Derren Discusses The Secret of Luck
If you head over to Channel 4’s website for the Experiments you will be able to see an exclusive interview in which Derren explains where the ideas behind the show came from.
Click the link below to view:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown/articles/derren-brown-on-channel-4
Extraordinary programme. Derren conveyed some of the best life coaching ever in the space of an hour. Fascinating, entertaining, superbly produced!
I’ve always believed that you make your own luck in life but sometimes you need a catalyst to give you the confidence to try new things. The statue in Tod acted as that catalyst and, even after the show, people are still going over to it and giving it a rub. Manufactured or not, it’s now become a “Lucky Dog”
Derren delivered some brilliantly effective life coaching ever in the space of an hour.. a ‘must see’ for anyone who’s vaguely interested in their fellow human beings and their destinies, not to mention their own, excellently produced!
I thoroughly enjoyed watching this episode and am glad that the guy won, however i do find it a bit sus that he did get the 4 he required on the 3rd go but there you go! Keep it up Derren ! Great TV ! !
Loved last nights show whane made me giggle so happy for him with his win quite funny seeing his face when you mentioned your charities lol great show think Id love to apply for the next one lol
How to make a town feel happier. Next show the whole country… Great show, great writing. Thank you so very much. 🙂 very entertaining.
I think the outcome of the dice was set-up at the end but in i liked the way it didn’t really matter and the main point still stands.
Loved this series! I would never bet £1000 on the roll of a dice though!
Hey Derren! Great show.
I wanted him to win even though I knew that if he won i would be forever wondering if it was rigged or not.
The opposite of the first show. Another example of crowd mentality but with a positive slant.
Great programme. Classic Darren.
But as usual, all is not as it seems. Lets not forget that Darren is a master magician and twister of minds, as well as dice, perhaps?
Ok, it was a very interesting show, and it does prove that there is something in the power of positive thinking, but the fact that the die came up with the predicted number on the third role makes me very dubious. I’m not convinced that any amount of positive thought can influence motion…But as I said the rest of the show was very interesting and quite uplifting.
One assumes that you rigged the dice roll at the end to ensure a win, which is fine, you wouldn’t really want him to loose his money, and it made for good TV. I’m sure you won’t admit it, but are you concerned at all that Wayne might take his £6000 and go put it on a single number on a roulette wheel or something? Did he take away the right message, and not attribute a pure gamble to be an “opportunity”? Was his reasoning, “this is Derren Brown, he’s a nice guy and he must be up to something, this is unlikely to really be a 1 in 6 chance therefor this is a real opportunity and I should try to get in on it”?
Anyways it was a good show, and nice to see what seemed like such a tight-knit village after you pretty much destroyed my faith in humanity a couple of weeks ago.
How did Sally Morgan feel when she found out that the lucky dog story was made up. Talk about jumping on the band wagon, I’m surprised that she consented to appear on the show.
loved the understated ‘sally morgan’ piece in the show, watchout for that sprit vortex around the dog derren ….
Loved it. Wayne; superb. Yet again Derren and the team work wonders : ) #theexperiments were amazing, thank you. (Rooting for a Stigmata show)
Duh….I was on the channel 4 website faster than you can blink! Right, show’s finished……Laptop! Yeah, it was a brilliant show and I bet there are a lot more people who are going to be taking more chances in life. 😀 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Shame it’s the end of the series……What are you gonna do next!!!!????
After seeing the interview I am glad to see that Derren believes in the power of luck or rather the belief of luck. For a while I have thought that Derren was intent on debunking all spiritual related aspects of culture. Luck is a state of mind, or if you like, another belief system, with positive results so long as you have realistic expectations. Luck is just one of the many beautiful positive phycological traits of self belief, which is far more attractive than over confidence or negativity.
Before we know it Derren you will be telling us you believe in Karma next – “What goes around comes around”
Karma the cosmic boomerang
Derren Brown…. as you know there is a major difference between what you put on T.V now and what you put on T.V years ago… I am a missive fan of all your works Especially the ‘Magic’ and ‘Psychic’ stuff you do and in the past few years I have slowly started to progress in learning about Psychology (one of the main ways was watching clips over and over and questioning every second) … however I sincerely hope you continue to do all of these types of shows but also to focus as you have in the recent past on doing thinks like ‘The experiments’, ‘Investigates’ and ‘Hero at 30,000ft’ because these shows grip the audience, it changes lifes, and i do not only mean your subjects life i mean the life of alot of people watching because these shows allow people to open their eyes and minds.
I love Derren’s shows and think he is amazing! I would love to meet him one day. 🙂 Fridays show was amazing as always. I loved the lesson about opportunities.
