On Friday on TV Derren Brown demonstrates a horse racing system that can not lose.
Today, he’s taking time out from conquering America (a mix of new material and old clips on the Sci-Fi Channel), preparing yet another stage tour from February, and writing a second series of Trick or Treat for spring, in order to do voice-overs for a new one-off TV special. In The System, he promises nothing less than to demonstrate a system for predicting which horse will win a race, 24 hours in advance. Every time.
“I realise that this is a farfetched claim,” Brown says, “but it really does work, it’s not hypnotism. I take a member of the public. She gets an e-mail in advance, not mentioning my name, and at the bottom is a racing tip to whet her appetite. She watches, out of curiosity. The horse does win, and she’s intrigued. Then she gets a whole series of tips, and they win, so she starts to bet her own money on it: first a fiver, then a tenner, £20, right up to £150, and then finally a whole lot of money, much more than she can afford . . . and I can’t tell you how that ends because it would spoil the show.”
“I realise that this is a farfetched claim,” Brown says, “but it really does work, it’s not hypnotism. I take a member of the public. She gets an e-mail in advance, not mentioning my name, and at the bottom is a racing tip to whet her appetite. She watches, out of curiosity. The horse does win, and she’s intrigued. Then she gets a whole series of tips, and they win, so she starts to bet her own money on it: first a fiver, then a tenner, £20, right up to £150, and then finally a whole lot of money, much more than she can afford . . . and I can’t tell you how that ends because it would spoil the show.”
