I once had Rachel McAdams over for lunch, when she was with Michael Sheen, who's a friend of mine.
— Derren Brown
I really do like being on stage. Compared to television I have a lot more control - it's a lot more relaxed and loose.
A lot of unconfident kids do tricks because it's the quickest route to impressing people. You can stand behind something amazing and people think you're amazing.
I have a couple of dogs and I live with my partner. We just like to sit and read and I'm generally quite quiet.
For a long time, I couldn't just sit and have a conversation with people at a table without showing them a trick. I thought you just had to impress, it was about impressing, which of course is what you do if you don't feel very impressive.
If you aim to be controversial for the sake of it you'd end up with a very thin and meaningless show.
That's how I lived for 10 years in Bristol after graduating. I just stayed in my student flat and paid very little rent. It was lovely, and part of me still misses that very lazy lifestyle. I was known as the magician on the street, and I used to dress a little eccentrically in a cloak.
Magic should get under people's skins.
That was how I started, as a hypnotist. But I didn't like the kind of gigs I was being offered. I didn't want to embarrass people.
Yes, I've had a slight feeling of wanting to reclaim some of the lifestyle I had in my 20s, which means poncing around in what amounts to pirate clothes.
So I don't really suffer too badly from fears - I'm quite happy to engender them in other people though!
Most people's fear of being in front of an audience can generally be conquered by being completely on top of what it is they've got to do.
You have to realise that hypnosis doesn't exist: it just works on people's natural suggestibility, their expectations and capacity to unconsciously role play. You can't make someone do anything they don't want to do.
Guilt's too strong a word, but there is this niggling worry that I'm a grown-up doing a childish job and it would be nice to do something more useful and to reach a number of people with an idea you think is important.
I'll sometimes go a week or two without tweeting, and then when I'm in the mood, tweet loads, and clog up people's in-boxes. It's a moment when you feel like sharing something.
The Stoics appear during a huge time of constant wars and real political strife. And it became very popular, I think, because it's a way of distancing yourself from strife and keeping your centre of gravity within you.
I like to eat other people's food in restaurants.
Magic has both feet planted in cheap vaudeville and childish posturing; in dishonesty and therefore not in art.
Psychic, illusionist... I'm just doing the things that I find interesting and worthwhile.
I love touring, more than anything. Doing the stage show is a more enjoyable process than TV. There are no safeguards but the payoff is the wow factor.
I'm not very sociable. If I get invited to a glamorous event I probably won't go. That world does not really appeal to me.
I wore a cloak for many years, I had long hair, I may have had a drop earring for a week and I fancied myself as a philosopher poet but was somewhere more in the gay female leisure pirate.
Mentalist is the technical term for what I do and it covers everything from psychic medium through Uri Geller, through to magicians doing tricks with a mental theme.
In recent years there's been a lot of philosophical theorising about how important magic is, and how it takes us back to a childlike state of astonishment. I think all this is just nonsense. Magic isn't meaningful or important other than how you're performing it in that moment.
The people who are most susceptible to hypnosis - the rugger bugger types - were also the ones who intimidated me most at school, so on an unconscious level I suppose I'm turning the tables on them.
The process of coming out is normally very disappointing. It's not that people react badly to it - they really don't care.
Since turning 40 I happily moisturise - I have what's called a regime - but I'm always in two minds because I have no idea if I'm completely wasting my money. They feel nice when they are on but I can't stop wondering, 'Am I succumbing to the same nonsense I try to fight against in other areas?'
I came across the idea of running towards the things that frighten you. Once you go and do it, you realise that the fear of it is far more powerful than actually doing it.
I am a movie geek, yes!
I'm finally having my TV removed and replaced by a tropical fish tank, which I hope will provide more interesting viewing.
As a performer you often feel that you're the child and everyone else is a grown-up.
I really liked 'Heist,' and that seems to be a popular favourite, but I think my personal favourite was 'Hero at 30,000 ft,' about the guy who ended up landing the aeroplane.
I was allowed to do whatever made me happy. I can't think of a better or more worthwhile approach to parenting.
I don't like big spiders in the house.
When touring I get to travel around with my best friends, do a show I love and I'm confident people will enjoy, and have all the adrenalin that comes with performing.
I don't want to be some extreme therapist. Although seeing someone's life change for the better is a really moving thing.
It used to frustrate me when I'd get celebrities on my shows and I had to meet them as this ludicrous magician character rather than as myself.
I'm probably a little shyer than people imagine.
There was something about me even at an early age that enjoyed charming and manipulating.
When I started doing magic I was quite obsessive about it. I didn't feel impressive and I had a strong desire to impress people. I was putting all my creative energy into learning and performing tricks, and it helps if you're not in relationships or doing the stuff other people are doing. But it's not necessarily a healthy way of living.
Everything you do is about creating an experience in the viewer's head. If you're rude or irritating as a performer, then your magic is irritating.
For every moment of concentration there is an equal moment of relaxation.
I went to a party when I was a student and they had a mynah bird up in the bedroom where people put their coats. I was completely captivated - I just sat there all night talking to it. The next day I passed a pet shop and they had a conure - it's a little parakeet - in the window. I bought it, not knowing what it was or how to look after it.
I never quite know how to describe what I do. I normally just say, 'Oh, I'm a magician', which probably puts fairly naff ideas in people's minds but is pleasantly conversation-stopping.
When I was at University I had a sort of fear about going to the gym and that kind of blokeish environment, which was rooted in a feeling of total inadequacy, which is what fear is.
Clearly if a hypnotist could make someone to steal £100k just by telling them to, the world would be a different place, and I suspect that hypnotists wouldn't bother doing shows in pubs or dodgy Spanish holiday resorts.
Feeling we have to be constantly updated about the lives of our friends and that everything we say has to be out there leads to frustration, anger and jealousy much more than it leads to anything else.
If something's stressful I've always tended to just find ways of avoiding it rather than rising to meet it or try to change it.
Magic, whether it's mind magic or conjuring, is about the cheapest and quickest way of impressing people, and I think if you don't grow out of that as a magician then it shows, and people get a bit sick of that after a while, because it starts to feel like posturing. So I grew out of it.
I never really enjoy the thought of fancy dress.
