Derren Brown: UNLOCK The Secret Power Of Your Mind!

[0] I've been asked by the FBI, I've been asked by the police to help.

[1] What did the FBI or the police want to help with?

[2] Nah.

[3] Ladies and gentlemen being a psychological illusionist.

[4] Doing extraordinary television and even better live shows.

[5] Darren is a national treasure.

[6] Welcome to the show.

[7] The story we tell ourselves is not what's real.

[8] Like, for example, I did a show called Miracle.

[9] The Lord has his work cut out tonight.

[10] And the second half was healing.

[11] The woman came up and she'd been paralyzed down one side of her body since she was.

[12] or in floods of tears because she could move her left arm for the first time.

[13] What you're seeing is that it's the psychological component of suffering, right?

[14] Like nothing's happened, nothing's changed.

[15] But their relationship to their suffering, that's been made to change.

[16] It's not the things in life that cause your problems.

[17] It's the story that you tell yourself about them.

[18] It's the judgments that you make about them.

[19] There's a lot of people that are trying to sell you on this bullshit that they can take your traumas or your insecurities to zero.

[20] I've never seen it happen.

[21] We've completely obliterated the idea of just fortune and life.

[22] Sometimes life's throwing stuff back and if we have no control over anxiety is still somehow.

[23] The demon.

[24] But, you know, without anxiety, how do you know to change anything?

[25] You know, you can't do that without embracing anxiety to an extent.

[26] Your work is predominantly based in psychology, right?

[27] So have you ever done anything?

[28] How the fuck did that happen?

[29] Don't go home and start doing that.

[30] Two things come to mind.

[31] I've spent the last few days reading all about your childhood.

[32] Oh, truly fascinating.

[33] Thank you.

[34] I've actually got a picture here.

[35] have you um how strange that you have that picture yes that's me with a um a parrot on my shoulder graph that you have this little boy yes what do i need to understand about about him and the world he lived in and the way he saw the world to understand you what do you need to understand well i was an only child till i was nine uh so i guess that's kind of a that's a pretty formative thing isn't it um quite creative like always always drawing and building things lego um always been a bit of a people pleaser and maybe that at that age kind of yeah sort of happy didn't didn't have a lot of friends there wasn't like a didn't have a big gang and everybody did i've always gone through life just with sort of a small number of of good friends uh but i think there's one that feels like a happy a happy time to think back on I remember sitting with Jimmy Carr and him telling me that people often think of comedians as being like, they're depressed.

[36] So they're trying to impress other people to get some kind of thrill for their own sort of self -gratification.

[37] But Jimmy said to me, he said, you should actually ask which one of my parents was depressed that I was trying to impress to understand how I became a comedian.

[38] And I wonder, you know, you said that you're a bit of a people pleaser.

[39] You clearly had this huge affinity towards entertaining and getting the reaction back from people, the amazement.

[40] where did that start have you pinpointed where that started in your childhood yes I think I could so when I was at school so my dad was a swimming teacher at school and he and I wasn't very sporty so I kind of it shielded me from being like bullied as a non -sporty kid but I didn't love school mainly because of that I said I found a lot of the kids the sporty kids quite intimidating and so on.

[41] So I kind of like, but dad teaching there helped.

[42] And then when I got to, and I was in with the wrong group, the sort of classical music loving group, or the Puff Gang, as we were less charitably known, didn't even like classical music.

[43] So it was a pretty miserable group to be stuck with.

[44] In sixth form, I remember everybody sort of seemed to grow up suddenly and become a lot more friendly.

[45] And so I kind of, uh, uh, I sort of exploded in a way into sort of like attention seeking.

[46] And I went from being very sort of quiet and a bit intimidated by these sort of kids to sort of suddenly they seem to sort of, you know, like me or at least, you know, they were fine.

[47] So I started doing impressions of teachers and I would draw caricatures of them.

[48] And I was definitely, I became a kind of really, I would imagine quite irritating, certainly some of the teachers, attention seeker.

[49] So I think it all happened around then.

[50] And then it just sort of then progressed into university.

[51] Most of my 20s was probably a lot of it was based around that.

[52] And it was quite a handy thing.

[53] You know, if you're going to perform, it takes care of that need to just sort of, you know, just kind of impress.

[54] I think it was probably a good thing.

[55] Were you picked on Ortiz or anything in school before that point?

[56] No, I think because my dad, taught there it held but I was definitely you know I was chosen last for the teams and and things hated uh sports and so on and there were a couple of kids that were probably I mean generally fairly nasty anyway but I certainly got uh a bit from them but no I think I think I sort of did all right I think I generally didn't enjoy school that much and I felt like I was sort of um so intimidated but I don't I don't really remember ever getting sort of I never got beaten up or bullied or no one was making my life particularly miserable i think it was just the general feeling of not quite fitting in and religion i was incredibly religious when i were you yeah and then i lost it at about 18 became incredibly atheist yeah and you i read a similar sort of journey in your street at six or something you'd asked your parents if you could go to bible that's right mrs wittaker one of our teachers at school was uh i really liked a lot and um she ran it was called crusader class but it was basically like a Sunday school thing.

