Ep 272: Derren Brown

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Speaker 1 from the 20th of January, starting in Toronto, and then finishing once again in Canada, in Vancouver, on the 15th of February. And in between, I'm going all over the place.

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Speaker 1 You don't even need to edit that, like, to be smooth, Benito.

Speaker 1 They know I'm scrolling through my phone. That's what the cool kids do these days.
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Speaker 1 Welcome to the Off Menu Podcast, Peeling the Carrot of Conversation. Ooh, carrots.
Just peeling a carrot? Yeah, just raw carrot. Having a raw carrot like Roba Popper.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's the final episode of the series. The final one, but not the final one ever, I predict.
God, no. Days a gamble.
My name is James A. Castle.
This is the Off Menu Podcast.

Speaker 1 And every single week, we're inviting a guest for our dream restaurant and asking their favourite ever start and main course dessert, side dish, and drink. Not in that order.

Speaker 1 And this week, I predict that our guest will be... Darren Brown.
Lovely bit of business from you there, James. Yeah, pretty good.

Speaker 1 People didn't see it, but I put my fingers to my temples when I predicted it. Yeah, like a mentalist.
Like a mentalist. I am a bloody mentalist, mate.
Ask my mates.

Speaker 1 I'm your mates. That's a gamble.
I'm a gamble. That's James Acaster.
Welcome to the Off Menu podcast. We're excited to talk to our very special guest, the wonderful Darren Brown.
Trege.

Speaker 1 National Treasure. It's a National Treasure.

Speaker 1 And, you know, we grew up watching Darren Brown. Yes.
And I think it was a similar feeling to when we had Louis Faroux on.

Speaker 1 I remember them, you know, arriving on the scene, the TV scene, watching their early stuff and watching it right through to the modern day. I feel like I've watched everything they've done.

Speaker 1 Evolved amazingly as well. Evolved.
Yeah. Incredible live shows as well.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 very excited to have darren on oh and benito this is you know obviously benito doesn't talk on the podcast but i just think the listeners should know he loves magic that's why he's called the great benito because he was a magician when he was a little boy yeah and he loves darren brown yes so you know you i think it's just good knowing that from this episode yeah how much benito's loving it um so benito will hate it if we have to ask darren brown to leave the restaurant he would hate it um and we've chosen very well explain why we've chosen it yeah but the secret ingredient which will get derin brown kicked out of the the Dream Restaurant, is mini-rolls.

Speaker 1 I can't figure out how he did it. It was a trick, I guess.

Speaker 1 I guess you'd call it a trick. A magic trick.
I guess you call it a magic trick. With the League of Gentlemen, all four of them.

Speaker 1 And there's a whole bunch of different moving parts to the trick, but they basically come in the room. They each pick a mini roll each off of the plinth.

Speaker 1 The last person has to take two because there's one extra. They all sit down on some chairs.
Random leader says, sit wherever you like. Then he mixes some envelopes up on the table, says

Speaker 1 all pick an envelope.

Speaker 1 and then they open their envelopes and their envelopes each say you will pick and then a color different color yeah and then he says each of you reach under your seats and they've all got a piece of card that corresponds to the color so that's bonkers and then that could have just been the trick and i would have been like that's pretty impressive because that seemed random and then he gets explained the whole trick and then he gets them to open the mini rolls and they all eat their mini rolls and then there's that one spare one that was left And then he's like, open that one and he gives them some protective gloves.

Speaker 1 And then they open it and there's a razor blade in it. Yes.
Could have killed someone. That's scary, man.
It's scary. I always think about it.

Speaker 1 I always think, I don't know how he did any of that stuff.

Speaker 1 The thing is, James, I know we're going to pick, we're picking mini-rolls as a secret ingredient, but I know you really want to talk to Darren Brown about that mini-rolls thing. So that feels unfair.

Speaker 1 Well, I'll wait until the end. Okay.
I'll wait until after we've done dessert. Yeah.
Okay. And I'll say, deal.
How'd you do that mini-rolls bit? Yeah.

Speaker 1 But also, I want to do a magic trick on him. Okay.
I love it when he does predictions. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think we should predict his dream menu. Yes, go ahead.
Write it down. Yeah.
Put it in an envelope. We'll do that.
Put it in the middle of the table. We don't touch it for the whole thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 At the end, we get him to open it.

Speaker 1 We don't touch it. Yeah.
And then we can see if we've predicted his dream menu. We'll do that.
We'll write out his dream menu before he gets here. Yeah.
Magic trick.

Speaker 1 It's going to blow it from his mouth. Because he doesn't know Benito's a magician.
No. So we know what we're doing.
Yeah. You know what you're doing, right, Benito? Benito knows what he's doing.

Speaker 1 He's got the magic. So hopefully he won't choose mini-roles because otherwise we won't be able to do the magic trick at the end.
No. or maybe the envelope will say you will get kicked out.

Speaker 1 Also, I really want to speak to Darren Brown, so I hope he doesn't get kicked out. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Maybe if he does get kicked out, we'll just re-record this bit and say it was something else, say it was radishes or something. Tickets for Darren's next show are on sale now at darrenbrown.co.uk.

Speaker 1 He doesn't need our help. He doesn't need our help, but you know,

Speaker 1 maybe you do, the listener. Maybe you need our help in order to get the tickets before everyone else.
Yes, I predict you will get the tickets. I predict some of you will get the tickets.

Speaker 1 This is the off-menu menu of Derren Brown.

Speaker 1 Welcome, Darren, to the Dream Restaurant. Hello.

Speaker 1 Welcome, Derren Brown, to the Dream Restaurant. But it's been you for some time.
I have been waiting to come on for some time. This is so exciting.
Thank you for having me. We're very excited.

Speaker 1 We're very excited.

Speaker 1 I'm very excited. Although, what I sensed with your genie explosion there, you sort of held it back a little bit.
No, I didn't. Did I? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, I've got a burp trapped here and I didn't want to burp at Darren. No, that would be an uncomfortable way of starting not interview chat.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, another chat. And it's quite rude to start.
I think I'd have to just like excuse myself and just let you two chat.

Speaker 1 Leave the room. And Darren is excited to be here.
And I think that would have maybe killed the vibe straight away if James had burped.

Speaker 1 He would have just started things off on a slightly off note, but you could have stopped and started again because it's so early in the chat. Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's early enough in the chat. That's early in the chat.
Do you like chats in general?

Speaker 1 I like a chat. Yeah, I like a chat.
This is very nice. I've listened to many of your chats in the car.

Speaker 1 You're my go-to in the car chat. So this is very

Speaker 1 lovely being here in the actual room where it happens. Yes.
Now, do you want to like, some people like to imagine the dream restaurant and what it looks like. I didn't imagine this.

Speaker 1 You wouldn't imagine that. I didn't quite imagine this.

Speaker 1 It's an enormous, grand... Well, it's like the foyer of a very expensive hotel, isn't it? Is that how you describe it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 yeah yeah yeah i think so it's gorgeous thank you for having me when we ask people to imagine that you're probably gonna get a lot of questions like this from us because we haven't had anyone in your line of work on the podcast before it's very exciting because i haven't had a mentalist on the podcast no now when we ask people when they come on what's your dream restaurant look like and they give an answer if you heard those answers would you be able to say what that says about them oh

Speaker 1 I suppose so a little bit. Yeah, I never do this stuff in real life.
I kind of like, it's become a real sort of,

Speaker 1 like it would be exhausting to go around being that guy

Speaker 1 in real life. And also, I'm quite, I'm, over the years, got quite interested in

Speaker 1 stoicism and the whole thing of stoicism, you know, not to try and control the things that are outside of your control. And yet, that's exactly what my job is in the answer to that.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, probably with a bit of thought, but I try not to use my magical skills in everyday life. But, I mean, you're someone who likes to chat famously.
Love a chat.

Speaker 1 Do you feel like when you're chatting to someone for the first time, are they constantly on guard as if you are you are trying to...

Speaker 1 Yeah, I had a friend who's now a very good friend, who actually I'm seeing immediately after this podcast.

Speaker 1 And I found out quite a way into our relationship that it was a good few times of us meeting before he could actually just relax and have a normal chat like this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because he thought I was constantly doing... I don't know what people say.
I don't know what it is. That he'd climbed into his brain.
I'm climbing into his brain and judging or whatever.

Speaker 1 Yeah, all that stuff.

Speaker 1 I really don't. I'm very.
No, but I mean, it's a compliment to your work. You know, the work's excellent.
So

Speaker 1 we always get, yeah, with people, those go, like, oh, probably going to put this in your act, yeah. And we're not,

Speaker 1 and we're not thinking that about them at all. But with you, it must be a much more extreme version of that, of like, you're probably going to make me kill Stephen Fry.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that is, uh, I had a lot of, I think pretty much every time I, if I go into a shop and ask how much something is,

Speaker 1 I get a lot of, oh, you should know, shouldn't you? Oh, yeah. Like, that's that.
I've lived with that one for a very long time. Yeah, that's a, that's a pretty standard response, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, to anyone. Yeah, to anyone.
That's just rude.

Speaker 1 That's what you should know.

Speaker 1 What the hell? Didn't you do one when

Speaker 1 you went in and you tricked them into thinking the price was less?

Speaker 1 Have you done that? Or am I making stuff up in my head now? No, no, no. That's the sort of thing I would have done.

Speaker 1 I was paying for stuff with paper in New York and seeing how long I could do that for.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I got away with that

Speaker 1 for some time. If you kind of do it confidently enough, I think it must have...

Speaker 1 felt like they'd missed something and I think that's quite an interesting space when you just sort of feel bewildered and like you've slightly missed missed something and you're not and you you it's like if somebody comes up to you in the street and says you know it's not 20 to 4 your reaction isn't to go yeah I know it's half seven or whatever you're you you sort of feel like you've missed something and it's a very it's very powerful place to put people in if you like you know if you're someone's aggressive to you in the street I mean if they're running at you with a knife it's different but if they're like intimidating you and you come out with that sort of stuff or come out with a song lyric or something it's it completely changes the dynamic and undoes their feeling of power and I've got out of you know a couple of potentially violent situations like that.

Speaker 1 So yeah, there's the confusion.

Speaker 1 On the tube the other day I did that.

Speaker 1 There was a lady on our carriage who was yelling at everyone very, very loudly about how we're all going to die one day and we're going to go to hell if we don't accept Jesus.

Speaker 1 And I was standing up to leave and she was shouting it directed at me. And I just went, is this the right train for Wilson Green or not? Do you know? To her.

Speaker 1 And she just looked at me like, what the f?

