So the Yes/No Trick Launched recently – there has been great feedback from purchasers and I really think that it is one of the cleanest, most direct and easiest mentalism effects that has ever been seen.

It goes a bit like this – you show two cards, one with the word “yes” and one with the word “no”. You mix them about a bit and place one of them down on the table. You ask the spectator which card they think you put down. By manipulating your spectator, reading their body language and thought patterns you are able to make them ALWAYS guess incorrectly. You can do this as many times as you like. Then you can swap positions – this time the spectator has the cards and you do the guessing. Only this time – you can get it right 100% of the time.

It really doesn’t get any cleaner than that and the principle can be adapted to any 50:50 choice – you can use Love/Hate, Up/Down, True/False and so on.

Just this week video instructions have been added to the ebook so its the perfect time for you to grab a copy. Check out the Yes/No Trick here.

This new Derren Brown “Miracles for Sale” special airs Easter Monday, 9pm Channel 4. In it, Derren Brown will try to teach a member of public how to be a fake faith healer. He’ll reveal the secrets to the art to this person and then present them as the real deal to a Texas church.

The show is set to expose the lack of evidence faith healers have in support of them. The truth is that there isn’t a single shred of evidence to suggest that such faith healing works. In every case there is a rational explanation for the supposed miracle that has occurred. It’s nothing more than a psychological magic trick – only with dangerous consequences. James Randi has already done a lot of work exposing faith healers – check out this little video clip:

It shows the faith healer’s wife transmitting him information about members of the audience – this lets the faith healer pretend he is delivering messages from God. What’s more, the members of the audience actually fill out prayer cards as they come in – this way the messages the faith healer transmits are a perfect match to the audience! Ingenious, but the people in that video are clearly very vulnerable – they shouldn’t be exploited in this way.

It will be interesting to see how well Derren’s volunteer can take on the role of faith healing. Although unethical, it is a tough thing to do convincingly. It’s going to require the full range of magic, mentalism, cold reading, NLP and mind reading tricks to pull off the effect both on the person being healed and the audience.

Derren is also set to expose the money that changes hands within the faith-healing industry. I’ve always thought it to be big business, but it will be interesting to see how much money these charlatans are really bringing in.

We are going to update this blog post on Monday, so come back then and we’ll reveal some of the techniques and methods Derren Brown and the faith healers utilise. In the mean time – leave a comment about the show below!

Joe Power is a psychic medium from Liverpool, UK. He claims he can contact the dead. For $40 an hour he’ll give it a go. Sounds like a bargain eh?

The show starts with Joe Power giving a psychic reading to a woman named Vanda. The reading was set up by his manager. Joe gives what appears to be a very accurate reading. It looks like Joe was using some cold reading techniques, but he also gave some very accurate information that cannot be obtained by cold reading. This indicates that he might have done some research on Vanda prior to the reading.

Derren takes Joe to the set of Hollyoakes and gives one of the actors an aura reading. He says that he can see ‘red’ around him and that it relates to legal issues. Amazingly the actor got a parking ticket earlier that day. He continues giving aura readings, again using what appears to be cold reading. The readings here aren’t as accurate as in the reading he gave with Vanda but the sitters are still impressed.

Derren Brown gives Claire Cooper a reading. His reading was quite accurate and he managed to get some accurate hits on where she went on holiday in an old relationship and that she has pedigree cats. Joe Power quips to the woman ‘I’ve not said anything about the affair’ – I suspect he was hoping that the old relationship ended because of an affair. Claire Cooper ended up just being confused – clearly having no idea about any affair. Had the relationship really ended because of an affair, this would have been a great hit for him. The manner in which he delivered this quip came across as a bit reckless.
Another trick Joe uses is to suggest that people are from a family of 4 – here 4 can mean 3 other siblings + the sitter, or one other sibling, plus two parents, or 2 siblings and a single parent or even 2 parents and a grandparent. So many ways to get a hit!

Derren Brown’s driver noted that Joe Power saw one of the people he gave an aura reading arriving on the Hollyoaks set in her mini. Later, during the reading –Joe reveals that the woman drives a mini as if he got that information from the supernatural world.

