Derren Brown: The Events

Yes, the ten minute slot on Wednesday makes sense now we know what the "event" is. After that though it's just Fridays.

Whatever happens it'll be a fascinating experiment. I'm sure though like many of his tricks it will be about making the viewer think he has done something, rather than actually doing something. However, unless he is powerful enough to trick all the press into believing it too if he gets it wrong there is no hiding.

And if he gets it right, I expect an upsurge in ticket sales for Saturdays draw. Of course though if it turns out to be that easy, the jackpot will be won by so many people it wouldn't be worth winning. There was a report years a go that over 100,000 people played the numbers 1-6, meaning should they ever come up if the jackpot was £10m they'd only end up with £100 each.

Of course, if you are clever and know the products offered by Camelot, and you must choose numbers 1-6, then you don't play it on the normal lottery playslip - you play 5 number hotpicks.
Regular lottery 5 numbers would win roughly £10 given the amount of mugs that choose them.
5 number hot-picks would win a guareented £130,000.

Back to Derren - and if you watched his backward promo, then stuck to one of the lampposts were 5 numbers on circular stickers. Are those the numbers coming out tomorrow? Or as Derren is fond of misdirection, are there another 5 numbers elsewhere in the trail and you have to hunt for them.

Did;t ITV have a gameshow presented by Foxy that was a bit like Going for going, where the winner, would win the context of the winning lotto tickets. Ie there spent £50'000 on ticket and there guess the odd in there favour

Someone did say it all down to maths!

I think something like what you have said is probably what will happen (option 2 below). Or one of the other options:

I think it's either going to be:
1) A time delay so he hears what the numbers are a second or so before they get shown on the TV next to him
2) Opening an envelope or a few envelopes where he's put in numbers before hand and only opens it after the draw is made. There could be multiple envelopes or he could put the right numbers in just after the draw has been made (but it will look to us like there was 1 envelope and it was sealed throughout the draw).
3) He pre-records a video of himself saying phrases about 6x the number of balls (49). eg. he says "the first ball will be 1", "the first ball will be 2" etc. up to 49 then "then second ball will be 1", "the second ball will be 2", etc. After each draw they automatically play back the right pre-recorded video speech - or something similar to that.

Bare in mind that these theories will be explained on Friday. I doubt he'd say "contact the BBC to delay the draw by a few seconds as they provide you with your own live feed" or "record yourself saying the numbers 1 to 49..."

The Big Call. http://www.ukgameshows.com/page/index.php?title=The_Big_Call

Just to confirm as Asa himself said earlier, this will be on C4, E4, Film4, More4 and 4 Music tomorrow night (confirmed on EPG).

Any finally a use for picture in picture too.

No, it'll be something much cleverer than any of them, or more likely a combination of different methods like teh best magic tricks

He's not got the reputation he has from doing things as basic as those. Plus he has a lot of airtime to fill on Friday with the (apparently) the promise of showing us how to do it ourselves!

Very odd that this is on all channels (not More4 though according to channel4.com.) It wasn't in the Sky EPG for all channels when Asa first mentioned it, I checked. I guess it acts like a ten minute promo for the Friday show and the rest of the series.

The PiP point is a good one although I would assume that the Channel 4 show will have a feed of BBC One to show anyway. I wonder how many people on forums will be calling fake tomorrow because they watched BBC One on analogue terestrial and Channel 4 on a digital platform and see BBC One a few seconds before Channel 4 and assume Derren Brown can see the same.

I'm really looking forward to this show and the whole series.

I do think people at home will be thinking 'OMG He can Do It' , but people have to remember he is a trickster, magician or whatever, because if he could really do this, he would have bought tickets and done this years ago.

Will be very interesting to see just how this works, if the numbers are "written down" and revealed after the draw it'll be fairly obvious. If they're revealed before the draw... well, that'll be interesting!

But I can see the whole Lottery thing being total misdirection. There have been times in his stage shows where it appears he gets things completely wrong, only for it to turn out to be planned and a set up to a greater trick. So maybe it'll appear he gets the numbers all wrong, only for it to be a set-up for something else.

As mentioned, this Friday's show is about how he did tonight's trick, next week is the "stuck to the sofa" stunt with things about subliminal messages, so that should be good. The following Friday will be a "national psychic event" and anyone who knows Derren's views on psychics will know it should be a good one. And the final episode will be all about how to beat a casino.

Well the series is called the Events of Misdirection after all.