‘Michael Sheen’ – acrylic on canvas 2011

I have known Michael for a little while, and recently went to see his Hamlet, directed by Ian Rickson and currently running at the New Vic. It’s phenomenal. Afterwards we had dinner and Michael spoke at length about what he and Ian had done with the play and why. A couple of weeks later we met again, I cooked an appalling piece of chicken and we asked him about his Passion, a mammoth modern unfurling of the Christ story spread across the streets and beaches of Port Talbot (an industrial port and market town where he grew up, and which has also produced Rob Brydon, Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton). Michael is deeply energised about his work, and if the formula for success is TALENT + ENERGY (as noted by my manager, who added wisely that the formal for stardom is SUCCESS + ATTITUDE) then Michael radiates them powerfully. He’s surely one of the most extraordinary actors of our generation, and possesses a phenomenal creative drive without any of the exhausting ego that normally accompanies mere dull ambition.

So, as I tend to paint people that I know and find extraordinary, I asked if he would mind awfully. A bit over a week later, interrupted by Christmas of course, and tweeted in its various stages, the large (it’s five foot high) portrait above was completed. For those who do not tweet, or for those who do but who might like to see the sequence together, and above all for those who give a jot because they paint and are interested in the process, I shall set it out as best as I can. Here then, is how it came together:

I prefer to work from photographs, so wherever possible I take my own. I can create a makeshift photographic studio in my painting room, so I took a bunch of Michael to work from. Ultimately I decide on one, tweak it in Lightroom to look its best, and print it out large (I have an A2 printer which does the job very well). He’s looking rather shaggy at the moment because of the role which he undertakes every night (a far cry from his shiny Tony Blair), which I knew would make the picture more interesting.

I then began the portrait by sketching directly onto the canvas:

Next, I block in some colour to set a unifying tone for the picture. Orange is a good one for flesh, but it can be anything, depending on the palette that the photograph suggests. The idea is then to let this blocked colour peep through as the layers of colour are built up. You want to make sure that every inch of the picture is interesting. With a good painting, you can generally make a little tube with your hand and look through it at tiny, isolated areas of canvas and they will all be of interest. There’ll always be stuff going on. The way to do this is by building up layers of colour. So we begin with orange:

And just enough of the sketch is left showing through to work with as a guide. Black paint does the job better than pencil, but I’ve kind of gotten used to using pencil. But use black paint to sketch of you’re using this method (and obviously white to erase).

Then next I get the shape of the features in, and the areas of light and dark. This is about sculpting the face and also getting down some basic colour – all things which will keep showing through as I add layers. For this reason I paint thinly, or rather with a fairly dry brush. I don’t want to lose what’s behind the colour I’m adding. Later on I’ll use glazes (a small dash of colour with a larger amount of a transparent glazing medium) to the same effect – but for now, thin layers that keep the orange showing:

And I’ve started to get some colour into the background too. The orange will provide some unity – you want to make sure that the colours you’re using for the subject are also in the background, so the two relate to each other. Otherwise you can sometimes have a figure that fights uncomfortably with what’s behind it. The left side of the face (our left as we look at it) has a purply tone, whereas the right side is warmer, so I’ve started to get those colours in too.

The process is now largely one of alternating between detail and sculpting (and using fairly strong colours and contrasts to do so) and then pulling everything back by going over it all with some fleshy tones (pulled out from what I’m already using) that soften and unify. I also get some colour on the shirt, as I want to include the same colours in all areas. Again, because I’m working with fairly thin paint, it’s easy to do this: it’s best to use as few colours as possible on your palette and create others from mixing them: that way you keep a sense of overall unity, which is one of the qualities that will make it feel ‘real’. The purple, for example, that is appearing in his forehead will come to be used on the face, the shirt and the background.

Next I added some detail around the eyes and threw in a bloody background. I often add the premature detail at this point to trick the eye into thinking it’s more complete than it is, and to give me more of a sense of where it is headed. The background was an idea I wanted to try, but I would eventually lose it. At the moment it works OK:

but I realised that I wanted to create some depth with the image, so the background would have to be less sharp and more muted. So with some glaze and a bit of white I brought the background back a bit and worked on the hair detail to put some distance between the two. I’m also continuing to add detail, and areas of colour, and then bring it all back with some unifying colour brushed over the top. That means that I can have, say, the purple in the right side of the nose, but still make it sit with the yellowy creaminess of that side by then brushing or glazing over with a flesh tone. The hair is quite fun to do.

