DERREN BROWN ON BEING HONEST ABOUT HIS DISHONESTY

Photograph: GuardianIn a great interview from the Guardian, Derren Brown talks about trickery and mind games, keeping an audience entertained and his new book "Confessions of a Conjuror."  Derren also takes a hard look at himself, his personality and his evolution as a performer. 

By Brown's own account, before he became famous he used to be an awful show-off. "In my 20s, I just had to be the centre of attention all the time. I was quite eccentric." The son of a swimming coach and a model, and an only child until the age of nine, he describes his childhood self as rather precocious, but not very good at fitting into the sporty private school he attended in Croydon. Largely ostracised by his peers, he became, of all things, a teenage evangelical Christian, and it wasn't until university in Bristol that he discovered a personality of sorts, through learning hypnotism.

"I thought it was fascinating, and I enjoyed the attention I was getting – and yes, the power. And the posturing of it, I quite enjoyed being that guy. Then after that my drive and focus and love shifted to magic; the love was in coming up with new tricks and perfecting them. But I had no ambition, really; my life was doing nothing, maybe a couple of magic gigs a week at most, and then just pottering around in Bristol. I had no sense of 'Gotta work hard to be famous.' Never have done, and still don't."

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Derren was also interviewed by BBC Radio 4. In case you missed it,  listen below: