Derren Brown – The Secret of Luck: Tonight at 9pm Ch4
Just a little reminder that the final episode in ‘The Experiments’ series airs tonight at 9pm on Channel 4.
Leave your thoughts on the show in the comments section below, or click here to watch a sneak preview 🙂
Congrats as show as always, Not sure I agree with your concusions. As a ‘wayne’ I too would be looking up to make sure I didnt walk into a lampost rather than on the floor on the chance of finding £50. Should ‘Wayne’ saw his next oppertunity as a tip for a 10/1 shot at Newmarket, wounld you be happy for him to put his winnings on it?
Brilliant! Not only another great show, but a much needed reminder that life is what you make it!
Truly random result with the 4 at the end, the same or larger cash prize as a result of Wayne dialling the number if it rolls anything bar 4 – we were told it would have mixed results for him by leaving his message, but never really heard any outcome.
Life savings of £1,000 – I bet a few folk were humbled when they heard that. Well done Derren.
Great episode but really can’t help to think the end result was controlled. The lack of expression on Derren’s face which to me, looked like he was expecting it. I think Derren did control the result as he always said hero at 30’000 feet was his favorite show that he did because he genuinely changed someones life. The same goes for this expect I think he would rather control the result so it was certain to would turn out to change someones life. I don’t think he would chance the guilt of losing a decent mans life savings. I think the ending was more to show to the whole public to take there every opportunity and not to presume bad luck in life, which in my opinion he achieved.
Great experiment
I have enjoyed all derren’s experiments all gave me something to think about. Did Derren perform some kind of magic so that Wayne won? dont belive everything i see. I always say that Derren would never get me. Going to see him in manchester. Magic is so believable.
“Brilliant show – even better than last week’s. Touble is, I no longer trust my eyes – but it did look as if the dice wobbled a bit unnaturally before coming down on 4. How about a magnetised dice with an electromagnet only turned on for the last roll?”
This is what I thought on first watch, and it becomes a more likely explanation the more I consider it – good shout IMO.
Oo, I loved this one! My favourite one. 😀 Clair de Lune again! Do you like that song by any chance? Lol. I do. Night night. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx This show made me feel happy 😀
Derren, you’re a bloody wonderful human being! Love your shows, you always entertain me and leave me with food for thought. What a lovely thing to do for that butcher tonight, Wayne Stansfield.
What a great show the tears rolled down my face as I laughed so hard at my cartoon. Can I get one for my scrap book?
Tod is a great place,the show was brill, thanks Derren you wer really lovely, Sally the artist xx
Ive often wondered that im one if the mist unluckiest people in the world at times. No one day ever goes straight for me.
Is it really down to the way I think or?
Opportunities dont often come my way and it seems one tradegy after another. What did i do that was so bad to deserve all this? (is my usual thought). Apart from put others first all of the time instead of myself, i dont know.should i be a selfish one or should i continue googling “bad luck”.
Interesting show though.
Thanks
I used to live in Todmorden. It’s in the middle of both nowhere and everywhere. Look through back issues of Todmorden News: for a population of only 15,000 there is a lot goes on in that there valley… it’s more than just “the biggest place for lesbians!”
@Tom & @Dan
But with 4 chances to roll a specific number, don’t the odds rise to 671/1,296 or 51.77 % ? Of course, it was still a huge gamble, but higher odds than 1 in 6. Great show anyway, left me planning to “feel lucky” more often hehe
As Luke said, I think “10 heads in a row” is the secret behind the 4 coming up.
Would the show have still been as powerful if Wayne had “failed” and Derren had given him the money anyway for having taken a “chance”? Would the caveat of having three chances have allowed for a ‘magician’s choice’, facilitating a justified edit of the final footage? Or perhaps three chances gave Wayne the oportunity to subconsciously effect the way he dropped the die? Hmmm…
Derren seemed quite surprised at the outcome. I don’t think he believed it would work out at the end.
Great show Derren!!! Nice to see a happy ending for Wayne. Embarrassing for Sally Morgan though!! I love watching you xx
Last time I changed someones tyre I got mugged.
Last time I entered a free draw I Ripped off.
Last time I helped a survey I got my wallet stolen.
Last time I rang a number it cost me £10.
Last time I threw a die I lost my fare home..
moral, “if someting is too good to be true it probably is”
loved the first 3 shows… not the last one though. Im suspicious about it and I dont think derren should encourage gambling. First 3 shows were awesome 10 out of 10.
Having done a lot of soul searching lately, your programs have helped me come to some logical solutions.