It now has some definition.

Next, I start the shirt. By this point the purple has become very useful (and I could have used that rather than the orange to cover the canvas), so I’m sure to include it in the shirt. I’ve been mixing the purple with a burnt umber to get the darkest/black shade (you don’t want to use flat black, it is lifeless and just looks like a hole in the painting) and some grey mixed in. The result is the basis of a grey shirt, but it still occupies the same tonal world as everything else. I also work more on the hair and am continuing to work on detail. I also soften the nose to make sure that it feels like it’s sticking out of the canvas: it would be slightly out of focus (the photo is all rather sharp so I’m exaggerating the depth a little as I paint) so by softening it, it will lift itself from the face.

At this point, something is bothering me. It’s looking like an illustration rather than a painting. There’s something ‘drawn’ about it. This may be the hair, as whatever frames the face will provide a context for it, and as the hair looks rather cartoony, it’s making the whole thing feel less like a proper portrait. There’s something else too – the background isn’t helping. It’s too… distracting, making it all seem like a comic-book graphic rather than a portrait. So I decide to lose the background. I first get some colour blocked onto it…

And then white thinly over to move towards a light background (but one that will incorporate and reflect the colours of the face for the sake of unity). I’ve also lost the edges of the hair, which will mean I can re-do them with a softness that will help lose the cartoonish quality I don’t want. So now we have this:

And with the hair added, I’m happier. I’m painting ‘background’ and ‘foreground’ hair to get depth. The hair at the back is soft and purply, which blends it into the background a little, and then I pick out some individual, light-catching strands in the front.

The remaining process is principally now one of softening the background. I use a big brush and a lot of glaze. Here’s me working on a bit of hair detail at this point so you can get a sense of the scale.

Finally, I put a bit more work into the shirt (it was tempting to leave it in an unfinished state to draw more attention to the face) and soften the focus a little where necessary (by losing edges and working the background a little into the parts I want to soften). And there we are. It took about a week, but that’s a few hours here and there and stopping for Christmas… difficult to qualify exactly how many hours of painting time were involved, and it’s invaluable to leave a painting standing around and come back to it.

I hope you like it. To answer a few questions about it which came up on Twitter: no, I haven’t had any training; I use Liquitex Professional Acrylics (Heavy Body); and no, this isn’t for Michael, although I’ll do him a nice print if he wants one. Yes, I exhibit: The Rebecca Hossack Gallery in Charlotte St, London, looks after my work. Any time I have an exhibition, I publicise it here on the blog and on Twitter. As I generally get fairly little time to paint, it’s normally only one small exhibition a year. But I’ll always let you know. A recent post shows a couple of other portraits, and there are some older ones on the main site. There is also a book available of the caricatures I used to paint.

Michael’s coming over soon to view it – I’ll post a picture of him with it when he does.

There you are. Hope you’re all having lovely ones.

db x

And here’s a better shot of the painting itself:

They’re acrylic on canvas. I’ve also been back and worked on the portrait of my father. Here it is, about the same size (5ft high) as the one of James:

and, for those who enjoy such things, a bit of detail:

Next up is actor friend Michael Sheen. I’ve taken a few shots and I’m about to get started. (I always take my own photographs and work quietly from them in my own time, as I only get a few hours here and there to paint). I’ll let you know when it’s done. What a great guy to paint. I can’t wait.

There are a few more pictures of portraits (including some of the older caricatures of Rufus Wainwright, Tom Waits, Clint Eastwood et al) on the artwork page of the main site. I’ll let you know here next time I have an exhibition: should be one next year somewhere.

Right, Merry Christmasses or just Happy Holidays, depending on whatnot. Ta-ta for now.

dx

Every now and then I have a conversation with someone who has seen a couple of my shows, but hasn’t read my books or writings, and believes I claim to do all sorts of things that I really don’t. As I had such a discussion last night, and as I’ve been talking about the importance of testing psychic claims that could be fraudulent, I thought I would clarify a few points regarding my own work for anyone in any doubt.

