It would be silly to suggest that Derren Brown made magic cool. No one has ever really managed to do this, and, to a large extent, I’m not sure the magic world even has any interest in being cool. It is an art form rooted in theatricality, and hard, nerdy graft: there’s nothing chic about it. But Brown has probably come as close as anyone when it comes to making magic – “or whatever it is that I do”, he hedges, mostly describing himself as an illusionist – into a snappy, provocative mainstream pursuit.
During his ascent in the 2000s, Brown took the staid top-hatted conventions of magic and sawed them in half. His big breakthrough came in 2003, when he played – or seemed to play – a game of Russian roulette on live TV. In various other specials, he used elaborate psychological methods to compel strangers into believing that he was the messiah reborn, into robbing a security van in broad daylight, into believing in an ongoing zombie apocalypse, and, in one instance, into an attempt to assassinate Stephen Fry.