Speaker 1 And then I just walked up and she was there in silence. I was like, that seems like a good way of dealing with it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I asked them something normal, and they're like, Jesus said I should help this person, but I don't, I want to yell at them. Did she answer the question? Did she know?

Speaker 1 She just stared at me like I was mad. Well, you suddenly brought her into normal society, which she should be doing on a tube, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you feel just the right?

Speaker 1 That was good, actually. I was quite pleased.
Yeah, that's a that's yeah, excellent. I always think a song lyric is a good one as well.

Speaker 1 If you've got something up your sleeve that you can just go into confidently as if

Speaker 1 it needs to make sense, just not in context with the situation.

Speaker 1 what's what's your go-to song lyric for the for the uh my go-to phrase is the wall outside my house isn't four foot high I don't know how I never done I just thought a song lyric was an easy thing to say to somebody if you if you rather but yeah that's that's my that's my go-to it works

Speaker 1 that's not a song no it's just not

Speaker 1 that'd be a good song yeah you're saying you don't really think in those terms all the time you spend a lot of your time doing painting yeah I've sort of I've taken a bit of a bit of time off uh well at least as we're recording this I've had a good chunk of time off probably by by the time this goes out i shall be touring but i've been um painting at home i paint portraits and uh i put them on my website and sometimes people buy them and put them on their walls and things which is nice uh so that's a really lovely uh that's that's kind of what i do in my that's what i do in my real life as opposed to controlling people but i am uh writing yeah starting to get my head around a new tour for next year.

Speaker 1 Can I say the title? Because I only know the title.

Speaker 1 It's called Only Human. And as we talk now, Only Human is only a title.

Speaker 1 title I haven't written a word of it and you must have had this situation yourself where you've it's out there being marketed and yeah people are buying tickets perhaps and and you have no idea what the first and people say oh I've got a ticket on there on the first night I'm in the front row and you're just I haven't got a clue.

Speaker 1 You want to go? You've done more for this show than I have.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. I've sort of got used to it over 20 years of doing it, but it's always a little odd.
Do you have that?

Speaker 1 panic when there's nothing or do you know the the rhythm of building a show so much now that you just know it's going to be fine yeah exactly it's that i've sort of yeah we have a month of writing and then a month of rehearsing and then it starts and it's the sort of thing and I guess with standard I guess with any even just a play you expect to change a lot once you get it on his feet but I mean I really don't know what will work just technically what will work until there's an audience because a lot of the stuff I do needs a thousand people to watch it because then it's only going to work with maybe a few percent of that so like it's just no way of knowing so it's always a a nervous start but yeah that that rhythm of making it and just going through the first couple of weeks of one of the shows miracle was faith healing in the second half.

Speaker 1 But every time you, if you go and see a faith healer, you know, there's evangelical types, you're going there as a believer.

Speaker 1 And I knew my audiences would be like me, you know, not believe any of it and not be ready for it, not be, not have that psychological preparation for it or anything.

Speaker 1 So yeah, it can be a bit nerve-wracking at the start.

Speaker 1 Do you then have to re-engineer how you do, I mean, I know you're on these because you can't really like reveal how you do these things, but like, do you have to like go, okay, that's how I'm presenting it, but I'm going to try and like have to trick them a different way because they're different.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Try and like, yeah, you have to, well, I have to, not you so much but i have to find ways of sort of saying yeah this is like this is what the charlatans would do or this is kind of this is stuff that's fake and i'm just going to do that now like you have to kind of set a certain parameters around it i guess so people people are on side but i was mad actually that one i remember in the first week somebody came up and they'd been paralyzed down their left hand side their body since they were a kid and she was a lady in her 40s and she's in floods of tears because she can move her arm like for the first time.

Speaker 1 And I haven't done anything other than just, you know, words, but just that, the the adrenaline of the situation and the kind of,

Speaker 1 it's the psychological component of suffering. Like nothing's changed if you x-rayed her before and after.
Clearly, nothing's changed.

Speaker 1 But yet her whole relationship to this pain that she'd lived with had just massively altered. So it was...
That was that was an amazing show to do, actually,

Speaker 1 night to night, just the sort of things that people would respond to. After that, though, do you think I should just do that all the time? I did.

Speaker 1 I really did. I thought, and I could do it in a secular way.
Like I could say, this is, it is just what it is.

Speaker 1 And there's no i could say all of the things i've just said to you yeah but i could probably pack out a stadium doing that and then i realized that's how you start to go that's mad yeah but it feels really plausible at the time it's like oh no this works this is a service that i'm providing yeah

Speaker 1 i'll be one of the good ones yeah i'll be one of the really good ones yeah yeah i've seen way more adverts for things like that on the side of buses now like the O2 arena, like big church meetings and stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I've seen loads of adverts for it.
And it's always the shiniest looking men. Very shiny.
Yeah, really shiny. A lot of white suits.
And I've been to a few of those things sort of incognito.

Speaker 1 And it is amazing what a weird world you're stepping into.

Speaker 1 Because it is not to offend anyone that's into this kind of thing, but if you're as an outsider sitting there, it's a weird mix of sort of amazing and kind of disgusting at the same time.

Speaker 1 Just it's a bet, which is, you know, it's a strange.

Speaker 1 you know the Venn diagram of those emotions it's odd to be in the middle of that but because it's such a closed world and they really go for it and I remember you know seeing some poor kid like a six-year-old girl on the stage being exorcised, the demons and the adrenaline and the whole thing of it was sort of amazing, but it was also kind of really gross at the same time as well.

Speaker 1 So yeah, it was a very

Speaker 1 odd world. And when you go to that, are you like, are there certain things that you're watching and going, oh, I could incorporate that into what I'm doing?

Speaker 1 Or are you going just to kind of understand? No, yeah. I was actually what I was doing.
I was kind of researching and sat there with glasses on and a baseball cat trying not to be noticed.

Speaker 1 Well, you've already noticed, but you haven't spoken to us about it but um for the listener i don't think you weren't here when me and darren walked into the studio yes you saw what we're about to describe and went all right

Speaker 1 there's an envelope that says prediction on it and a pen we would like you on the table please darren to sign across the um the sealed bit of the envelope on the back we've made a prediction that we will reveal at the end of the podcast oh okay that's exciting

Speaker 1 across it yeah so we can't do anything with it yes so we can't you know what you can put it wherever you like as well you don't have to put it in front of you i'm putting it in front of me so Yeah, yeah, put it right there.

Speaker 1 Wow. You can do it on me.
Good, isn't it? Pretty good. We don't do this for everyone.
No, well, I wouldn't make this. This is not

Speaker 1 a good question. I've never noticed this in the podcast.

Speaker 1 We always start with still spark and mortar down. Do you have a preference? Yeah, well, sort of.
So I don't have any very strong feelings about it, but I do like a San Pellegrino.

Speaker 1 San Pellegrino is, you know, nice and soft and kind of. But, yeah,

Speaker 1 I don't like that kind of aggressive, bubbly.

Speaker 1 You know, it should be a simple act of hydration, not a surprise sneezing fit, which is

Speaker 1 probably where it goes. So, yeah, I don't mind too much, but I think I'd probably go, I would probably go

Speaker 1 still

Speaker 1 and not too cold. And I don't like the jugs that are full of ice and lemon because they plop in your drink.
And, yeah.

Speaker 1 Is it the plopping that you don't like? It's the plopping. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's really unnecessary. And also, I've got so used to like, you know, warming up and things before shows.
And you know what?

Speaker 1 It's like, like you don't want cold water for that because it's kind of shocks your throat so I've got I quite like a sort of tepid water like Ben's given me uh here

Speaker 1 applies to your guests a kind of room temperature it's effortless minimal effort

Speaker 1 yeah it is to be fair there's nothing plopping in your drink here didn't get offered a choice of still or sparkling no no that's weird isn't it that we don't offer a guest the choice of still or sparkling in real life only it's all fake

Speaker 1 that is weird actually i've never thought about that yeah but it is weird that we just give you some tap water and then we say would you like still or sparkle as a hyper pentacle yeah we've not talked about the plopping a lot before we're not talked about how much it plops when there's stuff in there especially the ice and when ice gets caught in like the lip of a jug and you're not sure when it's going to plop in but it always plops in at the least convenient moment well and also it sort of diverts the water stream yeah and then someone gets the lemon and then no one else has got any lemon yeah uh i i yeah that's all that's all really uh annoying but you should get the lemon because you're darren brown i should get the lemon you should get you should know how to get it every time i always reach in in this.

Speaker 1 Just take it.

Speaker 1 That's kind of a restauranty thing, isn't it? There are many restauranty things. Well, not many.
A few restauranty things

Speaker 1 I don't care for. And that's certainly one of them.
Do you eat out a lot? I do, yeah.

Speaker 1 I like food. I'm definitely a foodie.
But I actually

Speaker 1 decided to opt for a sort of home restaurant situation for today. Nice.

Speaker 1 I don't like it when waiters point at your food. I don't like it when they get really close with their finger.
Maybe this is just like a nicer restaurant thing.

Speaker 1 But has anybody else brought this one up? No, you just. No, I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 We're not at the point in. Okay.
All right. I'm going to work alphabetically through my thing.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, that thing with the finger, when they come in, they go, this is a carrot, and they're pointing, and they're not actually touching the food because you can...

Speaker 1 slide a sheet of paper between their fingers

Speaker 1 to prove it. But

Speaker 1 that's an annoying habit that I don't like. It's sort of like

Speaker 1 operation in the game. It's like that.

Speaker 1 Where they hover it just above. Yeah.
Have you ever been tempted to get your plate and just move it up really quickly so their finger goes right into it? You have to grab the whole table.

Speaker 1 No, you could do the whole table.

Speaker 1 No, you'd grab the plate and lift them. No, I haven't done that, but that would defeat the point because contamination is the risk.
Yeah, but then you'd get a new one, right?

Speaker 1 But they'd be so impressed. How would they give you a new one if you just lifted the table up into their finger? I'll tell you who would struggle with that.
Martin Freeman. He's very weak.

Speaker 1 He can't even lift a plate. Oh, he was on my show being weak.
I said, I thought you were just being mean about him. No, no, no.

Speaker 1 Darren Brown got him to lift a plate. He couldn't lift a plate.
You can just say Darren when he's in the room, James.

Speaker 1 Darren Brown put a phone on the back of his neck. He told him all the stuff about crystals.
He said it's really powerful. He said, this is...
God, yeah.

Speaker 1 He said, Martin, this is a really powerful phone. And then you couldn't lift the things up.
He couldn't lift stuff up. He couldn't lift a pencil up.
That's right. He couldn't lift a plate up.