Firstly, regarding the ‘tricks’ as performed in the older shows:

1. I have never used stooges. People generally imagine I must do if they can find no other explanation. But I don’t: it would be artistically repugnant, totally unnecessary, impractical, and would spell career suicide.

2. My techniques are rooted in conjuring magic and hypnosis. All else is most likely misdirection and should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.

3. I have never claimed to use NLP to achieve my ‘tricks’. On the contrary, I have written very critically about it in Tricks of the Mind. I reserve the same scepticism for subliminal messaging, as well as a lot of body-language reading and the like.

Now, I have largely moved on from performing those sorts of tricks. So, as regards the specials, such as The Experiments and others:

1. Again, the people used are never stooges or set up in any way. They generally apply through an open audition process, whereby we meet or interview them and look at various qualities they possess which would be useful (for example their jobs, beliefs, or how suggestible they are).

2. The contributors are always psychologically screened if they are going to go through a ‘tough’ experience. Without giving away what the show is, or giving them any clue that they will be used in it, we arrange for our preferred participants to have interviews with an independent psychologist who ensures that they will be ‘robust’ enough for the show. This is an important part of our duty of care, which we take very seriously throughout the entire process of making the programmes. And the ‘heroes’ of these specials always emerge exhilarated and delighted to have been part of it.

3. If I make a statement on these shows, it will be true. Nowadays, the Channel 4 lawyers check every word to make sure there is no misleading of the viewer: this is a huge issue in the TV industry at the moment. The joke in the office is that a magician can’t even say ‘this is a normal deck of cards’ on TV nowadays if it isn’t, and I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.

I know that fans will know all this already, but it’s always worth repeating. Have lovely days and enjoy tonight’s show if you’re watching.

Dx

I thought I would pen a few words about the high-profile test offered to Sally Morgan by Simon Singh, Chris French and the Merseyside Skeptics tomorrow Monday. It looks like Sally has declined to take part, but their offer is open to conduct a fair test or at least discuss the test with her to make sure both they and her are happy with it.

Simon Singh, along with other sceptics, has had concerns about Sally and published them here on his blog. I add, as does he, that I am not saying that Sally is a fake or a fraud. I’d really like to think that she’s not, but reserve all judgement. I don’t know her and have never seen her show, on TV or on stage. Even if I had, my opinion about her would mean very little, and I’m sure she could give a flying doughnut about what I had to say. Really the only worthwhile point is whether claims such as Sally’s stand up to testing, not what I or any other individual with our own inevitable prejudices happens to think.

Until recently, I thought I had never met her, but I have since heard rather excitingly that I may have filmed an unused sequence with Sally once at her home. If I did, it would have been for one of those old Mind Control specials ten or so years ago. I have my team looking into that to see if we ever did and if they can dig it out. Certainly we filmed with one lady psychic at her house, where we each gave each other a reading, so perhaps that was it.

Sally has recently received mixed media attention following a phone call to a radio station made by a lady who had attended her show in Dublin, who said she heard what sounded like verbal cues being given to the medium on stage. Apparently she heard phrases like ‘Dave – bad back’ being whispered from the lighting booth at the back of the auditorium a few seconds before Sally repeated those words on stage, raising the strong suspicion in this woman’s mind that Sally was using an earpiece. If this were true, it would follow that the assistant in the booth had most likely picked up information in the foyer where people were openly discussing what they were hoping to hear that night. The phone call can be heard here and is worth listening to in full. Sally has since denied the insinuations, saying that it was simply lighting technicians chatting, although to me this doesn’t seem to answer the question of why she was delivering lines moments after they were heard coming from the booth.

Frustratingly for Sally, her explanation may of course be fair. To be honest, if I were a fake psychic and wanted to use an earpiece to receive my cues, I wouldn’t put my assistant in the lighting booth where in-house staff would normally work. There would be the advantage of receiving visual cues, but my preference would be to tuck him away safely backstage somewhere. Unless, that is, I was supplying all the crew for the show, in which case it wouldn’t be an issue. Sally may well supply all her crew, I have no idea. (Note: Thanks ‘Chez’, I hear the theatre in question would have indeed required Sally to bring all her own crew) But I have heard from in-house theatre crews who have hosted big-name psychic shows that they were surprised to see the shows follow a fairly tight structure and an oddly similar script every night: therefore another possible explanation could be that the whispering was indeed cheekiness from the lighting technicians who were just pre-empting what they knew was coming next, having seen the show so many times. Who knows. Maybe both they and Sally are genuinely psychic and they should all have their own shows.