[57] And because I was six, and she asked me if I wanted to go to it, I just sort of presumed everybody did.

[58] I didn't know any different.

[59] So I said to ask my parents if I could go, and they said, yes, of course.

[60] So I did.

[61] And then by the time I realized that, oh, no, no, this is actually like a thing that I now believe in.

[62] It was sort of, I was pretty much inculcated, so it was hard to step out of it.

[63] But I did eventually, yeah, university, so many years later, through doing hypnosis first and magic and they always give you quite a skeptical outlook on things because you just see how people fool themselves and so you sort of naturally start to view a lot of belief systems I think through those eyes including your own I don't know how it was for you but I and also the very idea of doing hypnosis I just remember that was I was a member of the Christian Union in my first year at university I went to Bristol and they were just totally up in arms I had I had members of the Christian Union at the back of one of my shows exorcising me and casting out demons whilst I was hypnotising people on stage so again all of that just sort of made me quite just helped with the sort of general scepticism it took a little while to properly come out of it.

[64] In fact, the Richard Dawkins book, the God Delusion, came out around the time that I had sort of mentally made that step, but didn't quite maybe have the sort of proper language for it.

[65] So that was, if that was a helpful book, actually, I was I'm sure it was for many people in terms of giving that lack of belief a kind of a structure.

[66] It was for me, one of the very sort of pivotal books in my life when I was about 18 years old.

[67] I also read about like compulsive behaviours from your childhood, things like knocking your knees together and a series of other things.

[68] Really twitchy, yeah, a little on that sort of, kind of Tourette's sort of scale.

[69] I think there's a, there's a wedge that ends with quite severe things, but a lot of people have that experience of making little funny, tickly noises in the throat or having to, you know, not step on the cracks and, uh, And there's all the kind of OCD thing that starts to get accompanied by feelings of dread and so much.

[70] I never had that.

[71] But yeah, I was twitchy.

[72] I find a lot of creative kids are.

[73] I don't really know what it is.

[74] It seems to be a form of auto suggestion.

[75] Like when you get the idea in your head and then it's very hard to let it go.

[76] Sometimes I get it now.

[77] Sometimes I get it on stage because there's a certain amount.

[78] There's a lot of muscle memory with doing a stage show.

[79] So if you've, if a little twitchy thing has crept in one point during the show, it'll just creep in every night.

[80] So I still kind of, still aware of it.

[81] A little more over the last few years, because obviously it's been such a, you know, weird few years for everyone's mental health.

[82] So I've noticed it more than I had before.

[83] But, yeah, and it was quite, it was a lot.

[84] My parents were quite despairing with it.

[85] I think it's a very painful thing to watch.

[86] child do and not know how to help knees knocking sniffing terrible sniffing yeah like really really loud I went to see a um Alfred Brendel the pianist playing in Berlin once when I was studying out there I think or did my gap year I think it was out there and just I mean this guy's playing the I think it was the Beethoven pianos and artists just him on his own on the stage at the Berlin Phenomonic.

[87] And there's this incredibly loud sniffing that I'm doing.

[88] And by the second half, everybody had cleared out.

[89] I was just basically a whole empty area of the audience.

[90] But yeah, it's such a bizarre thing.

[91] You just can't really stop it with the best world in the world.

[92] You can't stop yourself from doing this, these things.

[93] And it's, um, and also you don't have the language for it as a kid.

[94] That's, that's the worst part of it.

[95] You don't have the language to explain that it's a compulsion.

[96] You sort of feel like you're in control of it.

[97] You say you feel like therefore the only thing you can say is that you want to do it, but you don't want to do it because it's horrible.

[98] You really, really want to stop.

[99] And it's, it's hard and frightening because you can't articulate it and it, um, uh, and I, I think there's no answer to it.

[100] It just, it sort of passes.

[101] As you've, um, as you've matured, has your perspective of your childhood evolved?

[102] Because I've found that mine certainly has.

[103] It's almost like with, with a bit more wisdom.

[104] I say that.

[105] 30 years old now, but with a little bit more wisdom, I've, I've kind of have a different perspective now on the events of my childhood.

[106] At one point, I would have kind of narrated them differently, but now I see different sort of truths and through lines in my early experience.

[107] I think I'm quite fond of my memories of myself as a child.

[108] And I, um, it felt like there was quite a clean break.

[109] Once I sort of went off to university, it felt like life sort of stopped and started again.

[110] So I, when I think back to my kind of, um, the sort of story of myself, I guess I'm sort of quietly living out the back of my head.

[111] I sort of don't really go much beyond, uh, university age.

[112] Um, and I'm, I'll happily find anything excruciating like, you know, more than, you know, anything I've said or done 10 minutes ago.

[113] I find that quite easy.