Speaker 1 It was embarrassing. It's a plate with like a sandwich on it.
That's right. God, yes.

Speaker 1 We've watched all your stuff. You have, as you've done your research.

Speaker 1 We know it all. But, like, yeah, I mean, when you're doing something like that with someone like Martin Freeman, are you like, man, I'm going to make you look so weak on TV?

Speaker 1 You're loving it. I don't think anyone remembers that.
Apart from the fact, he is brilliant, but

Speaker 1 I don't think anyone's ever mentioned the making Martin Freeman weak skit. That's very niche.

Speaker 1 It's a good one. Yeah, it's good.
It's a good one. Maybe he mentions it.
Maybe he mentions it. I think we had him on the podcast.
Maybe we did bring it up. I don't know if we brought it up or not.

Speaker 1 So it was very well dressed. Yeah.
Very well dressed. It was during lockdown.
He was on Zoom. So we were on Zoom.
We can actually see if it really is.

Speaker 1 He's still ticky though. Still looked pretty good, I bet.
But I like that your interpretation of it is, wasn't Martin Freeman embarrassed when he came out and said he was weak?

Speaker 1 But he probably just thought, oh, I'm on a Darren Brown show and Darren's done a trick on me.

Speaker 1 No, because Derren Hughes, when Devin told him all the stuff, when Devin was like, all that stuff I told you was nonsense, by the way. You could tell he was like, I'm just a weak man.

Speaker 1 In his eyes, it was like, oh, no.

Speaker 1 You'd give him a whole spiel about how the energy in crystals is the same as our energy trying to remember what it was it was so long ago the vibrations in the phones are the same as the vibrations in the crystals and put it on the back of your neck now Martin now try and lift this it can't lift a plate oh he can't lift a pen ultimately I'm cleverer than you is the bottom line of anything I do that's the take home yeah yeah that's the take home especially for Martin Freeman and stronger

Speaker 1 stronger man than you pop lobs or bread poplars or bread Darren Brown poplars or bread please Jesus um the bread. I'm going for the...

Speaker 1 There's a group. I used to live not far from Dulston, and there is a place there called the Dusty Knuckle.
Do you know it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And I found out many years later that they

Speaker 1 employ, I think it's people, ex-prisoners, perhaps.

Speaker 1 Which, given it's got a slightly charitable edge to it, you might expect that to sort of... take the edge off the quality of the bread, if anything, but it doesn't.

Speaker 1 It's still bread focused and charity focused. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 So I fell in love with that when I lived in London. Haven't had it for a while.
But they're sourdough.

Speaker 1 Of late, I've discovered, I've been in Bristol a lot recently, and Hearts Bakery in Bristol also does a very good... And also Reg the Veg, which is the world's greatest

Speaker 1 grossest. Yeah, Reg the Veg.
Is Hearts the one that's under like Temple Meats?

Speaker 1 You come out and go down there. Phenomenal place.
I love Bristol, as I often do. That is definitely a heart of freedom.
Really, really good. Great sausage rolls.
Very good sausage rolls.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I love that place. It's brilliant.
Oh, there you go. There you go.
So, yeah, I'd go for a really good sourdough. A nice sourdough.
Yeah. It's sort of the hipster of the bread bowl, isn't it?

Speaker 1 I sort of hate myself saying it. But it is tasty, though, isn't it? That's the thing.
It is. And butter?

Speaker 1 Warm with butter, yeah, none of the oil, nonsense. Yeah, yeah, warm and butter.
A little bit of salt, crack salt, and that lovely. I never know whether when it's warm, you feel they've just cooked it.

Speaker 1 It probably isn't. They probably just stick it in the microwave for a bit or warm it up.
But I, yeah. For the dream, you want it out, you know, just cooked, right?

Speaker 1 We won't microwave it in the dream restaurant. No, you wouldn't do that.
There wouldn't be a microwave in the dream restaurant. This is all bread is fresh out of the oven.

Speaker 1 Wow. Have you ever baked yourself? No, not myself.

Speaker 1 That's the next TV show? Yeah, that's the finale. You're still writing this show, this live show.
Finale.

Speaker 1 You bake myself. You bake yourself.
I tried to...

Speaker 1 I heard the lockdown thing. I tried it like I did like a lemon drizzle and a couple of things.
And then that was it. Did you? Did you embrace it? Didn't do any baking.

Speaker 1 Realized very quickly that shops were still open and stuff.

Speaker 1 You could go and get a loaf of bread. You could buy your own

Speaker 1 scones. You mainly did barbecuing.
I did a little barbecue. Oh, that's nice.
I'm making rotisserie chicken quite a lot at the moment. I've got rotisserie in my new oven.
Nice. That's nice.

Speaker 1 That is fun. Do you find I would find it very easy to just watch it? Yeah, yeah, you do.
You put the lights on, you just sit and watch it. Grab a stool or a cushion.

Speaker 1 And listen, I don't want to keep on chipping in ideas for you.

Speaker 1 Go on, please. But you've got to find new ways of hypnotising people.

Speaker 1 A rotating chicken. Watch a rotivity chicken.
You go into a trance. That's an idea, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's not a toy, is it?

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay, brilliant, brilliant idea. Yeah.
A

Speaker 1 giant chicken, clearly fake, but a giant chicken on stage rotating. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
And they get hypnotized. And then when they're hypnotized, you swap them with the chicken.

Speaker 1 And then they wake up and they're spinning on the spit. And you're like...
And it's little chickens in the audience now.

Speaker 1 And the audience is full of chicken.

Speaker 1 But the chicken's headless because yeah how are they watching you haven't thought this through no i haven't thought it through but they're headless at first then you restore the heads a bit with magic i love as we're talking ben's just like making ben's writing stuff down yeah

Speaker 1 every time ben writes stuff down you know it's uh yeah shorthand for second well no ben's probably writing down the idea for the trick and then he's going to do it himself ben used to be a magician

Speaker 1 right when he was a little little boy it's why his nickname is the great benito because he called himself the great bonito he had a waistcoat and a magic box and everything and we'd put on magic tricks in the living room calling himself the great benito so he probably is writing down ideas for his his magic show silently do you ever have that in your shows can you ever look out and spot a magician in the audience like a fellow and go oh they're watching this differently and i'm not sure they'll make notes like ben does yeah yeah gags and things and they write them down it's a little bit a little bit annoying yeah

Speaker 1 a little bit irritating maybe sometimes you look out into the audience and there's a you know evangelist preacher doing the opposite of what you do they're there in the cap and shade so they're getting ideas so when they exercise a six-year-old.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Your dream starter. Right.
Well, I'm at home doing my own cooking here. This is integral to the to the setup.

Speaker 1 But yeah, the restaurantiness means I guess someone else is washing up and doing all that stuff. But I've got a very nice lobster risotto that I make.
So I would.

Speaker 1 Before, though, going into this, Parmesan and red wine. I years ago read in an interview with Christopher Walker that that was his favorite snack.
Oh. And I tried it.
I thought it was quite nice.

Speaker 1 And just of late in

Speaker 1 Venice, I had really, like, really good Parmesan, like at least sort of 50-something months aged. And that with a good red wine, with a good Sangiovosi perhaps, is phenomenal.

Speaker 1 So there is that on the table as people are sitting down. I know that's quite a starter.
It's like a sort of a snack. Little chef's welcome.

Speaker 1 A little chef's welcome. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that, that will kick us off. And then

Speaker 1 we would move into the lobster risotto. That really sounded like you were lining one of us up for an impression on a US talk show.
He said Christopher Walker. I know, I know.

Speaker 1 I wonder how he would have

Speaker 1 said that.

Speaker 1 I was sort of half hoping one of you would jump in with all of that. No, I don't know.

Speaker 1 A lot of people have got a good walking, and I'm not one of them. Someone asked me to gig recently.
Oh, really? They shouted out, yeah. The audience started shouting out.

Speaker 1 So I'm not very good at impressions. Right.
So I could run anything on this podcast. They

Speaker 1 started shouting out impressions. They sounded Christopher Walken.

Speaker 1 And I, in my head, I was like, well, everyone could do do that yeah went for it couldn't do it oh you gave it a go why don't you give it a go now and saying I love parmesan and red wine I love I love parmesan and red wine that's not it's not bad is it's not the worst thing I've ever throw your body into it as well which I really like yeah I was I was trying to you know think care with this watch I possess

Speaker 1 yeah yeah yeah I think that's yeah that's a lovely way to if I walked in somewhere and there was parmesan and red wine on the table crumbled up not not grated yeah

Speaker 1 I mean like chopped up into like little man

Speaker 1 You want to get a good chunk, you want to get the taste of the chunk. 15 months aged, yeah.
Yeah, at least, at least. I didn't even know that was a thing here.

Speaker 1 Like, you struggle to get more than whatever, 36

Speaker 1 here.

Speaker 1 But it's really good. It's really good if you get it.
Do you want the whole wheel on the table as you come in?

Speaker 1 So you can just sort of chip it away.

Speaker 1 And then in the middle is the card that one of them chose. That's exactly right.
Or this prediction in this envelope. Prediction in this envelope.

Speaker 1 Were you trying to give Darren another idea?

Speaker 1 I just think we could do an off-menu Devin Brown collab for the next tour and everything's food-based. You crack the wheel of apartment and there's a card in the middle.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 People do it all the time. Yeah.
Darren's done it. Like with fruit or something.
And there are things in there that they choose. That's really good.
It's a very good thing.

Speaker 1 You do it with a wheel of cheese. Yeah.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you could. I'm just

Speaker 1 trying to work out how you

Speaker 1 get something

Speaker 1 into a wheel of cheese.

Speaker 1 I've got one method, but I think it takes like four years.

Speaker 1 Worth it.

Speaker 1 pulse force for it yeah it's a 50-month trick yeah yeah

Speaker 1 you must have done a painting of Walking I have yeah I have over the years done a couple actually yeah yeah yeah how do you choose your choose your subjects for your portraits um just kind of great faces I mean you've got to you know I spent a couple of weeks very close to the big big paintings as well so uh it's got to be someone whose face I want to paint so I've just started one of Jack Nicholson who's got a great Yeah, a great face and just finished one of Beethoven, who's also got what you're interesting with Beethoven.