Point is, this could be a totally innocent incident which has gotten out of hand. Once you’re aware of the huge amount of fraudulence committed in the name of mediumship, it’s hard not to smirk when someone seems to have been caught out. If you watched ‘Miracles For Sale’, you may remember the ‘healer’ Peter Popoff getting caught out rather splendidly with an earpiece by James Randi: this is astonishing footage. Irrespective of whether to not Sally was using the earpiece, she has made a name for herself and made a lucrative business from the seemingly astonishing business of connecting people with their loved ones, so some scrutiny is important. If a psychic were simply a doctor – and arguably mediums and psychics involve themselves with their clients in a similarly personal and delicate way – then you’d want to know that he or she had passed her medical exams. We even like to check the credentials of a plumber. Surely the bigger and more amazing the claims being made, the more solid the evidence needs to be for them to hold up, and the more important that evidence is.

Sally may be a perfectly innocent victim of unfortunate tar-brushing. If she is a real stage psychic, she finds herself in bad company. Doris Stokes, her antecedent that most immediately springs to mind, has, since herself passing over to the Happy Summerland, been exposed on a number of counts. She would enter a town with her sell-out show to a flurry of mail from desperate people giving her all the information she’d need for a full evening show. She would, I heard, give readings during the day for people, and then invite them to the show in the evening and feed back, from the stage, the information she’d learnt from them during the day. A woman I once knew who had lost her son in a drowning accident was asked to come along to an event given by  Stokes and receive a message from the spirit of her child, and was furious to have her tragedy exploited and twisted when the the rosy-cheeked, grandmotherly medium simply trotted out the details of the death as reported in the local newspaper and used this woman as a sure-fire hit after a couple of dud readings. Other mediums, very much alive and well, are watched nightly by in-house stage crews who then delight in passing on their apparent modi operandi when I turn up with my show. One very big name psychic was caught ushering in a couple of stooges through a side entrance - self-evidently, I was told, his mother and a friend of hers – who then became his most enthusiastic audience members during the show.

Hence it would be a very good idea to test a psychic who claims to be real and to not be like all those nasty, manipulative frauds, who prey on the guaranteed paying audiences of vulnerable people who know no better. But who will call for such testing? Not the audiences. Ironically, they’re the last to insist that we check that the medium on stage before them is real, and not self-deluded or lying through her teeth. And why should they? Who would risk denying oneself profound comfort? Instead, to them, their psychic is the real one, those others are the fakes, and they know that because… because they just know it. Because they’ve seen the show and they think the show is the evidence. They most likely are unaware of the self-working technique of Cold Reading which can allow anyone with little sense of morality to get up on stage and carry off a perfectly convincing psychic show. Here’s a page where you can learn how to be a fake psychic yourself – its one of the oldest businesses in the world. Add some benign, trustworthy charisma, a bit of ‘hot’ reading (where you have some information on your punters) and some decent PR,  and you have got yourself a world class show. Many people might think you’re a fake, but you will be guaranteed to sell-out theatres across the country with people who will defend you to the grave and goodness me, it’s good business. In fact I sometimes wonder if the main reason why people would rather believe a psychic is genuine might be because the implications of it being a lie – of that person, for reasons of ego and renumeration, happily getting up on stage and trampling over the lives of people who know no better – is so ugly that it’s preferable to give them the benefit of the doubt.

