Finest food on tour
The culinary highlight of last year’s tour was the Eggs Benedict cooked by chef Dan Savage at St Giles’ House, St Giles St, Norwich. This year we were hugely excited to find that Dan was still there, and he crowned each of our mornings with the perfectly poached twin triumphs of the breakfast menu. (Dan has also been delightful enough to cook for us outside of the regular menu hours: a generous gesture for which we’re all massively grateful. Thank you, Dan, again). Here’s Dan:
The restaurant at the really lovely St Giles House has won two AA rosettes and is, I imagine, the finest place to eat in Norwich. Everything we had was sensational; the perfect crab and melon sorbet with candied chilli, or the crayfish and chili risotto on the lunch menu, which I think is the best I’ve had. Be sure to pay it a visit. Thank you also to Jamie and Daniel, Nick the night porter, and the lovely people at reception for looking after us all so royally. And talk about re-charging when tired on tour: outside is a lovely sun-trap of a terrace that has you feel like you’re deep in the Mediterranean:
Whilst we had the day free yesterday, I found myself in another favourite find of the tour: a glorious, secret Victorian plantation garden, created in the mid 1800s by the owner of a ‘Furnishing Establishment’ called Henry Trevor. The garden, is, quite simply, stunning. These photographs do it no justice: there are leafy walkways, a bridge, and a great, grand, Victorian water-feature.
It’s a secret find, but I’ll tell you it’s near the cathedral. And there are two cathedrals. But it’s not far from the hotel and they’ll give you directions. On the way back, we stopped at a lovely second-hand bookstore, the likes of which are getting hard to find nowadays, and, on urgent recommendation had late lunch at the Waffle House right next to the hotel on St. Giles St. Please, please, please, while we’re on the subject of spicy fruits, have the spicy fruit waffle with ice cream and maple syrup. The recommendation came from Chris, our erstwhile temporary company manager, and I pass it onto you.
The shows have been fun, though last night’s second half (second in Norwich), was a little slow, due to matters largely out of my control. Today is a travel day to Newcastle, when it should be a day for lazing in the sun in this lovely eastern city. Oh well. If you could all stay indoors out of respect, we’d appreciate the gesture.
Speak soon,
x
Do You Think What You Think You Think?
Quite often people tend to set themselves off on an idea in pursuit of a mental destination without knowing where they might end up half way through. The idea that if you can get from A to B in your though process means you have a perfectly valid idea is the backbone of any belief system and is what fuels conspiracy theorists.
DYTWYTYT – is the perfect antidote – it helps show up the holes in the way you actually form opinions. By breaking things down in to smaller elements we can analyze individual ideas before re-constructing them to form bigger “well-formed” thoughts.
It’s very much a pop-philosophy book and it’s quiz style can be a little grating at times but in general it’s ideal for all of you who wish to improve your thinking and idea analysis – and for me improve my debating skills – not that arguing with Derren Brown is ever fruitful, or worthwhile as I’ve managed to lose several heated debates without him uttering a word.
Voodoo Rituals Used to Create Sex Slaves in Spain
The women were recruited in Nigeria with false promises of legal employment and then illegally brought to Spain where they were forced to work as prostitutes, police said in a statement. Police said the ring carried out “voodoo rituals and black magic to frighten the women and keep them always under control with the threat of ‘destroying their souls” or ‘making them crazy’.”
All the money which the women earned was kept by the ring until they had paid off the debt they incurred to make the trip to Spain, which typically amounted to 50,000 euros (£44,000), police said. Police carried out searches of 10 residences as part of their operation and seized material used in voodoo rituals, computer equipment as well as several passports and other documents.
Earlier this month in the Netherlands, the trial of 11 people accused of using voodoo curses to force up to 150 Nigerian girls into prostitution in Europe was adjourned until later this year. Prosecutors alleged that between 140 and 150 Nigerian girls helped into the Netherlands as asylum seekers had disappeared from asylum centres in 2006 and 2007. About a dozen of the girls were traced, while the rest were thought to have been forced into prostitution in Italy, Spain and France. Most were minors at the time, their ages ranging from 16 to 23.
severe false memory syndrome
In the journal Cortex, researchers describe the case of a patient with severe memory loss who has a tendency to invent detailed and perfectly plausible false memories (confabulations) in response to questions to which most people would answer “I don’t know”, such as the one above. They have named this unusual condition confabulatory hypermnesia, and believe that theirs is the first study to document it.