[114] Um, and that feeling, I suppose kind of gets weaker and weaker and weaker the further I go back in terms of finding myself, you know, embarrassing.

[115] And then by the time I get to childhood, it's all perfectly, all feels fine.

[116] I mean, I'm aware, as I said, that I was kind of, would sort of just get on with my own things, but nothing.

[117] I, I, I think I was sensitive.

[118] I think I still am.

[119] I was quite a sensitive child.

[120] I used to, I did used to cry a lot.

[121] I know that makes me sound unhappy, but I used to, it didn't take much to make me, cry and I think I've probably retained a sort of sensitivity which is sort of interesting to write a lot about stoicism and a lot of the things I think people you people do tend to write about the things that you know that they either need to learn for themselves or are learning so you know you express those things often better because you're discovering them for you for yourself so So perhaps like a lot of stoics, I'm secretly quite sensitive too.

[122] So I remember that, but not really unhappy, not particularly blissfully happy either, but just a kind of fairly content, solitary kind of kid.

[123] That's sensitivity.

[124] I've always wondered if we're particularly taken by the applause, are we therefore also taken by the criticism so people that end up committing their lives to being like public entertainers and living for the response and the reaction that their work has are those then also the people that are most susceptible to when you know the opposite of applause yeah yes I guess so you're definitely putting yourself out there aren't you if you perform in any sort you are kind of you are opening yourself up to both extremes of reactions.

[125] But it wasn't really about that for me. I think it was about control was a big part of it.

[126] And also, as a sort of, like I didn't come out until I was actually sort of quite late in my 30s.

[127] And I think around the time that I was getting into the hypnosis, that was, you know, sort of university time, really.

[128] And I think, first of all, it was, this was all wasn't clear to me at the time, but with hindsight, that the control aspect of it was very clear.

[129] Control really ticked.

[130] Well, if you watch a hypnotist, hypnotising people, I mean, it's just the whole thing, it's a big exercise in control.

[131] And I think I sort of, that was appealing to me. Although I didn't know it in that, it didn't strike me quite in that language at the time.

[132] But I think looking back, that was helpful.

[133] And also, I think if the old, um outmoded cliche of the the gay man in particular being you know a hairdresser or a interior designer and all of those sort of horrible old clichés what they have in common actors as well is the um the notion of uh um being able to create dazzling surfaces because they they deflect people from the the more difficult if you're feeling shame about you know what's underneath um and i think magic's very good for that as well.

[134] You know, you're, you're sort of creating this bubble around yourself, this sort of, this, um, you're literally hiding behind a trick and people will look at that trick and go, oh gosh, you're amazing.

[135] How do you do that?

[136] You're amazing.

[137] That's a very appealing thing.

[138] A lot of kids get into magic just because they're underconfident.

[139] Um, and a lot of people even going through magic into adults, they, they've learned to rely on that to impress people and haven't had to go back and just work through normal social skills that most people do.

[140] So it's, it's a appealing thing I think all of that was all of that was helpful to me as somebody that was not out and you know kind of working all that stuff out use the word shame there reminded me of listening to your audio book where you talk about those two kids beating you up in your sleeping bag I can't remember the oh yeah yeah that's right yeah and one of the lines you said in that section of the book is that you were very good at I think you said embodying shame but I know that's not the exact word you used But you were very good at, like, holding shame.

[141] You were full of shame, I think, was the message.

[142] Yeah, I can't remember exactly what I wrote, but, yeah, kind of it creeps up on you.

[143] I find now it's, yeah, I can ease, I'm prone to it.

[144] You know, if I feel I've upset my partner, it's shame that I'll go to rather than defensiveness or, you know, Really?

[145] Yeah, I just, I'll easily, I can easily get back to a feeling of, oh, I've, you know, I've been bad.

[146] I've just sort of let this person down.

[147] Is that what, what does shame mean to you?

[148] Because I think I've been using the word a little bit without a very focused definition.

[149] I've been saying that I felt a lot of shame because I was the only like black kid in an all white school and we were the poorest family.

[150] And so that feeling of shame turned into like a motivation, which made me want to become a happy, sexy millionaire.

[151] But what does shame mean to you in that context?

[152] Well, I suppose if you distinguish it from embarrassment, embarrassment is sort of where you've sort of let yourself down in front of, or you've, it's a feeling you're going to get from other people.

[153] They're important in that.

[154] It's how you've appeared before them, whereas I suppose shame is how you've appeared before yourself, that you've sort of let something down within yourself.

[155] It's that, isn't it?

[156] But I think the experience of it is just a sort of, it just becomes an easy resting place.

[157] Whatever it is, it might be for someone else, it could be anger or fury or whatever.

[158] If there's just an emotional through line that was a familiar place when you were young, it's just, you just find yourself settling back into that.

[159] And I suppose part of getting older is recognising those kind of things, aren't they?

[160] Recognising, ah, that is a, you know, a needless pattern.

