How Derren Brown ‘predicted’ the lottery
Derren Brown
Britain’s top man of mystery – Derren Brown – appeared on television last night and apparently predicted the six winning lottery numbers.
It was a sensational stunt that will convince the majority of the vast viewing audience that he has incredible psychic powers. But there was nothing paranormal in his much-hyped performance, shown on Channel 4 and its associated channels simultaneously with the BBC’s live transmission of the lottery results. Here’s how I reckon he did it…
I would not normally spoil the magic of an illusionist’s tricks by speculating about the method, but since Brown will reveal the secret on Friday night … why shouldn’t I predict what he will say?
In doing so I will apply the same logic that he has applied in the past to investigations of psychic claims.
Logic tells us that he cannot possibly have known in advance what numbers would come up in the lottery. Why? Because he’s not psychic!
On that basis, the finger of suspicion must point to the six balls sitting on a stand alongside the TV monitor on which the lottery results were shown. They were in full view throughout but they had their backs towards the camera until after the lottery balls stopped rolling.
Logic again demands to know why we weren’t shown the numbers before the results were known. In his preamble, Derren Brown gave a plausible-sounding explanation of strict rules involving Camelot and the BBC, but that didn’t explain why he couldn’t show us the numbers in advance.
There is a simple reason why he didn’t show us the numbers in advance: at that point there were no numbers on the balls!
Once the lottery result was known, in a matter of seconds Brown and his confederates were able to feed that information to the balls on the stand. I’ve no idea what technology they used to display the numbers on the balls, but I am positive that something along those lines will prove to be the explanation for a stunning magical effect.
And on Friday, there will be thousands of people who will be bitterly disappointed that they won’t be able to make a fortune with the secret method he’s going to reveal.
Derren Brown will doubtless use it as an excuse to deride people who say they can foresee the future, but it proves no such thing – only that he’s a superb showman who doesn’t believe in the paranormal. Put another way, his lottery “prediction” was just a load of balls.
Derren Brown promotes his lottery prediction
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Predictiing means just that – predicting, at what point was there any ‘prediction’ BEFORE the numbers were announced -?
I sat through the second programme hoping for an explanation of how it was done and all I got was a load of rubbish about averaging out the guesses of a group of people. Wisdom of crowds, as it is known, only works when the crowd has an idea of the answer to the question. As no-one knows what number ball will be chosen then this clearly is not the explanation I was promised. Come on Derren, how about a third programme with the real answer ?
How did he do it? Well, the five most credible theories go as follows:
1. A split-screen technique would make it seem as though we were looking at one live shot, when in fact, the image of the left half of the screen on which the balls stood had been pre-recorded and patched onto the live action on the right, where Brown was standing.
This would allow the numbers to be applied to the balls without the viewer seeing. The pre-recorded image would be removed as Brown went to stand behind the balls – with the correct numbers written on them – and the whole screen would then go live.
2.The numbers were projected onto the balls using a projector hidden somewhere in the auditorium.
3. The studio was not as simple and bare as it seemed. False walls were used to conceal assistants who printed numbers on the balls as the numbers appeared.
4. Sleight of hand: Derren had hidden a set of balls up his sleeve and somehow managed to get the numbers onto them, and swap them for the balls on the stand without anyone noticing. This might, perhaps, have something to do with why he had his hand to his face during the draw.
5. There was an electronic link between the card on which Brown wrote the numbers and the balls standing several feet away. So as he hand-wrote the numbers on the card, they were somehow printed (see Theory 1) on the balls.
Brown himself has provided a clue in a trailer for a programme tonight, where he will explain his feat, at the end of which he holds up a model snowflake.
I suspect Brown is telling us the stunt was a ’snow-job’, a term defined as ‘an effort to deceive, overwhelm, or persuade with insincere talk and flattery’.
I’ve interviewed Brown and I know he is fascinated by psychological techniques, including so-called Neuro-Linguistic Programming, which uses particular words to imprint thoughts on the human mind.
He told me: ‘The reason I do magic is to shake people’s belief systems up a bit. It’s all about trying to create a psychological journey, because that’s what magic is.’
I suspect the apparently blathering words that tumbled out of his mouth for the first minutes of the programme were carefully chosen to imprint ideas onto our minds.
And I think I can sum up everything he’s going to say tonight into three words: ‘You’ve been had.’