Speaker 1 You don't really know exactly what he looks like so he's just kind of working

Speaker 1 other people's paintings a Saint Bernard

Speaker 1 you think Beethoven looks like a Saint Bernard why'd you say Saint Bernard are you American well that was what was it the film yeah James singing you in the film

Speaker 1 the dog sorry yes of course sorry sorry James

Speaker 1 Bernard in that yeah they do but

Speaker 1 it's a film yeah yeah okay so how have you settled on what Beethoven actually looks like then for your one I felt there's an artist I found who got hold of the death mask and was able to do like really accurate reconstructions and luckily they do all look a bit like the paintings.

Speaker 1 Yeah, otherwise that would have been a shame.

Speaker 1 And yeah, so I worked from that.

Speaker 1 I work from reference shots anyway. So I love it.
It's just a way of spending two weeks or whatever, just like locked in a creative thing. It's brilliant.
It's my favorite thing.

Speaker 1 Is it therapeutic or yeah, it really is. It really is.

Speaker 1 It's, I don't know, do you find it hard if you've been touring or something and then it just sort of finishes and then you'll there's like and you get really irritated and you blame everybody else.

Speaker 1 You realize you're just in this slightly kind of

Speaker 1 thing. So having something like painting to go into, it doesn't involve anybody else and just go away and do it.
And it's, yeah, it's the best.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe I need to do something like that because I finish a tour and go, I can't wait. All I'm thinking about halfway through the tour is I can't wait for some time off doing nothing.

Speaker 1 And then I'm sat there doing nothing, going, oh, I feel really angry. I'd love it if you started painting, Ed.
Yeah? Yeah. I'd like to see your paintings.
I'll paint you. Okay.
That's nice. Yeah.

Speaker 1 No one really knows what James looks like, though. No.
You don't have to track down his death mask.

Speaker 1 I've got one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'll lend you my death mask. Thank you, mate.
This lobster risotto sounds delicious, but let's get into it proper. How you make it and like what.
Oh, okay. Well, you make a bisque to start with.

Speaker 1 So you roast or dry pan your

Speaker 1 lobster shells with

Speaker 1 veg and then fish stock or water and perno and tomato puree, fennel, fennel, chili. This recipe, I should say, it comes from a chef called Will Parks, who is now at the rather brilliant pig hotels.

Speaker 1 He gave me this and there's a couple of other things I should probably

Speaker 1 not say so I don't give away all his secrets. And then you use this and fennel and chili and then you start off, you've made a stock and then you use that stock in your risotto.

Speaker 1 which I use cognac and vermouth with and then the then you reduce it you reduce the stock to a bisque and then you add that bisque at the end into your risotto along with your lobster meat and lemon and some chives and that's it and it should it should have the uh the consistency of hot lava it should tip like hot lava do you know this this is the

Speaker 1 you're supposed to be able to uh tilt the plate and a risotto should just move like lava as opposed to a you know a wallop of stodge that you often get i thought that was a good thing that's always uh stuck with me move like lava lava's a very funny thing to compare it to sure because it's not something that loads of people have seen.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah, you're right, or seen move.
Maybe it's not very,

Speaker 1 also very hot as well. You don't want your risotto that hot.
Also, you would have thought with Italian food, the last thing they want to think about is lava. I was thinking that as well.

Speaker 1 In fact, I had this in Naples, which is not

Speaker 1 too far from

Speaker 1 Herculaneum. What's the other one called? What's the big one? Bompei.
Bompei! Thank you.

Speaker 1 It'd be a good themed risotto, though, wouldn't it, in Pompeii if you go to a restaurant? It's a sensitive analogy to use in that part of the world. You get little shapes, things under there.

Speaker 1 People go.

Speaker 1 model the rice into frightened shapes. Maybe that's what happened.
We don't know, right? About the history. We don't know.
Maybe someone just made a massive risotto and everyone got trapped under it.

Speaker 1 Got out of hand. It was too hot.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Get out of the way. It moves like lava.

Speaker 1 It moves like a.

Speaker 1 They wouldn't have the work.

Speaker 1 I just think of Dante's Peak when the grandma's pushing the boat and the lava. She's waist high in the lava.
A couple of great film references from you today. Yeah, pretty good.

Speaker 1 Beethoven and Dante's Peak.

Speaker 1 Harking back, man. It's a Piers Brosnan and Dante's Peak.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And the grandma gets out of the boat. I guess it's not lava.
It's like

Speaker 1 lava-infused water. Like it's this lake that is like absolutely

Speaker 1 like, yeah, it's lava stock. It's absolutely mad hot lake that you shouldn't get in.
And she's not going to get the grandkids to the end of the lake if she's in the boat.

Speaker 1 So she just gets out of the boat and she pushes it. She's like,

Speaker 1 Does she sacrifice herself? She sacrifices herself. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's nice. And she absolutely hates it.
Like, when she gets in the water, you can tell she's like, this is... No, this wasn't worth it.
I shouldn't have done this. She's a fool to herself.

Speaker 1 She regretted that the moment she got in the water. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. It'd be a much better scene if she just put her toe and went absolutely nowhere.
Yeah. Nope.
Sorry.

Speaker 1 Chuck one of the kids in. I haven't seen Dante Speak.
Like, that doesn't even really ring a bell as a film. No, it feels like the sort of thing I have seen maybe 25 years ago.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's just classic, you know, before the Ketminodian opened up and we had the

Speaker 1 Ohio. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Everyone's held up there. I get it.

Speaker 1 And it was like that period of film where you were going to see Daylight with Sylvester Stallone, Independence Day, obviously the big one that spawned all of them. But all of those.
Stargate.

Speaker 1 Stargate, absolutely. Me and my mum, as a surprise, took me to see Stargate.
I went bananas for it. I loved it.
Yeah. I really loved Stargate.
Twister. Twister.
Twister.

Speaker 1 With Philip Seymour Hoffman. Yeah.
Yeah. Yes, he is in it.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 His finest role. Yeah.
Yeah. And you must have drawn a

Speaker 1 VHS. You must have drawn Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Yeah, I have. I have.
PSS. PSH.
Fucking Fucking hell.

Speaker 1 Devin's made me forget the other one. I was asking if I had Twister on VHS.
I was like, that's what you have.

Speaker 1 You must have Twister on VHS there.

Speaker 1 Don't. You do.
You do have it.

Speaker 1 You must have drawn Philip Zimmer Hoffman. I have, yeah, I have.

Speaker 1 I could do another one, actually, because that was a long time ago, and I don't think it was very good. Do him in Twister.
Do the Twister one. Just twisting.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like a Hawaiian shirt.

Speaker 1 The cap on. Yeah, it wasn't a very subtle kind of role, was it? He hadn't maybe been cast.

Speaker 1 What I've noticed is every time you suggest something to Darren, darren he goes yeah yeah sure i'll do that sure yeah i'm just being polite yeah the chicken he's gonna do it all the chicken the chicken idea was like yeah great okay great james i haven't suggested to someone so many things before that they should do but i just think it's because if i if i can influence darren brown yeah then i'm the ultimate influencer so i'll just keep on saying you should do this darren yeah and if it does darren's just going to keep going yeah sure and then he's not going to do any of it yeah but that's like a tip for anyone in your audience now who you try and influence they just know all they have to do is say yeah sure to him and you can't he can't control me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, sure, Devin. I'm tempted to bring out the chicken just as a little niche.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Where would that get the biggest laugh in the country if I brought out

Speaker 1 the station chicken? Most audiences are going to laugh at that.

Speaker 1 They're not made of stone. That's funny.
But I mean, where would they know you and get the reference after this? That's most likely. Kettering, you do? Kettering.
Kettering, yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyway, man, Northampton Shear. Okay.
Yeah, they're most likely going to know. And then you follow up by saying, we all remember what it was like before the Odeon opened.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And the roof will come up.

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Speaker 1 Tree main main course. Dream main course.

Speaker 1 Right, now I feel very strongly about this. Meatballs.
Meatballs. So again, we're in my home.
And

Speaker 1 if there's a thing I really dislike, I'm trying to make it begin with a P, but it doesn't, is in restaurants, is the whole tasting menu thing.

Speaker 1 And that's the opposite in my mind of what a meal should, you know, be.

Speaker 1 And I like to kind of be with friends and for it to feel social and easy and not like a, you know, like you're listening to a lecture course on

Speaker 1 two dots of

Speaker 1 pointing places. It's the pointing places, again, isn't it? You don't want the people pointing at the food.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's annoying.

Speaker 1 It kills the vibe. And I don't, you know, it's just like you don't listen to the origin story of what you know is just going to taste of more grass.

Speaker 1 So I do the opposite of that. So this is in my home and I've got my friends over and I've sort of, I won't name my friends because it'd be upsetting to the friends I haven't invited.

Speaker 1 But they know, they know if they've not been invited.

Speaker 1 Oh, they'd never know. They'd never know what happened.
I'd be very, very careful about that. The only thing the restaurant aspect of this is providing is a round table.

Speaker 1 I've always, I love the people sitting around a round table. I don't have one.
I can't really fit a round table in the kitchen now. It doesn't quite work.

Speaker 1 So we've got a rectangular one, but then you're always a bit, you know, stuck out on the end. So it's a round table.
And I don't know what this is. I don't know whether I saw...

Speaker 1 It's somewhere between, maybe it's in The Godfather or maybe it's in a Woody Allen film and there's just some people and they're in a restaurant and they're making there's meatballs and tomato sauce and spaghetti it's that Italian American thing and they're just like it's the passing around the table and the chat and everyone's talking over each other and I don't know if it only happens on you know TV and in films but that's that's the thing for me like it's comfort food and it's that social experience and everything that's the opposite of a fucking tasting menu so we're we're having um We're having that.

Speaker 1 And I learned to cook a bit out in Italy, once in Florence and then again in Rabello and the Amalfi Coast.

Speaker 1 There's a great woman there called Mama Agata who teaches Italian cooking, which I love more than anything.

Speaker 1 And I first made meatballs there and then I've sort of, which is a kind of Neapolitan way of doing them, which is a bit different.

Speaker 1 And now how I do them is with, again, sort of a bit of fennel and a bit of chili and garlic. There's a bit of a running theme, bringing everything together.
And your milky bread. Do you know this?

Speaker 1 You ever made meatballs? No. So you soak stale bread in milk and and then you can't take the crusts off.
You mix that up with beef and pork, mince,

Speaker 1 herbs, and a bit of garlic, no onions, egg to bind, and parmesan, I think, a parsley, I guess. And you mix all that up and you need to deep fry those.

Speaker 1 You make them into little meatballs and you roll them in flour. Then really

Speaker 1 you want to deep fry them. And then meanwhile, you're making your tomato sauce with your...
tomatoes and olive oil and and

Speaker 1 I'd go maybe like capers and anchovies and a bit of you know olives and stuff in there.

