First tech run
We got the show up on its feet today for a tech run… well, the first half, anyway, and then it was 10pm and everyone had to go home. I think it will be a good one. There are some previews later in the week, when some changes will be made, and then after a quick bout in Hastings it’s straight into a 4,500-seater in Bournemouth. Goodness me.
If you’re coming, I hope you like it. I hear the tour sold out a while ago, so if you don’t want to risk waiting for returns, get in for London while you can.
Meanwhile, to those of you who got up off your fat, wobbling, lardy sofas and bought tickets, I look forward to seeing you there. Have safe trips and I shall blog more often once I’m on the road.
I don’t want  to post any pictures that might spoil any surprises relating to what’s in the show, so here, instead, is a picture I took of a squirrel today:
oh wow sounds like it’s going to be fantastic love 🙂 I’m really looking forward to seeing your lovely begaoteed face again 😉
only one month to go woohooo i can’t wait (I bet you can though ahaha) lol
good luck with the tour sweetie I hope it all goes well
safe travels hon 🙂
see you soon
chantelle <3
Yay! See you in Bournemouth. We’re having a ritual slaughter on the beach afterwards if you want to join us. There’ll be Haribo and Mrs Crimbles’ Macaroons!
given the fact that you are not coming to lisbon ;( i won’t bother to ‘get up off my fat, wobbling, lardy sofa and buy tickets’, your loss Derren, your loss! lol
break a leg though, you’ll be brilliant as usual! x
lovely photo of a squirrel by the way 🙂 I once had a squirrel follow me around Edinburgh botanical gardens for a few hours it was so funny lol 🙂
i think they’re quite cute though 🙂
GL with the tour Derren 🙂
You are doing it for ages o.O it looks like it’s going to be exhausting and tough lol.
woo cant wait for the preview this sunday at chatam! hope its good 🙂 and a nice pic of a squirrels……….
well of a squirrel! lol
That is the most adorable picture of a squirral i have seen today!
Can’t wait for the tour – unfortuantely i got the last ticket for the shows in Norwich, so it’s in the gods somewhere, and i doubt i’ll actually be able to see derren, alas… still rather pleased though. Wish i wasn’t a poor student, and could afford to get decent tickets in london instead… meh…
I’m so looking forward to the show on Sunday (Chatham) we don’t normally get to see the show so early on in the tour. It’s quite exciting being one of the ‘first’ to see it this year.
Break a leg Mr B and bless you for keeping us entertained amused and mystified year after year.
More pictures of squirrels please!!
Can’t wait to see you in Nottingham. (:
&@ Rachael- I’d rather not comment on how cute a squirrel’s arse is, but the perspective it was taken from is nice. (:
Oh my god I can’t wait 😀
If it’s anything like the last tour of yours I saw, I might explode with hapiness.
I hope I spelled happiness right.
😀
@Sarah – it was more the way it looks like it’s stalking (or maybe just going for a merry wander) along the path that i liked 😀 I’m not sure i hold a firm opinion on the squirral’s arse per sae, but i think their tails are beautifullly fluffy…
(And since i’m posted again, i mght just rectify that my first post seem like i was rather ungrateful for having tickets to the tour, and this couldn’t be further from the truth – i just wish they were a little closer…)
well i’d like to of seen it but i’m not paying a total of £100 quid to do it (not the ticket for your show mind, just travel and over night expensises)
noone i want to see comes to Leeds its always Sheffield or Bradford
ahh well i was close to going on stage in London last tour it’ll have to do until i can actually afford it
or is it a flat faced featureless catbeast coming towards us..
Nice squirrel butt derry…bet it´s one of your poor taxi dermi´s! 🙂
I´m sure it´ll be a great show and i might… just miight come to see ya if those bloody only credit-card seetickets will work along, graww…
Yeah! Break a leg Derren! I am so lucky to be able to go to the London show this year. I am SO looking forward to it. Great squirrel pic by the way!
Squirrely! I wish we had those semi-tame squirrels here… the ones in our city parks almost never show themselves. Probably because they’re indigenous red ones, rather than american greys. Grey squirrels always seem more tame.
Derren! Oh Shame on you!
I know times are hard but that is NO excuse to go hunting poor little squirrels in the park to add to your taxidermy collection. Shame on you!
Yay cant wait for the show in Newcastle! 🙂
i got me some good seats. 😉
Ehehehe .. did not want to look into your eyes either huh?
