Lancelot's balls

Teeny tiny Derren Brown jumps on a small podium to meet his adoring audience at eye height. He predicted the lottree earlier this week, clever wee thing, and now he's explaining how.

A woman from the audience who doesn't like mice has to put her hand in boxes which may contain a mouse to show fear heightening predictability. The big reveal is that there is no mouse. Then, to up the non-existent stakes, a pre-recorded guy has to stamp on polystyrene cups which may contain an upturned knife. Clever little Derren correctly predicts the cups the guy will not stamp on, and good job because the last cup is hiding a mouse. Applause all round.

Splendidly, though he demonstrates these theories, he doesn't explain them in any depth. It's the most delicious bit of showmanship. I love a bit of devious psychology. But then he opens up a bit more. Some 'deep maths' (whatever that is) in a heads and tails experiment. And then, mirroring a classic guess the weight of the ox county fair competition, he applies the wisdom of crowds to the lottery. A group of people are asked to predict the next balls in a lottery sequence, which he then averages out. With this strategy he got as far as predicting three of the numbers. Woo.

Then he's onto automatic writing, the old spiritualist trick, with his panel. Four numbers correct. And the day of the lottery draw dawns and his team are off again, automatic writing. Numbers correct as we knew, and the group are ecstatic. But then he offers an alternative solution to the doubters, smuggling weighted balls into the machine, which he strenuously denies.

I am utterly credulous. I uncritically believe anything magicians or showmen like tiny DB say. So seeing someone so fundamentally untrustworthy demonstrate the different theories with such scant and partial explations was never really going to be very much help. Especially as he wants to continue his career and use similar techniques over and over.

He's funny, he's smart, he's devious, he's a nightmare. Derren is a Bond villain, Rasputin and every boyfriend I've ever had. This show was the obvious anticlimax it was set up to be after his audacious stunt. But I don't want to see how he does it really. Perhaps I'm naive or lack curiosity, but the amazing thig is he did it. And, tiny and annoying as he is, he's done something none of us will ever do - not choose the right numbers for the lottery but explode the dreams of a greedy nation that these things are easy.