[161] And as you said with your own experience with that, those things can be really helpful.

[162] and provide a real impetus and a motivation to, you know, to do things you wouldn't have.

[163] I mean, like not being out, all that energy was going into creating this Mr. Magic kind of persona.

[164] And I, you know, although it's easy to say, you know, you should always always come out and all the rest of it.

[165] Of course, those things are important too.

[166] But I don't think I'd be, I wouldn't be sitting there talking to you now.

[167] I don't think if that had been an easy ride, you know.

[168] shame being a familiar resting place as you kind of describe it and you said that kind of starts in your childhood I just want to be because I want to make sure that I'm clear on the context you know that that has a familiar sort of history in your childhood because of the social dynamics of your childhood because you felt like a bit different and a bit like a loner is that what you're saying or is there other dynamics with parents where they no I think it's specifically with sort of the gay thing I think that's what it is.

[169] I think if you feel, and hopefully it's different now, but it's going back a bit, I'm 51 now.

[170] But if you feel like those things are just embarrassing and awkward, you're kind of, you know, it's not like you really get to, well, you're finding it out in real time about yourself, aren't you?

[171] So there's just, it becomes an uncomfortable center of everything that starts to affect so much of what happens on the surface.

[172] And there's a real experience, I think, if you're not out, which I've recognised in many friends as well, well, there's just a bit of a bubble around you because you're sort of having to maintain a kind of a sort of curated exterior.

[173] And part of that then is then what's happening underneath is uncomfortable and difficult and feels shameful.

[174] So I think that's it.

[175] I think that's where I don't remember feeling that as a kid.

[176] As I said, quiet and so on, but I don't remember feeling that as an experience.

[177] but it just sort of just kind of crept in and the more the more I sort of kind of was leaning into the magic persona thing the more the outside becomes sort of the harder and more sort of opaque this sort of exterior presentation becomes I think it goes hand in hand with a more shameful interior until in the end you just sort of go fuck that and just sort of let it all be fine was there a point and this might be a really naive question as a straight guy but was there a point where it became crystal clear to you that your sexual preference was different or was it slow sort of realisations and yeah it was kind it's sort of because you can never really climb into anyone else's head and sort of understand what their experience is it's it's sort of of um it's often difficult to really know and of course at the time i was also proper christian which uh slightly kind of messes the thing up and just slightly gets in the way of the whole thing i had a friend who went through the um some of that kind of uh living waters movement which is the kind of gay conversion this got called gay conversion therapy it was a bit more subtle than that, but nonetheless is basically that.

[178] So he was going through that.

[179] And although I didn't, I was kind of skirted it a little bit because I was his friend and, you know, it was something we were talking about a lot.

[180] So all of those things, and obviously, by the way, it doesn't work, just in case I was wondering.

[181] I mean, I went in straight.

[182] It worked for me. So, yeah, it was sort of, I don't know, I don't, there's never just a clear moment.

[183] it's just uh i think as i just got in the public eye i thought i don't want this to be some weird sort of thing that's like a secret um so uh in the end you come out of it you come out about it and then actually the uh the the the joy the reason why it's liberating at least it was for me and probably hopefully most people now is that people just don't care like this thing that you've carried around and that experience that shameful center that's there again shame is a really strong word but nonetheless it is kind of just this sort of awkward thing eventually when you sort of are open about it it's just people don't care why would they care so that's that's the lip that's why it's liberating it's not because suddenly you can you know spin around in the street with your shopping bags it's um it's just that oh no one cares about your own difficult private stuff in the best way so actually and you've done the big one like you've so now anything else after this, we'll be fine.

[184] I think that's why it's a liberating thing.

[185] I read a quote, I think it was in the telegraph, where you'd said that maybe the journalist was commentating that something as simple as mislaying your keys can trigger a whole new wave of self -hatred.

[186] God.

[187] That was me saying that, was it?

[188] Yeah, that's just fury, though, isn't it?

[189] When you can't find a sock or you can't find your keys or your pen?

[190] Self -hatred, I mean, is a strong word.

[191] I think the piece may be yeah maybe it does yeah I probably would yes I would reflect it back on myself rather than being angry at my partner anybody else who's probably lost it that's what he'd do he'd be angry that I must have put his keys somewhere because he can't find them I would just be yeah beat myself up for why I'm always losing stuff why can't I remember where I put things yeah I definitely would do that interesting I wouldn't I wouldn't I don't think it would reflect on my my own self -immy if I lost the keys or even if it did it wouldn't negatively affect I think that's just who I am that's who I am yeah I'm unorganized versus like oh I'm so unorganized I hate that about myself yeah well I don't know when I said that I said that was probably quite a while ago and I don't know if I'd necessarily be that hard on myself now plus I don't you exaggerate these things for rhetorical effect has anything changed like on a really fundamental level yeah I'm so curious about how how good we are actually changing some of these things because we say it we talk about it but as I've gotten older and older and as I've done more and more of these interviews I tend to find that the like real fundamental stuff is never healed it never goes away and I actually think that's really good news for people because there's a lot of people that are trying to sell you on this bullshit that they can take your traumas or your your insecurities to zero yeah I've never seen it happen no that's all wrong and even stoicism in a way is sort of of um a little guilty of that um even something that's talk about talking about rolling with the punches of life is still kind of suggesting that and if you get this right you won't be disturbed you know you won't experience anxiety that is all that's a little bit off really i think the nature of life is that it is it is difficult and uh not all the time but a lot of the time things really go badly and they certainly don't go as you planned and you know that you actually is you start to get older you realize your plans probably have nothing to do with how things are are turning out, but the illusion that they are is what propels you through the first half of life.