Love how you demonstrate the power of the human mind, these shows have kept me on tenterhooks and each time has surprised me how suggestible we humans are. Good work
You must come to northern ireland……we are known for our gullibility haha
I was smiling through out the whole show, makes me realize that maybe I should take up more opportunities! I felt inspired and was moved by Wayne, what a wonderful ending to a fascinating series!
i have loved the series and are looking forward to future show. ps love it so much!!!!
Loved the show, plus The Drugs Don’t Work by The Verve is one of my favorite songs and number 4 is my favorite number so I hope this is a good sign 😀 . I was actually thinking they would all pick number 4 as well. I wonder if Derren put subliminal messages around the town so they would pick 4. LOVED IT!! Looks a lovely place too :D. Xx
I’m a 27 year old writer / video editor living in California going through a bit of a rough patch in life right now. I just watched the episode and was so moved I decided that within 1 year I will figure out a way to get to the U.K. (where I’ve wanted to spend a year or ten for quite some time now anyway), find my way to Todmorden, and touch that stupid statue. Not sure why but I have a feeling I’ll find luck along the way. Thanks for that hope! It’s something I haven’t known in quite some time.
The Experiments were amazing! Please do some more?? x
Last night’s experiment on ‘Good Luck’, I think, yes, proved the point that if we aren’t open to receive opportunities we won’t see them, and hence we feel we have bad luck…It reminds me of the story of a man who died and went to heaven, where upon God greeted him and the man very angrily said “You didn’t try to save me, let me live, when I prayed so hard for you to do so!” God responded by asking the man a question ” Did you not see the log I sent you?” …To explain – the man had been clinging to a roof with flood waters encroaching…he couldn’t swim…he thought he would drown if someone didn’t save him…HE DIDN’T SEE THE LOG that bumped up against the roof, that he could have climbed on and saved himself! How much Wayne, in this programme, reminded me of him.
Continuation of previous post by me –
…However, the programme then raised some very interesting questions because many of the ‘lucky’ things that happened were to do with something other than opportunity because it was in the realm of gambling, which really is to do with – what else can we call it, but – LUCK…?! It really seemed to show that if you INTEND and think you will be lucky, you will be…to the extent that in the grand finally, even with the odds stacked against the outcome of the dice falling where it did…It did (Sadly, many people who are now in Gamblers Anonymous felt convinced of this too, until they had to finally admit that wishing something to happen, patently was not working for them!)
Continuation of previous post by me –
BUT, it seemed something was operating on some level…as I watched, ‘I knew’ 4 was going to be the number chosen by the audience, and it was. That kind of knowing happens regularly to me, and the more I ‘listen’ to – what, I can only call intuition, I seem to notice, and have, these flashes of knowing more and more…?! I do posit there is indeed something to the idea of ‘resonance’, and that we can influence the outcome of situations, and that with a ‘group energy’ helping to intend it – even the role of a dice can be influenced. Now, that, Mr Brown, is what I think is really interesting, and needs investigating!
Luck is like lightning: it’s more likely to strike if you hoist a lightning conductor.
It was a shame that the ending was faked with a previous camera shot, the need for a count down and the pre selected contestant a bit of a give away. Getting the kid up, nice touch.
There seems to be two possibilities here.
1) Derren somehow switched the dice at some point. (Dawn had already filmed in the toyshop – he could have found out the kind of dice the shop sold and swapped the stock for a weighted or magnetic dice) I have seen a similar thing on Real Hustle where they replace normal cards with tampered resealed cards in a shop and get the subject to buy ‘new’ cards.
2) It was just a normal dice with a 1 in 6 chance, and the dice just happened to land on 4. If the dice did land on 4, Derren could have just turned it around and given him the money anyway, claiming that it was about him taking opportunities that was the real test.
(Sorry my comment was split up)
….Either way it’s a ‘hit’, however if Derren could have found a way to influence the roll of the dice – and I’m sure he would, and easily could have – it would make for a much better ending/television.
Nice work with Sally Morgan by the way. More evidence that psychics are either delusional or outright charlatans.
I like how Derren is continuing the tradition of the magician as scpetic i.e. Houdini, Randi, Penn & Teller etc.
I noticed how the lucky statue of a dog, could possibly have represented Deity worship, by design or accident. Dog spelled backwards being God. I suppose it is a far more rich and exciting experience when we approach opportunities as a rational and critical minded human being, and not from behind the guise of a comfortable superstition that some people base and revolve their life around.