Speaker 1 In fact, actually, I think to be more accurate with this, it's the perfect meatballs that I don't ever think exist. There's always something disappointing when you water.

Speaker 1 As long as you do fancy meatballs, they're never that nice. They're a bit bland or it's just not quite.
But it's the idea of the perfect meatballs in the tomato sauce.

Speaker 1 And maybe not spaghetti, but like the thicker spaghettis like... buccatini or spaghettoni or

Speaker 1 what's it called peachy that you can make with this just semolina and water and you roll them out by hand but then you don't get the starchy water that you you get from the sort of dried spaghetti, which I think you need in the sauce.

Speaker 1 But so, a good spaghetti and really just there's something that's always missing. I don't know what it is, but it's uh,

Speaker 1 there's a perfect meatball out there, and this is a dream restaurant.

Speaker 1 Absolutely, it would be the perfect meatball that has that, there's nothing missing from it. I've thought about these perfect meatballs so much since first listening to your podcast.

Speaker 1 Size is a difficult thing with meatballs, I think. It is rarely the perfect size, yeah.
Golf balls are too big.

Speaker 1 I think actually they're kind of pulpete, the actual battle, I think they're only like a cherry size. And normally you'd have them just on their own without any tomato sauce.

Speaker 1 That's very much an American thing. But I think it's one of the few things maybe the Americans really got right when it came to bastardizing Italian food.
And that's the whole spaghetti tomato thing.

Speaker 1 So yes, that. But I would go, yeah, a little bigger than a cherry.
Slightly bigger than a cherry. Yeah.
Big cherry size. Big cherry.
Strawberry? Yeah. Strawberries are slightly bigger than cherries.

Speaker 1 They're not the shape of a strawberry. No,

Speaker 1 that would be mad. No, it's just an idiot.

Speaker 1 But yeah, nice round strawberry size. What do you you mean about chasing the perfect one, though? Because I think as English people,

Speaker 1 meatballs, spaghetti meatballs specifically, are one of the things that we see drawn before we eat. Like

Speaker 1 before I'd ever had spaghetti and meatballs, I'd seen it drawn

Speaker 1 in cartoons and it looked delicious. You say that, there's a little cartoon circle just next to your head on the wall.
behind you that does look a bit dad i dare to do it

Speaker 1 how do you do that stuff there's a little yeah

Speaker 1 they look like spaghetti and meatballs right there yeah um

Speaker 1 Darren, stop.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I think you see it in those cartoons. Look delicious in the beano or whatever, or like Lady the Tramp.

Speaker 1 It's kind of cartoon for it. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So then trying to, and we're singing songs about them as well.
We're singing songs about my meatball rolled away and all that, all covered in cheese because somebody sneezed.

Speaker 1 On top of spaghetti,

Speaker 1 all covered in cheese. How would Christopher Wogan have sung that? I lost my poor meatball.

Speaker 1 Somebody sneezed. I thought you meant the rude song you sing at school.
Here we go. I don't know this.
Do you know spaghetti and meatballs and a banana? Do you not remember that?

Speaker 1 No, I've never heard that before. I just pointed it as peanuts for the bread.
It's a rude version of La Bamba. Spaghetti and meatballs and a banana.
And the meatballs are the balls.

Speaker 1 Yes, we know. The spaghetti is the pubes.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. What's the banana?

Speaker 1 I believe leaving the headline until last, it's

Speaker 1 the winkle. It's the penis.

Speaker 1 The winkle.

Speaker 1 I thought that's what you meant. But my point is,

Speaker 1 spaghetti and meatballs are a big part of your life as a kid before you've even tried it. I think so.
Before you've even eaten spaghetti. So you've got this thing in your head.

Speaker 1 So it might be impossible because a lot of the time... With food and drink, we're chasing the first time we had them or whatever, or the best time we had them.

Speaker 1 With this, we're chasing like what it conjured up in us when we saw these drawings.

Speaker 1 I filmed or Godfather or whatever it was there's a yeah there's a whole thing that comes with it which is why you need a dream restaurant to to make it happen and I still don't I don't even quite know what what it would be that would make them the perfect meatball I suppose they would have a bit of a maybe a bit of a crunch to the outside maybe and then

Speaker 1 maybe the sauce would just be really rich and not just like an apologetic yeah tinn of tomato you know like it'll actually have a real something to it I think it is about the atmosphere as well right that you described you're a bit passing it over or someone's dishing it up and it's just not fussy is it it?

Speaker 1 It's just like warming and homely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 My partner has a habit of

Speaker 1 serving. By the time I've sat down, he's served everything out and put it on plates, which to me is, I'd never say anything directly.
I might say the podcast that he might listen to in the car.

Speaker 1 But it slightly kills that part of the process, which I think I think is important.

Speaker 1 And also when you sit in, you know, films and stuff, the sauce is always sat atop the spaghetti, which I think is kind of wrong because you want to mix the spaghetti in with the sauce for that starchy goodness to thicken the sauce and the rest of it.

Speaker 1 So, that's but I guess it just doesn't look as good if you're designing or directing that film. You want it to be a bit messy as well, don't you? You want it to

Speaker 1 be slap it on and get involved.

Speaker 1 Are you tucking a napkin into the collar? Oh,

Speaker 1 I should totally do that. You should do that.
Having spaghetti in there. It'd be kitchen roll in our house, but

Speaker 1 yeah, so it might, you know, come up like bend up a bit. But yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 But expensive kitchen roll, like, you know, the

Speaker 1 stuff that really absorbs. Yeah, bounty.
I was thinking Regina Blitz, but I don't want to.

Speaker 1 Regina Blitz. Yeah, that's the thing.

Speaker 1 A drag queen. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Brilliant. Thank you.
That's what he reminded me as well.

Speaker 1 I'd forgotten about this until you started talking about it, but like, I used to work in a school as a classroom assistant, and there was like an annex center where the kids who couldn't be in the main school.

Speaker 1 uh would go to school and there's only about three of them in it and they would all be like one-on-one with different um classroom assistants yeah there was a kid from my class was sent there so we'd take it in turns to go there like once or twice a week.

Speaker 1 And me and him were given the job one day of cooking for everyone. And I learned how to make meatloaf from Jamie Oliver's cookbook.
Right.

Speaker 1 And he suggested that we made that into spaghetti and meatballs and have it with spaghetti and do that. And we did that for everyone.
And it was a really nice communal thing.

Speaker 1 And that was a very nice memory that I was lovely. I've half forgotten about until now.

Speaker 1 I was really, really fussy when I was a kid. I barely ate anything.
I was so proper fussy eater. And then when I was at uni, I was in the back of a car, starving.

Speaker 1 And the people I was with, they went out and got a pizza and

Speaker 1 called from the shop do you want sausage on it and I said yes thinking that meant sausage and it doesn't meant salami and salami was an absolute no-no but when it came I was so hungry but when it came it was all like you know mixed into the with the cheese and everything so I couldn't pull the salami out so I kind of thought all right I'll just have to trick myself with that I like salami so I did this thing of as I was eating it I not out loud but in my head I was going

Speaker 1 and doing that and not giving myself a moment to go hang on where's the salami taste I don't like where is it where is it there it is I don't like it. And it worked.
And I ate it. It was lovely.

Speaker 1 And then I started doing it with everything. And I just wiped out all these things I didn't like by just doing this, by going, mmm, in my head.

Speaker 1 The only thing it left was mushrooms and blue cheese, which I can't stand.

Speaker 1 You daren browned yourself. I daren't brown myself at a young age.

Speaker 1 Are you aware that that's like a sang in? You know, it's a verb. You know your name's a verb, right? I have.

Speaker 1 Are you aware? I use it. I use it without even realising the irony.
I just daren't brown that.

Speaker 1 Me and James watched someone try and Darren Brown someone else out of hating a food. Do you remember? Oh my God, it was the best.

Speaker 1 Fucking hell. Yeah, I do remember.
What happened? It was when we were doing Celebrity Hunted.

Speaker 1 Right. And it was before we started filming.
We were all just hanging out in Shrewsbury Prison was where we started.

Speaker 1 We had like two days in Shrewsbury Prison for them to just shoot like five seconds of us escaping from the prison, but it was such a great two days.

Speaker 1 So we were with the speakmans i don't know if you know the speakmans no work with they're like therapists but they do a lot of work with people around that sort of stuff and they're on this morning quite a lot there's a very funny video of them speaking to a woman who um throws up every time she thinks about a custard but we were also with bobby seagull who was on uh university challenge yes and he he didn't like marmite so they went right bobby also for context as well Bobby Siegel is the most positive person you've ever met.

Speaker 1 He's actively trying to be positive about everything. Right.
And would never in a million years, if someone was doing any sort of like mentalism on him or hypnosis, ever admit if it wasn't working.

Speaker 1 He's a people pleaser. Yeah.
Okay. So it was perfect.
We watched him go through all of these exercises they set up with Marmite of him getting like, now imagine I've got my Marmite here, Bobby.

Speaker 1 What are you going to do? Move closer to the Marmite, closer to the Marmite. And then he was imagining eating the Marmite.
Is that, and what do you feel about Marmite now, Bobby?

Speaker 1 And he went, yeah, I like it,

Speaker 1 You could tell. Total bullshit.
A bit of the enthusiasm in his face going like, it's good, isn't it, Bobby? You like it, Bobby. And did they then get him to try it for real?

Speaker 1 The next morning at breakfast, they got him to try some Marmite. He's like, no, it's nice, yeah.
And they walked away from the table.

Speaker 1 You could just see him like absolutely guttered that he'd eaten Marmite. He was eating it on its own, like he had a pot, and he was putting his finger in

Speaker 1 and just into his mouth. So much Marmite that even people who love Marmite wouldn't do that.

Speaker 1 I love Marmite, but even like a tiny bit of it on its own, I have a real, like it really makes me wretched. You want to hang out with the Speakmans?

Speaker 1 I think what they did with him, and maybe you can vouch if this would work. So they basically said, think of a food you love.
Yes. And we're putting that over here.

Speaker 1 So they like gestured, it's over in this part of the room. And as we move this pot of Marmite closer to that, how do you feel about it? Yeah.
And then eat the Marmite.

Speaker 1 That was what I remember it being.

Speaker 1 That's an NLP stuff going on. Right, yeah.
I think there was, I remember I cured someone of a cat allergy like that. and using a sort of similar thing.
Just really curious to see if it would work.

Speaker 1 And I say cured, but it was sort of like, it definitely worked there and then. Like, because when he was talking about cats before, he was...

