Hi

I've been watching the rare Devil's Picturebook DVD by Derren brown
and am astonished by his amazing card tricks (and mad humour!). I've
also just read his book Tricks of the Mind, which is good.

However I've been a bit flabbergasted by the info on wikipedia
suggesting that his recent 'older lady wins poker through body
language' thing on Trick or Treat might have been more fixed/tricky
than I thought. Apparently the bit where the older lady appeared to
select high and low cards wasn't actually through body language (as us
viewers are led to beleive) but through the higher cards being a
slightly different colour to the lower cards (something she would
register subconsciously). I suppose my question is either 1) does
this mean that the final tournament card games were also fixed to help
her win rounds, after all she may not have learnt much body language
etc at all? or even 2) that Derren Brown is virtually having a joke
with these tricks at the expense of Neuro-Linguistic Programming
beleivers etc (who he's criticised a bit before now), by devilishly
creating the illusion of mental transformation whereas in fact the
results are mostly achieved more through optical props etc.

Any thoughts??

I love Derren Brown's work, but at the moment I'm feeling just a
fraction manipulated! I have believed that he's a master of both
tricks AND helping people understand body language etc. So, why would
he be using rigged cards to make that trick work, rather than genuine
body language skills?

Just curious.

Best

Mike F

P.S. There are some other obvious optical tricks in his current
series. For example his ambigram playing crads that can read either
'Trick' or 'Treat' depending on what way up they are turned!