[192] So, actually, I think the project, the task, our task is a certain amount of, is sort of personal development and integrating ourselves with the parts of us that we are uncomfortable with.

[193] So again, that's the project of relating to what's difficult within ourselves.

[194] And then how we do that in life as well.

[195] how we relate to things that are difficult and tricky in life.

[196] Because the thing about it, although that experience can be very isolating, those feelings of, you know, when life lets you down or you feel you fail, they tend to be quite isolating experiences.

[197] Like shame, right?

[198] That's a very isolating thing.

[199] Whereas actually, and weirdly, I'm doing this show, showman at the moment, and this is entirely what the show's about, those isolating experiences, like they're exactly the things that join us all up.

[200] That is the human experience.

[201] How do we deal with the difficulties of life?

[202] When things are going badly and we feel like we fail, that's what we all have to find our way through.

[203] So the things that feel most isolating are the things that tend to connect us.

[204] So I don't think it's about trying to bury them under sort of, you know, some sort of forced optimism and it isn't about reaching a nirvana of a problem -free life.

[205] I think that's a really sort of terrible project because you're going to end up blaming yourself for failing.

[206] You weren't a good enough stoic or you weren't a good enough optimist or whatever.

[207] It always reminded me of the faith healers that I spent a lot of time watching.

[208] And when they do that thing of saying, throw away your pills.

[209] And if your illness returns, it's because you didn't have enough faith.

[210] Like, it's your fault.

[211] And that's no different from the, you know, the secret.

[212] cruits, you know, the law of attraction.

[213] Oh my God, fucking oh.

[214] Yeah, but it's the same thing.

[215] It's the same thing.

[216] You have to completely commit yourself, and if it doesn't work out, if the universe doesn't provide you with, it's always jewelry and money and cars, it's a bit odd, then you didn't have enough faith.

[217] It wasn't, you know, it was your own fault.

[218] So it's a perfect cycle of blame which exonerates the actual system completely and puts the blame entirely on you.

[219] So I'm, you.

[220] Yeah, I, there's a bit of an irony in the fact that people choose those books because they, they don't want responsibility, but failure puts responsibility back on them.

[221] Because I think of like the law of attract.

[222] I actually had a conversation with a girl I was dating many years ago in New York and she actually got out the cab and walked off because I said to her that I, she believed that she could visualize anything into existence.

[223] I went, so you believe that you can just think about something and then it will happen.

[224] So you could think about becoming a billionaire and it happened.

[225] She went, yes.

[226] And I was like, no, I don't agree with that.

[227] And I go, but how?

[228] She goes, you put out into the universe.

[229] and then it comes back.

[230] And what they're doing in that, to me, it seems like they're alleviating their own sense of responsibility.

[231] They're putting it up to the puppet master in the universe.

[232] But as you've described then, when that fails, the blame is ultimately on them for not doing it right.

[233] Yeah, it must be awful, as opposed to it was just a bad idea to begin with.

[234] And more helpfully, how do we live comfortably with the universe that doesn't give a fuck what our plans are?

[235] Well, why would it?

[236] It doesn't make any sense.

[237] So how do we navigate?

[238] and that there is an ancient sort of image.

[239] It's appeared in so many different forms of an X equals Y diagonal.

[240] So if you imagine a graph and you've got along one axis, you've got the X axis is the stuff you want to achieve in life, your aims and your plans, and then the other axis, the Y axis, is just life, what they used to call fortune.

[241] It's all the stuff that just gets thrown at you.

[242] If you imagine the line that we, lead in our lives.

[243] It's a sort of an X equals Y line, right?

[244] It's sort of an undulating line.

[245] So sometimes our plans are winning and we're doing great and sometimes life's throwing stuff back and we have no control over and things have gone horrible and someone's got ill or whatever it is.

[246] So there's this sort of undulating X equals Y diagonal where we're being pulled in these two different directions.

[247] That's what we live.

[248] That's just sort of reality.

[249] And the nature of the American optimistic model is that by believing in ourselves, we can, and this is an old hangover from Protestantism, this sort of work ethic, that you can, by believing in yourself, you can crank that line up so it's in line with your aims and your goals.

[250] And we just, it's a, we've completely obliterated the idea of just fortune and life from that.