Speaker 1 even just talking about them and thinking about them it wasn't making him sneeze and everything and then um he didn't afterwards so there's that okay you've created like but that's not a real cat yet it's just how you feel differently and then apparently he was better with the cats but i think it didn't really last like you know after a few weeks or a couple months whatever he was back to where he was so really really yeah hard to hard to say but does it does have it can have some effect we felt bobby seagull was just being polite i think always just being polite and uh what you do is go

Speaker 1 yeah yeah i think when he was actively making those noises yeah so maybe it did help a little bit him doing that i find marmite and mint sauce is the other thing that i love but i can't have it on its own just a thing yeah yeah

Speaker 1 it's just something it's rare it's rare that you're in a situation where you might end up having marmite or mint sauce by itself but you're going to do it once if you like both of them yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's true there was a salad in the pub that i used to work in this chain pub that was just basically i mean i can't remember any of the other ingredients but there weren't many other ingredients basically just mint sauce and red onions i i i got hooked on it one day i couldn't stop eating it

Speaker 1 just this

Speaker 1 we just had to certainly expand your brain yeah immediately i'll stick for the listener i'll stick

Speaker 1 Your dream side dish.

Speaker 1 It's not terribly interesting, but I just thought I like a nice, like a rocket salad because with the meatballs, you know, I'm sure there are better side dishes in the world, but if you're having this rocket salad with some of that parmesan and perhaps a nice balsamic, nice olive oil, that would be very nice.

Speaker 1 This is a very coherent menu. It's very

Speaker 1 carbi, I suppose, risotto followed by pasta. Yeah, but people would like I would do that at an Italian restaurant.
Yeah, because you're like, you're there to enjoy it and you want to get stuck in.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I suppose they'd appear, the risotto and the pasta would probably appear on the same premi platy course wouldn't they yeah but you're the customer right exactly yeah yeah so this is a very nice simple salad

Speaker 1 yeah a nice simple salad yeah i think you it could be a bowl of rice mashed potato i guess that's what carbs in but no it's just yeah nice little um wild rocket quite nice yeah grew my own rocket for a little while it was delicious yeah and then never returned to that did you make were you making salads pretty regular did you overdo it had a lot of rocket to use yeah and getting good good parmesan i'd i'd probably just end up eating the parmesan on its own it's nothing like that that and a good good bottle of red it's in the first episode of chef's table that series where and uh i've forgotten the name of the chef namassimo is it or something but like um he tells the story of when they saved all the uh

Speaker 1 yeah all of the the rounds yeah it was the broken by by promoting the idea of cooking with broken parmesan wasn't it right yes yeah yeah and they do the tap it what it should sound like when you tap on it and that stuck with me a lot.

Speaker 1 The sound of that sounds delicious. Yeah, but they're taping it on that.

Speaker 1 On a wheel or does it work with a wedge? No, yeah.

Speaker 1 That's like a woodwork. You can't go around the supermarket without tapping all the wedges.

Speaker 1 They've done the other cars.

Speaker 1 Astonishing.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah, yeah, tap it on the wheel.
And what is the sound? Is it like a dead, heavy sound or is it like a break?

Speaker 1 It's like a, yeah, it is dead, I guess, but then there's like a bit of a Hollowey sound to it as well.

Speaker 1 So like, yeah, you get that kind of like, it's like a dampened drum or something and when you hear something when you hear something knock back you know it's ready knock back yeah yeah

Speaker 1 little

Speaker 1 knock from the inside i'm ready

Speaker 1 it's the cheese knocking back yeah that's the cheese knocking back me a diamond

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 four years this has taken here we go

Speaker 1 that would be gutting if you what's the longest you've spent on a trick for it not to work um it's a good question I think that's a good question, right?

Speaker 1 I remember being on stage on Broadway and I'd messed up a trick at the beginning and it was like, it was quite a long long trick.

Speaker 1 I was in like, you know, 15, 20 minutes, quite a long time to spend on one thing on stage with four climaxes that were going to and I just knew none of them were going to work.

Speaker 1 And that felt like, and that felt like the longest time I'd spent on a trick for it not to work. And I made the same mistake the night after and the same mistake.

Speaker 1 But by the end of it, I'd learned that, you know, people didn't... didn't mind.
It's a weird thing. Like, you know, you mess something up, like, it's sort of okay.

Speaker 1 But do people almost want to see you mess at least one thing up? So yeah, I think I have to.

Speaker 1 And if a show's gone too smoothly, i will i will mess something up on purpose otherwise it's like a juggler dropping a ball i guess you sort of i guess you have to i remember i did a show once and i couldn't get the um either me or the person on stage couldn't get the lid off the marker

Speaker 1 and then i could hear backstage running around trying to get another uh trying to get another one those weren't any other markers and it was in the it got reviewed that night and it was like this really lovely human moment i guess they thought i did doing it on purpose so i i do it sometimes on purpose because actually now you know people aren't looking at what you're doing or thinking about other stuff if they're watching somebody struggle to get a pen off a microphone, lid off a marker.

Speaker 1 But yeah, failure is an important thing, thank God. And people need something to compare it to, right? Yeah, sure.
They need to.

Speaker 1 The really good stuff seems really good if they can see what happens when it goes wrong. They can see what happens.
Yeah, yeah. So the amount of time you must spend...
There was one where you get a...

Speaker 1 There we go. Darren's not going to remember this at all.
Oh, won't there be another one? I forget. I don't remember this.

Speaker 1 There's one where

Speaker 1 it's when you get them to bet on the horses.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you said that you'd done it.
So it's the for people who haven't seen it, it's like a series of every time you tell them to bet on a horse, it wins. Yes.

Speaker 1 And then they win massive at the end. Yeah.
And you slightly killed the slightly killed the surprise for anybody watching it. But yes, yes.
Yeah. Spoiler alert.
Yeah. Too late to say that?

Speaker 1 Hilliard plot. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
What do you want me to say? They don't expect because that spoils it even more.

Speaker 1 But like the

Speaker 1 how it works. Yeah.
So the way you've done it is you've done it with a series of people. And it's really, it's not like, it's just that if you do it enough times, it will eventually happen like that.

Speaker 1 And and then that person will think that this amazing trick has been done with it or something. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. How long are you spending on that doing it with all the dope? Yeah, yeah, so that took a very long time.

Speaker 1 So yeah, it all started with the idea that you know you if you'd get every week you'd get a thing in your email saying this horse is going to win like in two days time and then you perhaps the first time you're like really and then you don't even think about it and then you realize it has and then you you get it this another result the next week and you actually maybe this time you actually watch the race and it does win and does it again it does win and then when it gets to the fourth one or the fifth one it's like, Would you want to buy the system?

Speaker 1 It's expensive, but you'll be able to do this whenever you like.

Speaker 1 And yet, you just start with enough people, and the one in six that get happened to get the winning horse, the winning prediction, because you obviously divided that big group into six and given each group a different prediction.

Speaker 1 So, you take that group of six, which, if you start with enough people, is still a big group of people, and then you split them into six for the next race, and them into six for the next race.

Speaker 1 And so, there'll be one person by the end of it, which we had, who had just got a series of like impossibly accurate, you know, impossible predictions.

Speaker 1 And sure enough, she was willing to put her life savings up to buy this system. And then we told her after she'd given us the money.
Well, here's how it all works. So let's see.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, there was a twist at the end. I won't say it, just in case it's anyone that still wants to watch it.
People have to watch it.

Speaker 1 Your dream drink, Devin Brown. Dream.
Well,

Speaker 1 I'm going for a bottle of,

Speaker 1 well, it all starts with the Parmesan, I suppose. So a nice Sangiovese, maybe a

Speaker 1 Brunello de Moltalcino, which is probably my favourite red. I'm not drinking a lot with it, but just like, yeah, I probably just like a glass and a half.

Speaker 1 Very specific. Wow.
Yeah. Are you...

Speaker 1 Why the half glass? I like drink exactly the same amount as milk goes into a cabbage flake.

Speaker 1 That's, and then I stop. It's a very good system now.

Speaker 1 Not enough people stick to the... It's an example of a martini afterwards.
And

Speaker 1 I just can't do a martini if I've had more than like maybe a glass and a half.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's why I start with a martini and then I think

Speaker 1 that I think I can carry on.

Speaker 1 Do you start okay? I started with a lot of people. I'll start with a martini.
Yeah, I think it's a nice

Speaker 1 digestive afterwards and opens you up a little bit. I think if I got to the end of the night, I'd be like, no, there's no way I can have a martini now.
I'm going to absolutely lose my mind.

Speaker 1 I quite like a Tommy's margarita to start things off. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Tommy's margarita.
No. So Tommy's margarita is there's no triple sec or other alcohol in it.

Speaker 1 It is just tequila a good 100 agave tequila not the

Speaker 1 the horrible stuff and lime and agave

Speaker 1 and i i was friendly with remember kenny everett yes yeah remember clear rockers who was kenny everett's sidekick red-headed bombshell so she's a good friend and she um has a tequila brand of her own uh called Aqua Riva.

Speaker 1 And that got me, this before tequila became a huge thing. She was very much at the forefront of this kind of big tequila revival.

Speaker 1 And she was obviously very passionate about the drink and got me quite passionate about it too. It is a magic drink.
You know, there's

Speaker 1 no hangover if you don't, as I'm sure you know, if you don't, as long as you stay hydrated and you don't mix it with any other drinks.

Speaker 1 So the nice thing about a Tommy's margarita is because there's no other alcohol in it, you really can just drink this drink all night and you will feel fine, if slightly held. Like I'm

Speaker 1 holding my head in my own hands. Now there's a slight, I've done this, I have drunk them all day once.

Speaker 1 And the next morning, everything's fine, but it's maybe it's a bit like everything's been taken away and replaced with identical

Speaker 1 there's something slightly off you can't put your finger on it but you don't there's no bad feelings yeah i think i'd prefer a traditional hangover to feeling like all of my stuff being replaced with identical versions of themselves you've not got the tommy's margarita on your menu yet do you want that as you come into the into the meal before the meal

Speaker 1 to be a welcome drink a welcomed yeah with a welcome and is a welcome and then you're moving on to the the red wine moving on to the onto the parmesan the red wine wine.

Speaker 1 So this is a very Italian menu. Have you spent a lot of time in Italy? Do you remember the first time you had these Italian wines that you thought this is my jam?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't know a huge amount about wine, but as with anything like that, it's like if you can have one little area or one little part of it, and then it makes it feel a bit more manageable. I

Speaker 1 remember having Brunello on the holiday in Tuscany somewhere and loving it and going, that's it, that's what I like. That's my one.
That's it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then there's a, then you, from that, I guess you sort of build out and go, I quite like that too. No, I can't remember the difference.