So I hope Sally isn’t like those people. And there’s no way of knowing without a test. For those who say they’ve seen her and have all the proof they need, then that’s great for them, but her show is not the test, it’s the very thing we’d need to test. If the magician David Copperfield went mad and claimed to really be sawing a woman in half, and you wanted to see if he was just using trickery, it would make no sense to say ‘I know he’s real, I’ve seen the show and he really saws that woman in half’. Instead you’d have to take what he does out of a show environment and see if he can still do it when other explanations have been removed. For example, if on stage the woman has to be first placed in a special box or on a special table, can he do it without the box and on any table? If not then maybe it’s something to do with the box or the table. Can he do it with any woman? With any blades? You get the idea. We’d have to put aside our emotions (the ones that want us to believe he’s real or fake regardless of testing) and base our new beliefs on the outcome of the test. Of course in this imaginary scenario where he is claiming to have real magic powers, Copperfield would know he’d never stand up to this sort of examination and would most do anything to decline the test.

You’d think psychics would be very eager to prove they can really do it. There’s a million dollar prize fund to be won by any psychic who can show under reasonable and controlled conditions (which they can decide upon in conjunction with the scientists) that what they do is real. This is money that could be kept or given to charity of course, not to mention the likelihood of also receiving a Nobel prize and the ability to give the world vital new knowledge that would change us forever. Imagine that! If I woke up to find that I could really do it, I’d be a selfish and odd creature to offer it only to TV viewers and theatre audiences. I’d be out there, doing every test I could until the scientific establishment sat up and listened. You’d be forgiven for doubting my sincerity if I said I had better things to do.

Sally Morgan has said she does have better things to do, which may be true, but if she’s real it’s a shame to deny the world the first psychic to have been able to prove herself. Sadly no psychic or medium to this point has ever been able to do so. The test is based on asking her to reproduce the phenomena she produces in her show, but importantly the scientists have invited her to discuss the test if she feels any aspect of it should be changed. Some entertaining correspondence on the subject between her lawyer and Simon Singh can be read here.

I imagine Sally will decline the test, and people will draw their own conclusions. I can’t imagine this will make any difference to her fan base or indeed to her. She may be seen by that minority as somehow gloriously ‘rising above’ the test and the ‘haters’ and the ‘sceptics’. Usually when people say this they mean ‘cynics’ rather than ‘sceptics’ as the former is negative and the latter is neutral. A sceptic reserves judgement until the evidence is in. A sceptic or a scientist should never be a ‘hater’ – he or she just feels that a suitable test is a way of finding truth rather than unreliable anecdote or a stage show where any cheating could be going on. The pre-determined negative views of cynics and ‘haters’, meanwhile, are as blind and irrelevant to the discussion as those of ardent, true-believing fans.

Another term that gets abused is ‘open-minded’. There’s being open-minded and there’s being so open minded that your brain falls out. Ian Rowland, the author of ‘The Full Facts Book of Cold-Reading’ (an excellent guide on faking these skills) gives an example. Suppose you are a chef, cooking soup for two hundred diners. You say to yourself ‘Well, I know if I put arsenic in this soup it’ll kill everyone. But hey! Gotta be open-minded!’ And you go ahead and add the deadly metalloid to the goats’ cheese crostini and float it atop the watercress and mint broth. Are you being open-minded or… just ignoring important information? In life we can only work with the best information we have to go on. We know that poison kills people so we don’t add it to our soups. We know that gravity works so we don’t jump out of windows unless we want to kiss a cruel world goodbye. Likewise when we know that psychic ability can be very easily faked – particularly on stage where the size of the audience can help enormously – it is not ‘open-minded’ to ignore that fact and keep believing without real evidence. Sadly, however, the methods of the fraudsters are not so well-known, which is why I spend some of my time trying to bring them out into the open. It is not being ‘closed-minded’ to want to put these people to the test or be wary of a psychic’s claims. It’s the best use of available knowledge in a world where we know how it can be faked and where vulnerable people are being asked to pay for the promise of something supernatural, with no firm evidence to back it up.

Most of you, as readers of this blog, will know all of this of course. Others won’t, and will just feel annoyance towards the scientists offering the test (‘Who the hell are you to test our Sally? Leave her alone, it’s nothing to do with you’). So it’s always worth saying why it’s really important to check carefully when these sorts of claims are being made. Meanwhile, brace yourselves: Sally may decide to show the world tomorrow that she can really do it, and the course of human knowledge will take a sudden swerve to the left. We can look forward to her and other verified psychics working with governments and scientists and finally, perhaps, these proven individuals can engage with the forces of the departed in order to advance our race, help us find peace amongst ourselves and understand the nature of eternity, rather than merely pass on bland condolences or upsetting revelations from the Other Side.