[251] You know, we used to, we used to call people, unfortunate, now we call them losers, you know, so there's a, there's a lack of respect now for just the fact that life is throwing stuff back at you.

[252] So how do you, how do you navigate that?

[253] And I think actually Stoicism is a very good toolkit for, and Stoicism, as I'm sure, pretty much all of your listeners will be familiar with, but the bottom line of it is, is that, you know, the things in life, it's not the things in life that cause your problems, it's the story that you tell yourself about them, is the judgment.

[254] that you make about them, which is a very good and sensible idea that's made its way down to us over the last couple of thousand years, and then allied to that, that you take all the stuff that you have no control over outcomes, what other people do and what they think and so on.

[255] And you can just decide that that stuff is fine as it is, and you can just focus on the stuff only try and change the stuff you can actually change, which is the world of your own thoughts and your own actions.

[256] And that's where we should put our attention.

[257] And then there's interesting there is a middle ground of you know like if you're well success of any sort you know there's parts of that you're in control of and parts that you're not so it's like a best analogy I've read for it is like going into a game of tennis if you go in determined to win and then your your opponent is playing better than you you're probably going to get anxious and you're going to feel that you're failing whereas if you go in determined to play as well as you can again just to control the part you're in you're in charge of then it sort of doesn't matter if your opponents a bit better than you or they start to win you're not you're not failing you know you're and the same goes for um you know the stoics were big movers and shakers you if you want to change the world you can but you're only going to emotionally commit yourself to your intention and your actions not the outcomes which may happen a generation after you've after you've died you know that's something out of your hands i think all that's very helpful and very useful the The only thing, if you see it as a toolkit, to be lent into when it's helpful, but the, even that, if you take it as a sort of a, you know, almost like a spiritual way of life, can fall into the problem of, and therefore we shouldn't have any anxiety.

[258] Therefore, anxiety is still somehow the demon.

[259] But, you know, without anxiety, how do you know to change anything in your life?

[260] How do you know to change your job unless the current job is making you feel bad or, you know, things have to.

[261] become anxious and things have to fall away in order for us to move forward and grow.

[262] And, you know, you can't do that without embracing anxiety to an extent.

[263] As of age, I've started to realize that the kind of compass of my life is how I feel.

[264] And that's kind of what you've alluded to there, that we have this signal.

[265] Sometimes it comes in a form of anxiety.

[266] Sometimes it comes in the form of fear.

[267] But these are all, like, really useful signals.

[268] Do you resonate with what I just said there in terms of, like, feelings that our body is giving us?

[269] are the greatest signals for us to navigate versus like narratives versus like what my mum wants or I end up working in the city in like a suit and a tie because that's what society had an expectation of but I'm feeling a signal inside which is, I don't know, depression or I'm feeling, you know.

[270] I think those things are very important to listen to.

[271] I think we do live out stories very easily.

[272] We do tend to see things in terms of a narrative and that's an interestingly double -edged thing because on the one hand whether someone's written in or out of a story has become very important.

[273] Language and harm and all of those things have all got suddenly very tied up and the very notion of story has become so important taking authorship of your story and so on.

[274] But the other side of that which I live out in my job as a magician is that stories are just stories.

[275] is, you know, if a magician fools you with a trick in a way that works, you, what you're being shown is that your story that you were forming of the world isn't quite right.

[276] Like, there's something you missed, and you always feel like you've properly paid attention, you saw everything, you were taking in all the information.

[277] But it shows you that you've missed something, that your narrative of what reality is isn't the same as the world.

[278] And so the story side of things seems to be.

[279] to be part of just our makeup, but it's important not to fall in love with it too much and to realize that the nature of a story is that it's...

[280] There's stuff you're excluding.

[281] There's an image of, isn't there, of telling a story over a campfire and a clearing, and it's cozy.

[282] But then there's all the forest in the darkness with all the stuff that you're excluding from that story, and that's where the monsters live, and the nature of monsters that they come and bite you and all the stuff that we don't include in a story, whether it's the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, or whether it's a story we tell ourselves about our nation or our culture, whether it's a social thing or whether it's a private thing, the stuff that we bury and the stuff that we don't include within the narrative, because the narrative is really too simple, goes deep, like it sort of gets buried.

[283] It gets buried in our own unconscious, or it gets buried in the untold story of whatever the thing is, And that's what comes back and bites us.

[284] That's the stuff that comes to own us in our own lives and in our, you know, in our societal lives as well as the stuff that we've buried.

[285] And I think as you get older, and this is where that, those feeling signals come in, I think it becomes more and more important to pay attention to the things that we are banishing from our stories.

[286] You know, what do we, if we think about what makes us feel resentful or what we envy or, you know what are what are those things because those are the things that we're bearing somehow and I think there's a shift in the second half of life and I'm a chunk older than you but where we can disengage a bit with the the story that we've been telling of how to move forward in life that's all about a dialogue with the external world that's what we're getting our cues from people showing us what we need to be successful what we need to look or act in a certain way that denotes moving forward and progress.