Speaker 1 I don't know which one I'm drinking, but there's you, yeah, so that's definitely my winey home. And then, yeah, I'd cook Italian food all the time.
I love pasta.

Speaker 1 I would have pasta all the time, and I can.

Speaker 1 You literally can. You can.
You're doing brown. Exactly.

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Speaker 1 We arrive at your dream dessert. Very exciting.
You're already. Yeah, has it gone quickly? Has gone quickly, yeah.

Speaker 1 You have no idea how many other, you know, tricks and specials of yours I've held back on asking about, so I've done quite well. Yeah, I really

Speaker 1 appreciate it. I do.
You ever worry about people that you've done stuff on?

Speaker 1 You ever go, I hope that guy's all right, or I got to push the guy off the building. Well, there's so few of them that it's easy to keep in touch and maintain a friendship with them.
So

Speaker 1 that's what's happened. So, like in the last one,

Speaker 1 a few years ago now, on

Speaker 1 Netflix and Channel 4 called sacrifice i remember the guy oh yeah this is the guy get uh getting laying down his life for uh an illegal mexican immigrant but he himself was you know very much anti-all of that immigration stuff uh so as whether he could be changed and um he uh yeah so he came over i flew him over to watch the show and watched it because it's all very weird when you it's not just Not just your experience of going through it.

Speaker 1 And we knew that would be fine for him.

Speaker 1 And there's a, you know, there's obviously take care of people, but then there's there's um actually seeing your experience then rendered as a tv show with you know music and close-ups and bits edited out that might have meant a lot to you but just don't make the final cut and so on so he came over and watched it and then we watched it again with martin freeman because he was a big fan of martin i wanted to sit the remote yeah

Speaker 1 i imagine um we uh did expect him to come up twice um and uh because i wanted him to because he was a big fan of martin freeman and martin was a friend and i wanted him to feel you know sort of proud of it and enjoy it and then we watch it again with the um the other guys that had done the other shows like that that I've done that all been through these similar journeys so he could feel like part of a very niche oh that's nice group army I think of them as an army I would like to see that as a as a special actually all those guys living in a house together yeah yeah who've been through different things one of them thought zombies were real yeah he's walking about waiting for the signal yeah to attack

Speaker 1 just all of them in a house constantly paranoid that it's another that something else is happening but it's just I do get occasional emails from people that think they are part of a show.

Speaker 1 And in the middle of there was one we did called

Speaker 1 Remote Control. It was like a big game show thing and the audience are in masks

Speaker 1 and it's they're making decisions about whether good or bad things happen to somebody who's out being secretly filmed. And there was a runner on that show who was

Speaker 1 in one of the sort of, you know, secret filming units over the road from the pub where this guy is and all this stuff's happening to him.

Speaker 1 And, you know, runners are very important characters in a crew keeping everything ticking over and he just totally freaked out thought the whole thing was about him and he literally ran down the street screaming he totally lost his and ran down the street in the middle of a live thing screaming i mean i get the impulse yeah yeah i completely understand but

Speaker 1 even more embarrassing when someone has to go it's not it's not and you might be a narcissist yeah you're total main main character syndrome literally main character syndrome

Speaker 1 is hard isn't it the other one that comes to mind is on apocalypse that you mentioned.

Speaker 1 During the nighttime sequences, so I obviously I have to go and sleep, but we felt like somebody should, if Stephen, our guy in it, at all like freaked out in the middle of the night, like if it was me watching, I would get in there, hypnotise him and make sure everything was fine.

Speaker 1 And even that meant, you know, the whole show had to go down the toilet, it wouldn't matter.

Speaker 1 But basically, there's always that thing I can run in and sort it out if I need to, if it all goes horribly wrong. But I needed sleep, but so I would sleep and he would sleep.
But we had a

Speaker 1 backup hypnotist

Speaker 1 just in case he was doing a night shift. He was just watching Stephen sleep just in case anything like that happened.
And I won't mention his name.

Speaker 1 I normally do, I won't this time, I don't want to embarrass him, but he needed to go to the loo. So

Speaker 1 somebody said, do you mind if I need power to the loo? And of course, it's fine, like nothing's happening.

Speaker 1 So I said, yeah, yeah, there's actually just, well, the nearest one is actually within the sort of filmed area. So, you know, be quiet, but it's within this sort of like bunker that Stephen's in.

Speaker 1 I bet there was like a, there was a portal somewhere. So, yeah, just best you just use that.
So, off he goes to use the loo.

Speaker 1 And then, there was something that they were going to do a very quiet rehearsal of a zombie crowd scene that was going to happen the next morning. So, backup hypnotist is in the toilet.

Speaker 1 Then, there's like, okay, do you mind? Sorry, just stay in there for a bit because we just got to rehearse. Don't, don't come out.

Speaker 1 Then there's like a load of silent zombies sort of pretending to shake the thing, the fences, and they kind of run through there a bit.

Speaker 1 And no no one tells backup hypnotist uh in the toilet that um he can come out at the end of it so he just he knows he's there to do a job so he just sort of sleeps i think in the portal certainly there for a very very long time so there are entire sequences of that show where there's a backup hypnotist trapped in the portal

Speaker 1 you see his outline if you look carefully just leant against the wall sleeping that way you should have just filmed that and made that a different show so yeah you're drinking dessert devon okay well i tell you at home what it is and what i was going to say for reasons of honesty and transparency, is a single Charbonnel A.

Speaker 1 Walker salted caramel truffle. So I love it.
Because normally I'm full, right? I make these carbi things.

Speaker 1 I can't do a pudding on top of that. So they're on the mantelpiece in the front room.

Speaker 1 I get the big pots, because again, the big ones.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they're all in their little, you know, little frilly things. And I take it and I normally try and do it as non-around.
And I sit down and I'm very mindful.

Speaker 1 They're lovely and I'm very mindful about enjoying this one chocolate.

Speaker 1 However, given it's a dream restaurant, I figured something could happen whereby you'd lose some of

Speaker 1 the fullness and general gastric discomfort at this point and you'd open up a bit of space for a nice pudding. Otherwise, it's a bit pointless.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I'm going to go Apple Crumble. Must be a popular choice.
Yeah, pretty popular. It comes up, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Not normally after risotto and spaghetti.
No, I mean, this is it.

Speaker 1 There's nothing wrong with it.

Speaker 1 It's not a practical. No, but we're employing the genie's powers here.
You know, you're not feeling full. You're ready for Apple Crumble.
Exactly. Yeah.
Hearty.

Speaker 1 Might even put a little Sharpen and Walker on top. Yeah.
We'll give you the Sharpen and Walker. Jabbing that afterwards, because you described it

Speaker 1 so nicely, yeah. No, you're absolutely right.
You absolutely should. You're absolutely right.

Speaker 1 You've got to have it on its own afterwards. But the crumble is.
Yeah, Apple Crumble. And sometimes blackberries in there too.

Speaker 1 Oats,

Speaker 1 I do oats. My mum's always like, oh, have you put oats in there? Okay.
She's not sure about the oats. She's got her way of doing it.
Yeah. And oats, I think, are a little out there.

Speaker 1 It's a bit new school, though. Yeah, a bit new school.
But I quite like them. I think I quite like the oats.

Speaker 1 So yeah, nothing particularly imaginative with the apple crumble, but it's just, again, it's just all, it's all comfort food for me. Risotto's a big comfort food as well, isn't it? It's all red wine.

Speaker 1 It's a comfort food. It's all about that.
And again, bring it out. And maybe with ice cream, but probably with custard.
Hot or cold custard? Oh, no, hot custard. Don't, yeah, don't do that.

Speaker 1 Do people people have cold custard?

Speaker 1 we both like on a hot dessert cold custard we both like it yeah but it's the same yeah you say you might have ice cream that's basically just very cold custard isn't it the coldest of all custards it is but i i'd rather go custard over over ice cream i do like i love i do like i do love an ice cream matter my other option would have been ice vanilla ice cream with swiss roll chocolate swiss roll from when you were a kid who did that yeah so a bit like essentially a deconstructed arctic roll which we all had i'm sure

Speaker 1 so what we can tell you yeah because you have chosen the apple crumble every episode there's a secret ingredient if the guest chooses it. Have you mentioned it out? Sort of.
Mini rolls for you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We chose that because of a trick you did with mini rolls. I was doing my best.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 that was dangerously close to it. Okay.

Speaker 1 You're allowed to mention it. It's fine.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Something about chocolate rolls. You haven't

Speaker 1 chose it, so we're fine. Yeah.
Okay. But like,

Speaker 1 but if you chose it as your chocolate. Close, but no, chocolate.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because a Swiss roll is not. A mini roll is not the same as a Swiss roll.
Well, we would have to have that debate. Yeah.

Speaker 1 If a mini roll is the same as a Swiss roll. What happens if somebody says it? Do you just cut it dead, get out?

Speaker 1 You say that you're not getting any of your food that you ordered. You're not getting any of it in the dream.

Speaker 1 It's only happened once. It's only happened once.
And then we read them their menu out, tell them it's going all, it's all going in the bin.

Speaker 1 And you'd be surprised at how badly it gets received by the person.

Speaker 1 They're still pretty angry that they're getting their meals. Even though it's a completely imaginary menu, they're lividly.
They're so disappointed. They're so disappointed by it.

Speaker 1 For you, it was mini rolls because of the League of Gentlemen thing you did. Yes.
And I will say, though,

Speaker 1 that Mini Rolls thing is the only thing that I'm going to just straight up ask you how you did it.

Speaker 1 I know you're not going to tell us. And I know it's a waste of time.
I know that magicians and ventilists and everyone get asked this all the time.

Speaker 1 But it's been bothering me ever since I saw it, probably over a decade ago. And I would like you to just tell us how you did it, please.
One martini.

Speaker 1 Tell you anything.

Speaker 1 It's a razor blade in a... It's a razor blade in the Swiss roll.
It's a chocolate roll.

Speaker 1 Chocolate roll. I won't say it.
Not a Swiss roll. And there's a whole bunch of other things beforehand of like they sit down on chairs and you mix some envelopes up and they open the envelopes.

Speaker 1 It says what colour chair they're going to sit on and they reach under their chair and they've all got the colour that corresponds to that.

Speaker 1 There's a whole bunch of different things that have to all be. It's not tiny men in the table.
It's the ones that escaped from

Speaker 1 the pay.