It was good to see your thought provoking series of The Experiments go out with a bang, with a firework display and I (luck) forward to the next series/book/tour of yours.
great series, provoking more serious realisations about the common state of mind. i work in banking and have to watch and manage the economic impacts on everyone around me, not just how the industry is on the brink of imploding but how my friends and family are coping and trying to keep themselves positive and focused, when its easy to fear the worst at the moment, when people you thought were in safe jobs, are currently out of work. i think this series is so timely as the messages can have just a reassuring impact in that no matter what goes on in and around our lives, we can continue to control by owning our choices and decisions and to wake up. The UK the world is going through a huge flux of change but this change will bring new opportunity, so good time to keep an open state of mind.
phillip, dog spelt backwards as God doesn’t say anything, not only is that blasphemous but also illogical.
Dear Derren,
I have a question in regards to Wayne and the win at the end of last nights experiment. It is my belief that you would not have genuinely allowed Wayne to gamble his life savings on the simple role of a dice. Therefore it leads me to believe that as the point of your experiment as i see it was not “luck” but the mentality behind it, that a real gamble or act of chance at the end was irrelevant to the point being made.
Following the point made at the start of the program, with the planting of a song in someones head, done over simply the course of a day. I can see it no great leap that planting the number 4 in the mind of the town over the course of 3months would not be a great difficulty for yourself, especially with Dawn walking around filming for 3months regularly stating
cont from above
“we’re filming a documentary for channel 4” and many other techniques you must have employed.
Therefore my question is, was Wayne’s 1 in 6 chance gamble, in fact not such the gamble it first appears to be.
Please do not take this question negatively, I am a huge fan of yours, having read several of your books, watched all of your shows and seen you live, sadly only once.
I simply wish to determine whether I am correct in thinking this, as it also leaves the town as a whole with the positive conformation of taking chances, and not feeling like they have lost anything that they gained during the 3 months prior to the final event.
Kind regards,
Sam Farley
Bounteousness, such as that exhibited in the latest experiment, deserves not to go unrewarded. So I for one will be forwarding all the munificent money making material I receive from Nigerian dignitaries and such like, on to DB to take fullest advantage of.
If like me, the subject had no previous (to indoctrination) conscious knowledge of either tune or artist. How much would luck play a part in who had been picked?
Brilliant! Heartwarming! Inspiring! Hilarious! ‘The Gameshow’ was horrendous and would have switched channels withing minutes had I not known it was an ‘experiment’. The ‘Guilt Trip’ was also terrifying and painful to watch. But ‘The Secret of Luck’ made it all worthwhile! I am inspired, and if nothing else I know that I am very ‘lucky’ indeed to live in such a beautiful place! BTW, no wonder Sally declined the Halloween invite! Lol!
Was it just me, or was that the Stig behind the wheel in the animation of them going to Blackpool?
Loved the show and the Experiments series. There are few programmes on TV that really make you think, and it has gone on to show how powerful belief can be. I have always finished watching the show feeling not only entertained but as if I’ve learnt something.
The dog might not be lucky, but the people of Todmarden certainly were.
Well done Derren, Look forward to seeing you live next year. 🙂
Love the show… what was the beautiful piece of music used at the end for the fireworks?
Yours hopefully, PM
Surely Wayne was short changed? 1k on a 6/1 bet pays back 6k winnings plus 1k stake = 7k, not the 6k Derren paid him.
I cried. Thats age for you.
dog god die dice…either way the show(s) have been great. (nb Greyfriars Bobby hoax)
Sally,
‘I knew’ 4 was going to be the number chosen by the audience, and it was. That kind of knowing happens regularly to me,
Derren subtly directed the townsfolk (and you and I) to pick four. He’s an illusionist; it’s what he does.
Great show until the final stunt. Gambling your life’s savings on the roll of a die isn’t taking an opportunity — it’s being foolish.
Thank you for the whole series Derren Brown! I’ve got to say that my favoruite was the first one and the third one. Very entertaining and eyes-opener.
Lovely end to your Experiments last night Derren. Looking forward to seeing what else you have up your sleeves. x 😉
Wow, what a wonderful conclusion to the experiments, and the most relevant and profound of the series. For me the Dog was no different from all other superstitious, mythical and religious beliefs held by individuals through blind faith without evidence. In a similar way, despite the residents of Todmorden now being in the knowledge that the Dog wasn’t magical in any way, i imagine many will continue to treat it as lucky because much like theists, there main concern is comfort rather than truth. It was a great demonstration of how such illogical superstitious beliefs created, passed on and maintained in the face of reason.