[287] And we do that for the first half of life.

[288] And it is sustained a little by this optimistic illusion that the castles that we're chasing in the air that will reach if we just, you know, a lot of happiness deferring going on and a lot of, you know, focusing on the future.

[289] And then something happens around midlife where actually the project shifts to taking the cues from within rather than from the outside world.

[290] And I think then that's a good time for priorities to shift from what will give me success in the future to what is actually what might bring pleasure and satisfaction and meaning now in the in the present i think that's a useful thing to lean into towards the second half of life it was university that's um sort of sparked your interest in hypnosis right yeah yeah yeah you saw someone on campus doing martin taylor was doing a show yes it was in my freshest week and uh wow it was amazing and i i left and walked back that night with a friend and said, I'm going to learn how to do this.

[291] And my friend Nick said, oh, yeah, so am I. But I knew I meant it.

[292] I knew that.

[293] I'd never seen it before.

[294] Never come across hypnosis.

[295] I obviously had heard of it, but, and it was a good show.

[296] Like, it wasn't, you know, embarrassing people and making them look stupid.

[297] It was sort of just jaw -dropping.

[298] How did you know that you meant it?

[299] Because I've had that feeling in my life before where something just connects.

[300] Yeah.

[301] Well, I think it was, again, those boxes were being ticked, something about performing, something about control.

[302] I didn't really know it.

[303] It just felt like I want, I have to do that.

[304] It's the most amazing thing I've seen.

[305] And it was, it was appealing in ways that just weren't really, it's ways I hadn't really thought about it.

[306] I hadn't thought about performing.

[307] Hadn't, uh, but yeah, I think, I think that's what's happening, isn't it?

[308] There's something is, it's resonating unconsciously.

[309] It's something that you kind of need.

[310] And yet it was absolutely no, there was no doubt.

[311] So I, bought, borrowed, stole any books I could find, the subject you probably just learn on YouTube nowadays but it's probably a dodgy thing because you need to you need to learn it the long way around so that if you run into problems or if someone's having a weird time when you're hypnotize them you can't be like fumbling around trying to Google what to do you know you need to have the skills there and the wherewithal to to deal with it so I definitely learned the long way around yeah and then you you became, I think, from what I was reading, pretty obsessed with magic and hypnosis and to the point that you have a conversation with your parents and you tell them that you're going to...

[312] Yeah, I'm saying to my mum, I think, I'm not going to be a lawyer.

[313] I was studying law and German.

[314] I said, I'm not going to be a lawyer.

[315] I'm going to be a magician.

[316] I said, oh, fine, that sounds great.

[317] Sounds much more fun.

[318] Which actually made me stop and think, okay, hang on, probably being a bit, probably being a bit rush.

[319] What did they say?

[320] So they were okay with...

[321] Totally, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[322] That's what she said.

[323] Oh, that sounds great.

[324] Sounds much more fun.

[325] It's nice, isn't it?

[326] Actually, I wrote them a letter at the end of my first year saying, because I saw all these other law students really fretting about their exams because of what their parents were going to think if they didn't pass.

[327] And that had never occurred to me as a thing that your parents would make you feel.

[328] So I wrote them a letter thanking them for that, just for letting me always do what I want to.

[329] wanted to do.

[330] The only thing they ever put any pressure on me to do is learn how to drive and I don't drive.

[331] I still don't drive.

[332] I still don't drive.

[333] It's quite a common story I have to say that your obsession seemed to come from or at least be driven by some kind of insecurity as in like the reason why hypnosis initially resonated so much was because it was giving you some it felt like it might offer you something that you were looking for or didn't have yourself.

[334] That's the story I hear all the time.

[335] That's what obsessions are though, isn't it?

[336] Isn't that the nature of them?

[337] Aren't your own?

[338] It's just the level of obsession I saw from that day when you discovered hypnosis, like getting all the books, teaching yourself.

[339] And then even beyond university where you start working in restaurants for many, many years.

[340] How long from that first day when you saw hypnosis for the first time until let's say before the TV stuff began?

[341] How long is that sort of tenure?

[342] I think the tenure is about 10 years.

[343] Ten years?

[344] I think so.

[345] Let me think.

[346] So I graduated 94 and then by that point I was doing the odd hypnosis show for students.

[347] Oh, actually, the first TV show went out in December 2000.

[348] So I was into all.

[349] It was about 10 years, but that also included my university career.

[350] But there was a six -year period after university, by which point I was already doing it, mainly for students.

[351] when I was just then signing on or just about scraping a living doing hypnosis shows but a lot more magic I was doing magic in restaurants in Bristol and then people would book me for their parties and I wrote a book for magicians which kind of got me known within that world which that then led to being picked out for a TV show that led to me getting a phone call and my name getting passed around in that world so that's almost 10 years of practising and without any real money.

[352] When you say signing on for people that are in America.