The patient, a 68-year-old patient known as LM, had a history of heavy drinking which lasted more than 30 years and stopped just 3 months before the study was carried out. He was referred to the memory clinic at the Charles Foix Hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine for a neuropsychological evaluation after he began to experience memory loss and disorientation in time and space. A brain scan showed mild degeneration throughout the cerebral cortex and he was diagnosed with Korsakoff’s Syndrome, a neurodegenerative condition which occurs as a result of vitamin B1deficiency and is associated with long-term, chronic alcoholism.
Recreating déjà vu
Déjà vu is that creepy feeling that you’re living through a moment for the second time, as if retreading the path of an earlier existence. Now Alan Brown and Elizabeth Marsh believe they’ve found a way to simulate the déjà vu sensation in the laboratory – a finding that could help us understand why the phenomenon occurs.
Twenty-four participants were presented with dozens of symbols that had been carefully chosen, with the help of a pilot study, to be either entirely novel, rarely encountered, or highly familiar (e.g. the division symbol). The participants’ task was simply to state for each symbol whether they’d seen it prior to the experiment.
Wikipedia bans Church of Scientology
In an unprecedented effort to crack down on self-serving edits, the Wikipedia supreme court has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates.
Closing out the longest-running court case in Wikiland history, the site’s Arbitration Committee voted 10 to 0 (with one abstention) in favor of the move, which takes effect immediately.
Horrific Article
But please God it will hasten the death knell for this particular organisation, or at least its more revolting aspects. How charming too, that I have to post it under ‘religious matters’…
From The Times
May 29, 2009
An unholy secret that still haunts Ireland
It’s shame confirmed by an official report, it’s time to pronounce the last rites for the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland
David Sharrock
But even if the will to make amends by seeking genuine forgiveness now exists — and that has yet to be proven — it may be too late. Another report, out next month, will reveal that the activities of hundreds of paedophile priests in the Dublin diocese were covered up. This may deliver the coup de grace.
The Catholic Church and its institutions in Ireland are now so badly damaged as to be devoid of moral authority. Its only possible salvation lies in prostrating itself before the courts of public opinion and natural justice.
Derren’s thoughts on those five facts
1. The man you have to initially blame/thank for the unstoppable rise of Derren Brown is Jerry Sadowitz. They first met in a magic shop in London and after swapping tricks soon became pals, with Sadowitz helping Brown get his first lecture gig for magicians and recommending him to production companies.
Very true – Jerry helped Pure Effect get published, hugely supported my early work and then gave my name to Objective (just the one production company) when they were looking for some sort of mind-reader fellow to do a telly show. If it wasn’t for Jerry, I wouldn’t be bothering you at all.
2. Brown claims to be flattered that Kenny Craig, the magic act in Little Britain (you know, ‘look into the eyes, not around the eyes’) might be based on him, considering Kenny to be better looking than himself.
I could never quite understand the link that some others presumed to exist, not being a stage hypnotist myself. I asked Matt Lucas about it and he confirmed it wasn’t based on me. But prior to this I was asked in an interview if I was the inspiration, and I replied, ’I don’t think so, but I’d be flattered if I was’. Or something. Don’t remember saying anything about either of us being better looking.
3. He studied law and German at Bristol University, where he first took to the stage as ‘Darren V Brown’. V is for Victor.
This is true, but do not be concerned, I was born DERREN, not DARREN. I grew up being called Darren by everyone, even though this was not my born name; hence these early shows were advertised under this admittedly drearier variant. Once I started performing a lot, I reverted to my original Christian name.
4. Fellow magician Andy Nyman has been his working partner for several years, having co-created the likes of Russian Roulette and Seance. You may have seen Nyman being disembowelled and decapitated during Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set, while playing the outspoken telly producer Patrick.