Speaker 1 I mean, that is,

Speaker 1 I think about it a lot. I think I don't know.
I'm genuinely, I genuinely cannot remember.

Speaker 1 I do occasionally watch those things back. I have no idea.
Yeah. Actually, no idea.
So if you watch them back and go, oh, that was good.

Speaker 1 I sort of, well, not quite that sadly as that sounds, but occasionally I'll just watch it because someone will be talking about it. I haven't seen that video.
I'll pop that on and find it.

Speaker 1 Or it'll just suddenly all come up on my computer or something. I'll just find myself watching it.
I haven't got a clue. But that's how you know it's a good trick, right?

Speaker 1 You've even tricked yourself in the future. Trick myself.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's an idea.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh. Trick yourself in the future.
Yeah. Are you going to add any more to that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, just get the ball rolling.

Speaker 1 Trick yourself in the future. Do a load of things, record them, then you sit down and you're the person it's happening to.
And by then you've forgotten about it. Yeah.
And do it.

Speaker 1 You just trick yourself. You're like, fuck it.
So the audience are watching me do tricks on myself and go, I had no idea. Watching you react to the video.

Speaker 1 Of course, they will all think you're just potentially tricked.

Speaker 1 But you will know. Can they see what's on the video? Are they just watching my reaction? They can see what's on the video.
Yeah, they can see what's on the video. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Is this how you normally write shows? Someone comes in and says just a completely random idea and then goes, just get in the ball rolling. Zandy Neyman does it.

Speaker 1 Just get the ball rolling. Just trick yourself in the future.
So he's like,

Speaker 1 please stop. That's a weird thing with that.
People do say things and then you have to stop them because sometimes it does lead to half a thought or you've had a similar thought.

Speaker 1 And then they're like, well, I gave you that idea. Yeah, yeah.
No, you didn't. That was a rotating chicken.
That makes sense. Something else.
But yes, the idea of rotation is something that we

Speaker 1 happens quite a lot. The chicken's the headline of that idea, I think.
If you change it from chicken, I think it's no longer just a chicken.

Speaker 1 It's fine. And to be honest, if the chicken's not rotating, I'm not going to think it's me.
If you just got chickens knocking about, I'm not going to go that with me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's only if it's a rotisserie chicken being used to put someone into a trance. Yeah.
Okay. And then they're on the rotisserie at the end.
And it's me.

Speaker 1 But then even then, I'm not going to get annoyed. I didn't get credit.
I'll just know in my heart.

Speaker 1 I'll be really happy. There's an illness satisfaction, isn't there? That's enough.
That is enough. I'll be really happy with that.
It's about time the hypnotists used the idea of a chicken, right?

Speaker 1 It is about time. We've never seen that before.
But it's the opposite. Would you draw like a spiral or she or they draw like a spiral on the where the head's been removed?

Speaker 1 Because that could be the center of the spiral. And then the spiral sort of works its way out on that plane, that sort of front end of the chicken.

Speaker 1 So if you're sat in front and your view isn't obscured by the drumsticks,

Speaker 1 you could be more powerful, wouldn't it? And also, like,

Speaker 1 if the audience can't see that spiral, it adds to it, right? Because they think they're just hypnotised by the chicken. Yeah.
But actually, there's a spiral on the neck.

Speaker 1 And I don't know, but I guess a biro would work, would write very satisfyingly on the front of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think you're doing that spiral.

Speaker 1 It would feel good to write on the neck of a chicken with a biro. You wouldn't, sorry, just to say, you wouldn't need to draw a circle.

Speaker 1 You could hold the biro still and let the rotisserie spit through the work for you. Face outside.

Speaker 1 This is going to be a weird show, your next show. I don't think that's weird at all.
What? Let someone hold a biro on a chicken neck and then it rotates and you draw on it.

Speaker 1 They've got to slowly move the pen to one to the side, slowly to the left.

Speaker 1 All right, I'm in. You're in.
Yes, my team.

Speaker 1 oh yeah we follow we've definitely we finished with a um yeah a uh an extra dry painfully brutally dry vodka martini i'd probably go um maybe cony's tail with a twist with a twist yeah

Speaker 1 twist is chocolate truffle vibing if anyone's seen devin brown he always always ends with a twist i was too excited to say that but i think that was very good to say that even devin brown's menu ends with a twist yeah and then if you just said that great read your menu back to you now see if you feel about it.

Speaker 1 Be mindful. Okay, go.
A Tommy's margarita when you arrive. That's nice.
You would like still water, not too cold, nothing in it, no plops.

Speaker 1 Pop comes of bread, you would like sourdough, warm with butter and salt. Then some parmesan and red wine on the table.
For starter, you would like a lobster risotto.

Speaker 1 Main course, perfect meatballs in tomato sauce with a thick spaghetti. Side dish of rocket salad with parmesan, balsamic, olive oil.

Speaker 1 Drink, you would like a glass and a half of Brunella de Montalchini.

Speaker 1 Dessert, you would like an apple crumble hot with hot custard and then Chabonnet,

Speaker 1 walker, salted, caramel truffle on its own to say it. It was a good accent there, didn't it? And an extra dry vodka martini.
Did you say the crumble? Yes. You're still thinking about it.
Okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I hypnotised you and you forgot that I said the crumble. It worked.

Speaker 1 That's amazing. Hearing you say it back

Speaker 1 as beautifully as you did.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's gorgeous. Well, that's a great menu.
You've heard that. Please.
Now, confirm to the listener, that envelope hasn't left you. This has been in front of me all the time.

Speaker 1 If this contains my menu choices, there's no exception. You've had it there and you've signed it over the thing.

Speaker 1 If you could open it and just read to the listener what it says inside.

Speaker 1 You can hear the envelope being opened. It says prediction on the front of it.
I've removed a sheet of paper. Yes, here we go.
I'm removing it. It says Darren's menu.
Here we go. Water.

Speaker 1 Olive oil. That was a.
We got that one wrong. That's wrong.
I always say it. But you always get one.
You've got to get one wrong at the top.

Speaker 1 I did have a moment there of thinking, oh my god, is this actually going to be a thing?

Speaker 1 Well, you know, you always get the first one wrong. Yeah, yeah.
Failure. Yeah.
Dropping a ball. All right.
Poppa doms or bread. You put egg, McMuffin, and a cigarette.

Speaker 1 Always get the second one wrong. Always get the second one wrong.

Speaker 1 Starter, clams, main, candy floss, flambéed. Well, Well,

Speaker 1 okay. Not far off.
You're not far off. Side, spaghetti hoops, boiling hot.
Nearly. Like lava? Nearly? I had it like lava.
Spaghetti hoops is close. Drink an ice-cold beer,

Speaker 1 dessert, nothing. You haven't written anything? We ran out of room.
We ran out of page.

Speaker 1 We didn't really space out the menu enough and we ran out of space. We ran out of room.
We had to just leave it dessert. This is ran out of space.
I'm framing this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sphaghetti. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, in a sense, they're all correct.
You've got the spaghetti hoops and spaghetti. Hoops are circles like meatballs.
Yeah. An ice

Speaker 1 called beer, in a sense. Candy floss, comfort food.
Yeah. Clams.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, clams are by the sea. Pompeii is by the sea.
Yeah. They probably were feasting on clams when

Speaker 1 it all struck.

Speaker 1 We talked about all of this.

Speaker 1 All of it was in the salad. Yeah.
Egg McMuffin.

Speaker 1 Had a cigarette. That's my favourite.
I think you

Speaker 1 peaked early.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that one is wrong. And then olive oil was correct.
That's what I said. So, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Pretty good. Phenomenal.
Pretty good.

Speaker 1 You just got Devin Brown.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much for coming to the dream restaurant, Darren. It's been a dream.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 James, you embarrassed me in that interview. What?

Speaker 1 You're a little nerd. I've never seen you nerd out so hard.
I just know stuff. I like knowledge.
Yes, you were very excited to meet Darren. So was I.
Lovely to chat to Darren. What a nice man.

Speaker 1 What a great boy. What a lot of stuff I could have said.
Yes, I know. So many episodes.
Questions have got. I'm well aware.

Speaker 1 I looked around at you during that interview and you were pinching your leg at some point. Yes, just to get myself a shut up.
To stop yourself saying all the different shows he's done.

Speaker 1 Don't ask him about all the shows, James. Calm down.
Yeah. Back off.
You've got to prioritise. It was lovely to speak to Darren.
I enjoyed his menu very much.

Speaker 1 And he didn't say mini rolls, although we were skirting a little bit close to it, weren't we? Yes.

Speaker 1 He'd already established that Swiss roll was his backup dessert, but that he wasn't going to choose it. So I thought we can let him know.

Speaker 1 Because if he did say Swiss roll, we would have had to have debated that. And I guess ultimately, mini rolls, the clue is in that.
It's a mini roll. It's a mini roll.

Speaker 1 And it's chocolate and Swiss rolls are not traditional chocolate. It is specific.
So yeah,

Speaker 1 yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got to get off his back on that.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 1 And also, we predicted his entire meal it's pretty impressive that we predicted his entire meal we derren brown darren brown there was a moment when he opened it where i thought he might have done something to the envelope he might have done something for us is he about to do something for us

Speaker 1 is he gonna like hold the envelope and tell us what we've written down before opening it yeah or he might reveal if you listen back to the podcast yeah during every course I actually said these things.

Speaker 1 Yes. If you listen back.

Speaker 1 I got it in there. You didn't notice.
That would have blown my mind. That's how good he is.
We're amazed by stuff he didn't do.

Speaker 1 Well done, Darren. Tickets for Darren's new show, Only Human, are on sale now.
So get yourself along to that. I know we'll be going at some point.
Yeah, absolutely. All of us, for sure.

Speaker 1 I want to see that spinning chicken. In his show, Only Human.
Yes.

Speaker 1 It's still time to change it, call it Only Chicken.

Speaker 1 That was, of course, the final episode of the series, but we will be back before you know it for Christmas specials, best ofs, all of that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 Other than that, we'll see you in the new year. Yes, no need to text me and ask me when those are, though, mum.

Speaker 1 So that's the end of the series now. That's been established.
You don't have to text me saying that you're annoyed about that.

Speaker 1 And then you don't have to just be like, where are these Christmas specials? And where's the compost? They'll be Christmas. They're all coming out.
We're giving you content, mum.

Speaker 1 He sounds very ungrateful to me, Di. I'm so sorry you have such a wretch of a son.
Thank you so much to Darren for coming on the podcast. We will see you again soon.
Bye-bye. Goodbye.

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