shows (Russian Roulette and Seance) in a list of examples of Channel 4's "legacy of controversy". In 2013, Brown said "Controversy has never interested me for its own sake. It's always been about doing stuff that feels dramatic."

Brown came out as gay in 2007 and revealed that he was in a relationship at the time with a designer named Marc, though they ended their relationship after eight years. He came out aged 30; his parents were not practising Christians, but they sent him to Bible classes from the age of five, believing it was the right thing to do. In an effort to deal with issues of self-esteem and sexuality, Brown became a committed Evangelical Christian in his teens in order to present himself as confident and asexual. By his twenties, he had decided that his belief in Christianity had no basis, and he became a committed atheist. He turned to the character of the eccentric, caped magician to fulfil the role.

In 2007, Brown performed in the short film Medium Rare.

As part of Channel 4's 3D season, Brown presented Derren Brown's 3D Magic Spectacular. The show was not a new special from Brown, rather he was the presenter for a number of other magicians and clips that were shown. However, he did include one extract taken from a 2006 episode of Trick of the Mind in which he found an object that had been hidden in the streets of Venice by a volunteer.

In an interview in New Scientist in 2005, when asked how he "acquired his psychological skills", Brown says that he learnt skills as a hypnotist, which he was not sure how to apply until he started performing close-up magic. When asked whether he is able to detect lies, Brown claimed to be able to read subtle cues such as micro-muscle movements that indicate to him if someone is lying. Concerning his apparent success at hypnotising people, he stated that he can normally spot a suggestible type of person and chooses that person to be his participant. He believes that the presence of a television camera also increases suggestibility.

Since 2004, Brown has been the patron of the Parrot Zoo Trust in Friskney, Lincolnshire. In an interview with LeftLion magazine, he said, "I'm a big fan of parrots. I think they're fascinating creatures. Many of them live for longer than us humans and it's interesting to me the way they learn to mimic human voices even though they don't really comprehend what they're saying."

In a Daily Telegraph article published in 2003 Simon Singh criticised Brown's early TV appearances, arguing that he presented standard magic and mentalism effects—such as the classic ten-card poker deal trick—as genuine psychological manipulation. On Brown's television and live shows he often appears to show the audience how a particular effect was created—claiming to use techniques such as subliminal suggestion, hypnosis, and body language reading. Singh's suggestion is that these explanations are dishonest. Furthermore, Singh took exception to the programme's website being categorised under Channel 4's "Science" section. The mini-site was moved to "Entertainment" for later series.

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.

Brown was privately educated at Whitgift School in Croydon, where his father was a swimming coach, and studied 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".

Derren Brown (born 27 February 1971) is an English mentalist, illusionist, and author. Since his television debut with Derren Brown: Mind Control in 2000, Brown has produced several other shows for the stage and television in both series and specials. His 2006 stage show Something Wicked This Way Comes and his 2012 show Svengali won him two Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Entertainment. He made his Broadway debut with his 2019 stage show Secret. He has also written books for magicians as well as the general public.

Derren Brown was born in Croydon, London, on 27 February 1971, the son of Chris and Bob Brown. Brown was raised in Purley, a South London town that he describes as "the epitome of middle-class suburbia". He has a brother nine years his junior.