For a moment I thought it was a skunk ..
Have a good first show and enjoy!
can’t wait 🙂 x
Cool… Squirrels! The low maintenance pet, or at least that’s the theory.
I used to feed one on my window ledge in a flat in Manchester, until it started getting demanding.
It got to a stage where if I didn’t get those peanuts out in time, it would literally start banging my window and kicking over its plastic foodbowl in a big squirrel hissy fit.
It also used to taunt the neighbour’s cats by sitting five feet away and shaking it’s ass at them. The cats never caught them! They build squirrels tough in Manchester…
Agree with Berber Anna, the red squirrels are wusses by comparison!
If this shows anything like the last three you have done it will be fantastic. All the best Derren see you in blackpool.
Very artistic Derry! Utterly impressed! But I know you better than this- the show is obviously full of squirrels!!
Can’t wait til the 27th! See ya then!
xoxo
By the way why is your date on the 7th may in Blackpool not on the list of dates on your site
The best of luck on your show!
I’m a fan from the Netherlands (YouTube is great, isn’t it? Otherwise there’s no way I could watch your TV and theatre shows…) who has been reading your entertaining book “Tricks of the Mind” over the past few days. Excellent reading: thank you for that!
I have been improving my memory tremendously, but I forgot why.
And I can’t seem to get rid of the first shopping list I remembered using your tips. Quite annoying.
Anyway, keep up the good work!
I really should stop reading this blog for the next week, it’s getting me excited and distracting me and I only have one week left to finish my dissertation, argh. Although I have something to look forward to for after I finish. I’m sure it’ll be a great show.
@rogerthevicar
Well Spotted! I’ve updated the page.
@ Abeo
Thanks
I got attacked by a squirrel last year! The poor thing was young and unexperienced so was too excited to get the nut in my hand. When she finally overcame her fear she bit and scratched me and I ended up having to go to get the Tetanus jab…
@Flapjack. LOL. 😀
That squirrel’s heard the rumours: 2 dead parrots and a house full of stuffed animals. “I’m outta here!”
Sorry Derren. 😉
Good luck for the new tour and look forward to more blogging…
GJW: Hey fellow Dutchie — now there’s 4 of us here, if I’m counting correctly ;o)
Youtube is great for sampling stuff, but if you’d like to actually watch the shows larger and unpixelated, Amazon.co.uk is a great place to order the DVDs (low price, fast delivery, no they’re not paying me to say this :oP)
Whereabouts are you from? I’m from Amsterdam, myself.
Sara: Ouch… I’ve never been bitten, luckily. Sounds painful. I did hold a baby (red) squirrel once, when I was a kid — it was sitting in the middle of a road frozen with fear, so I picked it up and put it near a tree on the side of the road. Now that I think of it, I was lucky it didn’t bite me…
“We’ve installed hidden cameras all down the street on this squirrel’s normal route to catch the action. The squirrel has no idea what’s about to happen.”
Sara – I’ve had this experience with squirrels too. First they observe from a safe distance, then after 5 minutes they come in closer to investigate. Once they’ve established you aren’t about to kill them they bite you hard on the finger to make doubly sure.
Then just as you start to think about killing them for being vindictive little buck-toothed bastards, that’s when they take the peanut!
Well in my case it was probably karma. Someone misguidedly told me that squirrels like ‘Bounty’ chocolate bars more than anything else, so I bought a box of them from a wholesalers and went to the park fully stocked. Having fed them with non-stop Bounty bars for a number of weeks and noticed a drop in the number of squirrels taking me up on my generous offer of chocolate covered coconut, I heard a wildlife expert on the radio one morning claim that chocolate is actually poisonous to squirrels! So I probably deserved any subsequent biting, window banging and foodbowl kicking tantrums they gave me.
I think I may have inadvertantly decimated the squirrel population of that particular park, and now the squirrels are after revenge…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcm5Ahx7Ww0&feature=related
hmm, how big a set of thumb screews you think we would need to crack out to get a Q&A session after one of the london shows for ticket holders at a secret location?
just an idea as a “fans pay back” type gig and the opp for him to maybe try something new out to a responsive crowd.
Cheers
Rob
Rob: I love the idea, but on the other hand I don’t expect anyone who’s just done an entire stage show to really be in the mood for another event. If it were me, I’d be far too tired…
Flapjack: Chocolate contains a compound called theobromine, which is poisonous to most non-primates when ingested in large enough quantities. I know small dogs can die from ingesting a single bar of dark chocolate, so it’s possible that the Bounty bars did kill the squirrels. On the other hand, those bars are mostly coconut, iirc, so maybe they just got sick?