I just watched that program about luck, £1000 on the role of a dice, the amount of suspense to see whether he got that money. i was sitting on the sofa hoping it would land on the correct number. the amount of suspense was great!!!!! slow motion all the way down the tube. that was great, my favourite along with the assassin one.
every time i watch one of your shows i am left amazed and intrigued you are definatly one in a million
For me, this show is the latest example Derren shows us of not only the extent of our brain capacity we don’t use but also the appalling use we sometimes put that small working part of our brains to.
On the one hand very few of us apply our brains to understand and shape our behaviour in the way Derren does and on the other we consider psychics ‘feeling the energy’ and rubbing lottery tickets on a ‘lucky dog’ as a good use of our brainpower. We’re all doomed!
Honestly Derren, your TV shows are sublime. Brought a tear to me eye, the last Experiment on Friday (just caught up on 4OD) Serious series. Keep cranking them out. Please! I need a D.B fix at least twice a year… And good luck on your New York tour thingy. Rock broadway… America will be yours for the taking… MWHUAHAHAHAHAH (evil laugh) 😉
great show.thanx.btw the name of that place :)check translation in german.:))
I loved this. I found it really moving and it’s changed my outlook on life. Life really is what you make of it.
Brilliant. I’m really sad that the experiments have come to an end, however.
Can’t wait for whatever comes next!
Amazing. The only “magician” I can trust not to be disappointed with, his honesty shows how genuine he is and even though what he does sometimes are of course tricks, you don’t feel cheated like you sometimes feel from a lot of other magicians. Everything he does exceeds my VERY high expectations. Me and my Girlfriend have watched all of The Experiments on 4OD in a row, loved them, even though I had watched them all last night. Watching Trick of the Mind at the moment, again! 🙂
That was a doggone good episode.
Derren, you mentioned “the roll of a dice” after the group returned from Blackpool, before cutting to commercial. Were you going to use 2 die, or just mentioning the common usage of the term? Just kidding… I think if you were writing about it instead, you’d say “die.”
I quite like that idea of a catylist, though people rarely use themselves as one. really good episode, and a fantastic ending.
I just want to say this was a beautiful program. Uplifting, hopeful and positive beyond all means. I know that Derren has a bit of an ‘evil’ side to prove many interesting points but with this and Hero at 30,000 feet is when he truly hits his peak. Very emotional, extraordinary television. Never stop what you do because it is so enlightening!
Brown never distinguished between training your powers of observation (good), practising trust in cases where you can afford to lose (generally good) and hobbling your powers of inductive reasoning (terrible plan).
If ever someone lived by the motto ‘The more I practice, the luckier I get’, that man is Brown. He knows the world is not run by a magician who rewards superstitious behaviour. Like many others, I baulk at the idea of anyone ‘getting the better of me’ to the extent that I probably turn down some good opportunities. Brown was right to point this out. He was quite wrong to deliberately blur the line between precious, fragile, empathic human-to-human trust – a thing he claims to respect – and the idea that blind superstitious trust can affect the outcome of a mechanical process.
I loved that the end of the series ended with a positive high,after being so shocked about the last episode. It made me question my own ability to perceive and take opportunities. Hope that D.B. will bring out a lot more series. In Germany most people do not know Derren, so I think I can already say I’m lucky, as I got to know him, his abilities and his insightful programmes. Vielen Dank!
Positive thinking/taking more notice of the positive things that happen to you is a good message but it didn’t increase Wayne’s chances of winning.
As you can tell from some of the daft comments on here you have made some people think that they’ll have more success in games of pure chance by thinking positively. That will only work with games with a level of skill/ concentration, as you showed with the Blackpool thing. They might now go out & make more bets that they can’t afford. Usually, love all your stuff (apart from lottery show;didn’t deliver on your promise to explain it) I agree with Samantha; wrong message for some people.
Derren, I love you !!!!!
This is a great show! You are God, man!
I really admire the work you and your team are doing. Its so obvious that you really care and are so thoughtful, keep up the good work. Really wonderful!
Am I the only one who thinks this show was recklessly irresponsible? The message about creating ones own opportunities is all well and good, but I think a lot of people are going to come away with the impression that gambling ones life savings is a good thing to do (it’s not; NEVER risk more than you can afford to lose), or that rubbing a dog’s head is going to affect the outcome of a dice roll (don’t be stupid).
TOPGUN the unfoolable here.
It’s blindlingly obvious to me that the £1000 wasn’t really Wayne’s money but actually Derren’s £1000.
How do I know that?
Well I’m smarter than 99.9% of people. Hell I should be a detective.