Or maybe she’ll have better things to do.

D.

If you like a little comment, then do feel free to comment throughout and after the show here on this blog.

What larks. Please enjoy the show.

My dear bloggees.

I have, these past few months, been secretly ferreting away on a new series of four weekly specials (and they are specials) for Chanel no. 4. I have been up to all manner of no good, hiding out here and there and making people do all sorts of dreadful things. Trailers and whatnot will be emerging very soon, but I wanted you to hear it here first.

The shows are called Derren Brown: The Experiments. The ‘Derren Brown’ bit, you’ll be immediately relieved, refers to me; the ‘The Experiments’ part is what they are. Each special is an ambitious sociological experiment, in which the unwitting subject is a single person, a crowd, or even an entire town.

Unlike previous shows, these are driven by open-ended questions. They are experiments into whether certain things are possible, or what would happen if certain situations arose, or how people might behave under certain conditions. Three of the four very much look at the darkest edges of human behaviour, and given that, I’m sure there’ll be all manner of complaints. I, meanwhile, am rather fond of them.

We’ll be posting all information here on this site first. Details of the first show should be here tomorrow.

The Experiments start on Friday, October 21st at 9pm, C4.

I do hope you enjoy them.

Here’s the address:

derrenbrown@objectiveproductions.com

Don’t do this unless you genuinely want to take part. Your decision.

X

My only worthwhile boating memory is from my twenties: that of hiring a rowing boat with my friend Joe in the Lake District. ‘Hiring’ is an optimistic term: the arrangement was that we would pay for the jaunt upon our return when, I imagine, the boat-man would know how long to charge us for. We rowed in the rain and sun, swigged Talisker from the bottle like the hardened seafarers we imagined we were, and played loud upon our harmonicas; then, when we realised too late that time was too short and the jetty too far to return to, we sailed on towards the train station we needed to reach, tied up the boat now several miles from the hire point, took a self-timed photograph of us stood triumphantly by the vessel we were abandoning, and fucked off home.

It was one of the best days of my life. Promises were made to myself to row more often, to canoe regularly, and to live the life aquatic. None of this came to pass. Instead, I have framed in my office, and holding pride of place, a glorious souvenir of us in our rain hats, flanking our boat and beaming.

Bournemouth, for readers of ‘Confessions’, was also home to my occasional Christmas family holiday at the Water’s Edge Hotel. My grandfather would treat us all to a few days by the sea. I had tried to find a picture of the hotel but found that it had since been pulled down. I am indebted to one Dean Watson, who found and emailed an old picture of said hotel and in doing so awakened some happy memories.

(On the subject of thank-yous: I received a copy of ‘Twitterature’ and a letter from a chap who worked at a book factory near or in Oxford: if you are reading this or might know him, I apologise profusely for losing your/his address. Do email me through this site.)

With just two more days of touring remaining, I shall miss the delights of new towns and lazy afternoons in eagerly acquired local haunts. The upcoming Shaftesbury Theatre London run brings with it its own peculiar pleasure, but somehow with TV concerns and other intrusions, the days don’t quite remain as carefree as I intend them to. There is, though, the private love of feeling part of a largely nocturnal stratum of London life known only to a bunch of actors and performers; a feeling of inclusion in something subterranean and steeped in joy. For a month and a half, one becomes part of London Theatreland, and for a lover of said theatre, that’s rather giddying. There are the concomitant delights of having ones social calendar cleared, save for lunchtime meets with those who might find themselves free in the days for the same reason, and of having a new home in the faded glamour of a west-end dressing room, available to make hospitable and homely according to ones whim. Of finding out who from the ranks of fame or friends might be in attendance that night, of stocking up on wine and treats to offer should they ‘come round’; meeting actor friends from other shows and discussing the idiosyncrasies of our audiences from that night; and of being on first-name terms with the doormen and waiting staff of local late-night clubs and eateries that cater for the post-show social artisan.