Berber Anna – Well I know that now, but do squirrels ever forgive and forget?
Even a sick squirrel is entitled to be a bit pissed off with me, and I did feel pretty guilty about it at the time. I’ve since switched to feeding them peanuts and hazlenuts and hope that time will heal those deep emotional wounds. You’ll be pleased to know I haven’t been tempted to see if they’d prefer Snickers bars or Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut!
Roll on May 23rd.
Can I swap a friendly squirrel for one of the nasty seagulls who live around here? Horrible creatures who screach anytime of day or night and steal your chips and ice cream. Taxidermy the lot!
Katherine – you’ve missed a trick with the seagulls there… I like to call it the gravity defying digestive biscuit trick.
I used to do this on Worthing pier. Take a pack of cheap digestive biscuits somewhere with a lot of seagulls, throw them in the air one at a time, and you score a point for each one that never hits the ground.
Hours of fun, until they figure out that the bigger stash of digestives is the packet you’re holding, then it all goes slightly Hitchcock-like! (BTW, If you really don’t like the seagulls, try using chocolate digestives!)
Flapjack – sorry, far too much of a coward to try that.
Sounds good Derren. Can’t wait to see you in London on July 15th 🙂
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009/04/14/funny-pictures-has-squirrel-food/
My God… now Derren can teach CATS the art of persuasion. This man will take over the world by 2015 I just know it.
I love birds. I would totally try that seagull trick. A few buddies of mine trained some local pigeons to fly to their hands for food, but pigeons are domesticated so I guess that wasn’t too hard.
You should see the Toronto squirrels. They come in black and grey and are HUGE. They would probably put a hit on you for that chocolate thing, Flapjack.
I just have to try the seagull thing now, lol!
Greenwich park squirrels are teh cheekiest animals ever. Once one of them came down to see us to ask for food, how did she know we had the nuts in the backpack??!! Well, she patiently waited at our feet until we took the bag out of the back pack, opened it and got the nuts for her…
Then again when you get the young ones in spring, they’re still unsure of your intentions, and so they should be from reading the commetns above, lol!!
Re. Q&A session, YES PLEASE PLEASE YES YES!
I knew about chocolate being poisonous to animals, specially cats and dogs, but one my my cats (Biscuit) loves eating my breakfast chocolate milk!!
Seeing that photo of cat & squirrel i would put my money on the squirrel though.
Back to Derren, Q&A for geeks PLEASE!!
It’s not the sofa that’s fat, wobbling, and lardy.
It’s my arse.
Looking forward to the show.
Shawn
SGC – The seagull trick is just amazing… throw the biscuit straight up and if my findings are anything to go by only about 20% of them make it back.
By coincidence that’s roughly the same percentage as the squirrels who made it back after that whole Bounty bar fiasco in Ynysangharad Park. I suspect they’ve already put me on some sort of squirrel hit list. Word spreads quick through the squirrel grapevine, or is that just paranoia?
Please don’t tip off the Toronto squirrels… the Manchester ones got to be pretty intimidating when they were tapping on my windowpane, and they were just the standard grey types. Anything larger than that with a serious grudge and I think I’d have to hire bodyguards. Even the local cats know better than to take them on!
It was an innocent mistake, why won’t they let me put my shady past behind me? 🙁
I think they might be onto me…
http://www.thebirdmachine.com/fullsize/A3A0D1_fullsize.JPG
@Berber Ann
From the south: near the wonderful city of Breda actually. I might follow up on that tip of yours. For the time being it’s youtube for me.
Big fan as well? I’m amazed at what Derren does, but equally impressed with how he writes and thinks. Sometimes you need a bit of mental sharpening, don’t you think? Have you read his book? If not, do so. It won’t be disappointing.
So, from the photo we can conclude that Derren must be about as tall as a squirrel’s arse.
GJW: I did, actually. Got my copy signed last year @ the theatre show, too. *grins* Derren’s a really nice guy to talk to, as I’ve found out.
And yeah, he’s easily one of my favorite magicians (that would be why I started reading this blog in the first place :oP). Looking forward to this summer’s show in London — I’m going there with five of my friends, who like Derren’s work as well.