Yup, and as an actor first-and-foremost, recent years have also seen him most memorably in Dead Babies, Severance, and Frank Oz’s brilliant Death at a Funeral. And anyone who caught his extraordinary performance in ‘Moonlight and Magnolias’ at the Tricycle Theatre will never forget his relentless energy. He’s a great alter-ego for me: emotive, impulsive and earthy where I’m cerebral, considered and indecisive. We do well together.
5. Although there’s never any question that his helpers on the TV shows are not plants, he often becomes friends with those he has tortured. The guy who loaded the gun in Russian Roulette once accompanied Brown to a screening of Team America to the suspicion of many onlookers.
Some of you found that first sentence ambiguous. Looks like it’s been cleared up. I have never used stooges, never had people just ‘playing along’. It’s an artistic travesty and plain lazy. As for making friends, get this: Iain, the supposedly ‘handsome’ one with us on tour, I met while filming Seance. He’s the guy who goes into the Spirit Cabinet at the end and freaks out. He has longer hair now but that’s him. He was so bowled over by the experience that he started studying magic and suggestion, and what with him being a staggeringly lovely chap, we quickly became very good friends. Now he writes with Andy and me on the TV show, has met the love of his life through filming with us, and is a treasured tour companion.
Some other facts for your delectation:
6. Derren lives with two giraffes. One is a six-foot baby, stuffed in his hallway (it was stillborn, please don’t be upset: all taxidermy owned is humanely secured), and the other is a skeleton of the neck and head of an adult, which spans the wall in his office at home.
7. Derren set fire to a neighbour’s boat when he was nine. His most devastating, gut-wrenching childhood memory. He was playing with matches, along with the neighbour’s son, and managed to set a tarpaulin on fire that was covering a boat that the father was building. Probably the father’s life’s work. The whole lot went up. Christ. He went home, hid himself, and prayed to God to make-it-didn’t-happen.
8. Derren hates mushrooms, parsnips (unless honey-roasted, in which case they’re bearable), mushy peas, and has to sleep in a cold room. If you’d have asked him at age ten what he would grow up to be, he’d have said, ‘A poet, or a vet”.
Sshhh.
x
Conman kidnaps daughter after “telepathic call for help”
Setting up an insanity defence, a lawyer for suspect Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter said his client was mentally ill and did not know it was wrong when he ran off with the seven-year-old last July. Gerhartsreiter is accused of pushing a social worker to the ground during a supervised visit in Boston and bundling his daughter, Reigh, into a waiting car. Reigh, known to the family as Snooks, was found six days later and reunited with her mother Sandra Boss, a senior partner in the London office of the management consulting firm McKinsey and Co. Opening the defence case at a trial in Boston, lawyer Jeffrey Denner said that his client was “pushed over the edge” when he lost custody of his daughter in 2007.
“He believed that on a moral level, he had to do this to save his daughter,” Mr Denner said. ”He believed he was telepathically communicating with his child. ”He believed that she was secretly signalling him… that she needed to be saved, that she wasn’t being cared for.” On Thursday, a psychologist hired by Gerhartsreiter’s legal team said during legal arguments that the 48-year-old suffered delusions of power and wealth, as well as having a narcissistic personality disorder. Opening their case, prosecutors said the alleged kidnapper is a conman who spent months meticulously planning the abduction.
The court heard Gerhartsreiter told Ms Boss he advised small countries on how to restructure their debt – but she grew frustrated with his lack of income and filed for divorce in 2006.
Sky (Thanks Craig)
News Blast:
The links you send to us that we want to post but just don’t have room to:
This week neuroscientists are looking at how memories form by using brain scans to read them and also finding people who never forget faces. Mockingbirds are also remembering faces and attacking Canadian airports while Rooks are revealing remarkable tool use and other bird genetics are teaching us about the aging process.
Snails are slowing down while short people are thinking faster by waving their tiny arms about, but are just as susceptible to scams.
The atheist bus is trying to drive into Indiana and has ended up in a court battle, as has the Church of Scientology in France, a Wisconsin mother who prayed for her child instead of seeking medical assistance and several alleged devil worshippers in Iran.
Finally, Derren announced his favourite submissions to the Acts of kindness competition, and a winner shall be announced soon.
Thanks to all of you who submit articles – send your submissions to us here.