For my little crew it will be a blessed relief not to have to install and de-rig the set for six whole weeks, and for us all it will be a pleasure to tidy, make shiny, then primp and pimp the set with any extras which have been waiting for the convenience of the break to be installed. The show is always at its best in town. After a couple of day’s grace in which I will once again feel my bedroom carpet under my feet, perhaps watch a late-night movie with my beloved, and, excitingly, start painting a portrait of our very own Mr. Coops, the show will once again go on. A few nights to get up to speed, a press night, the reviews later that week which I won’t read (but will ask my director and PR personage for a general overview and to report any concerns worth attending to), and then the pleasure and challenge of re-creating the show six nights a week for a further six weeks without letting it ever feel like I’m merely repeating it.

Svengali, despite an error in the London Metro to the contrary, runs from June 8th to July 16th. Booking details and links are on this site. If you do come I hope very much that you enjoy it at least as much as I do. Before then, I shall soak up this impossible Bournemouth sun while I can.

It’s also a great city for the tour, as the staff of the New Alexandra theatre are beyond compare. We are lucky enough to have met some really excellent, super-friendly crews during our tours: the Alex bunch are a particular huge joy. Kim, the general manager, had made me an astonishing photo print as a welcome gift, along with some excellent whisky. More of that please. Thank you everyone there, it’s always such a treat.

The famous Brum friendliness was evident at stage door: numbers are so large outside now that it’s always a bit of a rush, but everyone was super-lovely and didn’t seem to mind. We added a tiny new bit to the show that seems to be working well, on top of the improvements we made back in Oxford. The process of continually trying to improve and tweak is one of the real joys of touring, and of course helps keep the show feeling fresh for me.

I donned the classic hat and shades celebrity disguise for a day-off trip to Alton Towers one afternoon with the gang, and we soared and dipped and vomited on Nemesis and Oblivion and Air and all the rest of them. I rather like 13, for what it’s worth. I like a bit of old-fashioned big dipperiness. A bit of plummeting punctuation to my rides. Nowadays it’s all on the one note, all the same velocity and turny-twisty.

Last year I remember riding everything, including the hilarious and terrifying Oblivion, as many times as I could, like a six-year old high on Fanta, and found later that I had strained my throat with all the tension and nearly lost my voice. So this time I was more careful. (Also, I remember, last year we had Jennie with us, who added stage blood to our faces and blackened up our teeth with make-up so we could look horribly damaged in those mid-ride photographs they sell at the exits. I recommend this game unreservedly.)

The past weeks also brought a night where a chap fainted twice on stage (during, for those in the know, THAT bit). Twice! I’m sure it all looked like part of the show, but it provided the sort of extra excitement that I live for.

Tonight is our first of three nights in Northampton. I believe it’s also home to a Torchwood convention this weekend. I wonder what sort of cross-over demographic will emerge. I’ll watch out for John Barrowman costumes or sudden bursts of ‘I Am What I Am’ in the stalls. (Do I have that right? I honestly don’t have a TV so I don’t really know what I’m talking about).

Righty-ho, carry on about your business. Pleased that the Rapture hasn’t affected show attendance, though I did find myself wondering at a couple of second-half empty seats in the front stalls last night.

The picture shows the rubbish collected from just ONE QUARTER of the stalls the other night. We’re such a filthy bunch.

Matt Galley, star of ‘Hero at 30,000 ft’, is auctioning for charity the first two of the three jack-in-the-boxes left at his doorstep during the filming of the special.

Here’s what he says on his eBay page:

Hello my name is Matt Galley,

Last year i had the fantastic opportunity to be part of a Derren Brown special called Hero At 30,000…I was an ordinary guy looking for a break and a bit of a helping hand…

I found an advert to be part of Derren’s show and i knew that if i was going to break out of my habits then, as a life long Derren Fan, he would surely be able to help me.

For those of you who saw the show you will know that Derren left cool little Jack-In-The-Box’s on my door step to show my progress through the transition from zero to hero

I want to try and help someone in need like Derren did me, so as a result i would like to auction off two of the props so that i can raise some money for SAVE THE CHILDREN who help young children in Africa get clean water, mosquito nets and a education.

So if you are a Derren fan, and want to get your hands on a small piece of his history then please let’s raise as much as we can!!

Thanks to you all,

Matt

Click here to view the auction