Derren goes on to see Joe at a psychic show where he gives readings to the audience. He seems to be getting a lot of hits, delivering some accurate information to members of the audience. Derren Brown goes on to interview some of the audience and many of them have had readings with him in the past. This raises the prospect that Joe is just repeating hits that he got in the past.

Richard Wiseman gives some insight on how cold reading works.

• Make a connection: Joe shouts out a name and waits for someone to confirm it.
• Make the sitter do the work: Joe manages to get the sitter to the work, for example Joe uses his family number trick – “I’m getting the number 5” – the sitter confirms that there were ‘5 girls and a boy’.
• Barnum statements: These are statements that sound like they are quite specific but really applies to a lot of people. For example asking an older person “How’s your knee, is it feeling better” – it’s very likely they have or have had something wrong with their knee.
• The Recap: – Joe often repeats or rephrases information that the sitter has already given him earlier in the reader. For example a sitter talks about a cousin, later in the reading Joe “forgets” this and says “was she a cousin”. Here he gets the credit for a hit that was given to him already.
• Blame the Audience: – Sometimes when things aren’t going to plan, Joe just blames the audience. For example he asks about something specific, but the sitter doesn’t know what he is talking about. He says things like “Try thinking about it a bit more” or “Sit down for a while and have a think”.

Derren Brown tells us that Joe originally agreed to take part in a scientific test to assess his abilities. Joe Power pulled out of the test claiming that it was ‘designed for failure’. He says that he needs natural communication for the spirit world to come through to him. When asked what he would do if he wanted to test whether someone else was doing psychic readings for real – Joe Power’s response was that ‘he would just know’. Hardly convincing!

Derren Brown arranged a final one-on-one reading with another woman. Unlike the first reading of the show, this is one that has been arranged by Derren rather than Joe Power’s manager. Roz uses a fake name and the reading happens not at her home address, this reduces the chance that Joe can do research before he gives the reading. If Joe was to get hit after hit during the Roz reading it would support his claims. The reading doesn’t go too well. Joe doesn’t get many hits and makes many uncomfortable misses. It clearly looked like Joe was using only cold reading with Roz. Interestingly, Joe always seems to go to the toilet before personal readings. Perhaps he is getting information from photos on the walls on the way or even inside the toilet.

Joe gets very angry with Derren. He claims that because Derren had met Roz beforehand, the test has been corrupted.

The show concludes with Derren confronting Joe Power with some of his suspicions of his fakery. He asks Joe Power is he is a fake. Joe denies this. Derren says the audience will have to decide.
Finally, Derren Brown reveals that after contacting Vanda – the woman that Joe gave a very accurate reading to at the start of the show. Joe claimed to not have carried out any research on her and that she he had never met her before. It turns out that Joe Power’s brother lives next door to her! Co-incidence?

I’ll be producing an eBook to allow you to easily create your own psychic readings. Join the mailing list to be notified when it’s ready for download!

What do you want to know about fake psychic readings? Got a question about cold reading? Let me know with a comment below.

Episode Summaries:

From May 10th, Channel 4 in the UK will be showing a new Derren Brown show named “Derren Brown Investigates”. It is the first in a series of three in which Derren Brown will investigate various paranormal claims rather than his usual blend of mentalism and mind reading.

The first show will be with a psychic medium, the second focuses on a ghost hunter and the third is a new Russian treatment that claims to cure blindness. In each show Derren Brown will spend time investigating the paranormal claims, spending time with them, observing their surroundings and weighing up the evidence for and against their position. Check out the trailer below:

You can get more information direct from the Derren Brown Blog. I wonder if there will be some magic and mentalim included in the show to break things up.

Come back to this page after Derren Brown Investigates airs and I’ll be discussing what went down.

Do you think Derren will expose the tricks these people use to dupe the public? Is he right to? Leave a comment below!

When I initially published Mindreading Exposed, I always intended to start a blog to accompany the book. So here it starts! It took a little longer than I wanted, but better late than never

Expect to see discussion of some a few of the tricks taught in the book, news and reviews of other products and happenings in the mentalism world and occassionally my random musings.

Is there anything you’d especially like me to cover? Leave me a message in the comments sections below.