-TOPGUN (the unfoolable)
Great programme. Couldn’t believe you planted the lucky dog….you little minx…you had us all fooled on Twitter when you went up there to investigate!
When you said where the money would go if Wayne lost my aspergers son said the Parrot Sanctuary is ‘lucky’ coz they got the parrot cage we bought you! 🙂 ha ha! (And on another subject of coincidences, I was born and raised right near that sanctuary!)
For the record I don’t believe in psychics or anybody that claims to have the powers that Sally Morgan does. And maybe her inclusion was meant to show how stupid her viewpoint was (it certainly was edited thus) BUT to play devil’s advocate for a second: just because the lucky dog was created by Derren, it does not mean that she was riding a bandwagon in claiming the dog was in the middle of a vortex of positive energy or whatever she called it…
That dog was surrounded for three months by hundreds of people who were thinking positive things at the time they were rubbing the dog… and if there ever was anything real about pshycic abilities, then there would be a lot of positive energy in that park… just as there would be lots of positive energy anywhere around blown out birthday candles
Fantastic – showed how much we can see or miss opportunities in life and that we, not some magical power, are in control of this. It ended in the roll of the die and interesting that the community chose this as a way of testing the luck theory. Wayne chose to gamble his life savings and I wonder if he had lost them, would he have regretted it? Easy to assume he would but he is now approaching his life with more optimism and I’d be surprised if he turns into a gambler. Far more likely he will be much more positive in life and now open to the many opportunities around him.
Brilliant show.
if i found that dog i’d rub myself against it…that way the blonde in the cafe would take a shine to me!!
ruf ruf!!
Derren, have you got your left ear pierced? I was watching in HD, and on the bit about half an hour through when you are standing a field, there is a close up of your face. You can see, very clearly, a hole, or so it seems in your left ear. Earlier, when you are watching the car breakdown action you can see it as well. I checked your right ear later on, and there’s nothing, is it just an unfortunate stubborn piece of dirt? Or a remnant from your student days? Or something you did in between touring and filming? Just curious!
Looking for the characature picture of Wayne the Butcher, he would love a copy for the shop…. can you help???
brilliant entertainment as always guys. i was in tears by the end!
I liked when you were showing the “good luck” that can be found through embracing opportunity ( the scratch card) and that if you do good things for for other people, they may repay your kindness. (the comedian thing). But the ending really disappointed me. Wayne risked his life savings on the turn of a dice! Thats not embracing opportunity, thats just stupid.
You could have given him the chance to donate the money to charity and given the audiance the chance to repay him by putting money in a donation box on their way out. Maybe it could have been a competition that relied on him taking a a risk but using and trusting his own skills. But the ending as it was? It seemed to be saying “trust you will win and it will happen” Wouldn’t have put you down as a faith merchant Derren.
Hi. I have some questions about relevance of this shows. Can somebody answer it for me properly?
How it is with law in this shows? for example in “zombie game” or anything else. from where has derren permission to manipulate somebody? It bothering me because in our country if you do to somebody something without his permission, it is against law.
Thank you for answers.
Hi Derren & fellow forumites!
Just wanted to share a splendid little coincidence. My fiancee and I watched the ‘Secret of Luck’ programme last night on 4oD and it prompted a debate. I believed that an optimistic and open attitude would lead to more opportunities and ‘luck’ and my better half disagreed, for example I occasionally text in to competitions which she thinks is a bit foolish – her point of view is that I’m not going to win so it’s a waste of a pound! I say that if you take the odd chance you never know, statistics may be against you but one day the ‘luck’ may be with you!. My fiancee is by her own admission a more pessimistic soul than I but we closed the debate with me saying that she should take a chance sometimes (other than the chance she is taking in marrying me!).
Continued! Ran out of characters!
Anyway, my fiancee just called me to say that on her lunch break she had, on a whim and as a result of the show and our conversation last night, bought a single solitary scratch card.
And just won £1000!
Money is very tight for us at the moment and so this is exceptionally good news, that’s a lot of money for us! I am a firm rationalist so of course I don’t believe in any sort of ‘mystical’ explanation but I thought it was a good example of taking the odd chance because you never know what it could lead to.
I enjoyed this episode a lot more than the other 3 experiments, I think because most of us have a problem with seeing opportunities right in front of us.
Whilst all 4 experiments were very interesting, I think there’s a tiny minority who would be influenced enough in experiments 1 and 3, and in experiment 2, I think the kind of people who regularly participate in studio audiences aren’t going to be introverted or hugely sympathetic to a man’s bad fortune.
Experiment 4 felt really special and probably spoke to a huge majority of viewers, who hopefully will take a few more opportunities in life now!