[353] Signing on as in welfare, I guess you'd call it.

[354] Yeah, I was, I lived in my student flat I stayed in.

[355] It was quite a nice flat.

[356] I had all my books in it, my parrot, and that didn't cost me very much.

[357] And I just loved this life.

[358] I would go out dreaming up magic tricks during the day, and then I would go out and do them in the evening.

[359] And so I developed my own sort of approach to it all.

[360] and that yeah that I just remember thinking I've never had any ambition at all and I just remember thinking if I if I can take us like a cross section of my life is everything in the right place like at my I'd like to get up whenever I'd like to get up I'd like to feel I can make my own decisions about what I do from day to day and I just had a vague idea of those sorts of things that were important to me and um and if anything didn't feel right it would be easy to sort of change and that was all that was always how it was never about looking forward into the future it was never about where do I want to be it was just is this day this week sort of the life that I'd like to be living and that's never changed I suppose the difference is as you get successful you start to have people around you that are doing those other jobs for you the grown up jobs and you know I've got a manager and I've worked with producers and all that kind of thing so it's not like that doesn't have to happen somewhere along the line but it doesn't come from me. I've, um, I, I, you can feel like a kid a little bit, a bit like a child in a world of grown -ups.

[361] So I feel that sometimes, except now the grown -ups are younger than me, which is, uh, strange.

[362] Um, but also I think maybe that's a good way to feel.

[363] Maybe that's a nice way to be.

[364] If you contrast yourself from today, yeah, to the, to the, to that young man in those restaurants in Bristol doing the magic tricks.

[365] Is there a difference in your level of happiness?

[366] I think about this.

[367] I think it's about the same, but it's different.

[368] I mean, a bit like being a kid and playing on my own.

[369] Most of my 20s were kind.

[370] Well, my 20s were sort of fairly, fairly solitary as well.

[371] That's another template that settles in.

[372] So that's, again, an easy place to go back to.

[373] I love my own company.

[374] All my interests, the things I love doing out of my job, painting, writing and reading.

[375] and they're all like solitary things.

[376] I said that's a comfortable place for me. So part of me, I had more of that then, as slightly misses that, but actually that's, you know, I'm also aware it was, that was lonely sometimes.

[377] And, you know, I like being in a relationship too.

[378] So it's different, had a different feel about it.

[379] I think the freedom to just do what I wanted to do and kind of create this sort of world for myself that was kind of lovely and it's harder to do that as you grow up and you do have responsibilities and you know you're contributing to a household and you've got a partner you've got dogs and all of that it's not quite as easy so a childish part i mean would kind of quite like the idea of going back to that but not really not really i wouldn't really press a button and make it happen it's just a nice little sort of back -of -the -head dream as we probably all have maybe don't we a slight kind of fantasy thing if we'd never really live it out but it's just something nice about about that um it's almost like um i feel like you were my head it's like you know you're in bristol mining your own business enjoying the simple life and then they pulled you they ripped you out of bristol you were really successful so they put you on tv that was really successful and sometimes when people are successful they sometimes forget and i think i've done this in my life a few times kind of we forget to take the moment of pause and consider how intentional this journey and direction and direction of travel is kind of get pulled and dragged And then it ends up feeling a bit like you throw in the coal in the steam engine of the train just to keep it moving.

[380] Has there ever been a moment of pause in your life where you've gone, do you know what?

[381] I need to take some time and just think about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it because I've been successful and then I've climbed the ladder.

[382] People do that a lot in the corporate world.

[383] They become a good lawyer.

[384] Then they get promoted.

[385] Then they're a partner.

[386] And they go, fuck am I doing here.

[387] Yeah, I think we drift towards the things we're second best.

[388] It's like, you know, the great teacher that becomes a headmaster, but would have been a better teacher than that's an easy thing to do, isn't it?

[389] And I think that sometimes I think about, or it might be quite nice to act.

[390] I think I'm doing exactly that thing of sort of going from being someone who's really good at what I do now.

[391] And I just to sort of, why would I want to do it?

[392] It might be fun, but like what a strange thing.

[393] We naturally start to drift towards things that we're not as good at.

[394] I would say, when you said that, I was thinking of the early TV shows when I was sort of, which were very much a response to David Blaine's success in the state.

[395] So I'm out doing, you know, mind reading tricks and things.

[396] And I kind of felt like I'd grown out of it, but that was sort of the mode that I was caught in.

[397] And I definitely felt like I'm not really enjoying this.

[398] And that led to a shift in the type of shows I was doing.

[399] So, I mean, the last show I've done is on Netflix called Sacrifice.

[400] If people have no idea who I am, and they've listened this far.

[401] And generally what I've been doing for the last decade or so with the TV shows is putting people through these kind of Truman shows style, big social experiments, often quite life or death situations they found themselves in without realizing they're part of a show.

[402] And what that allowed me to do was not be the center of attention.

[403] And the reason for it is, actually, apart from just my own dissatisfaction with it, but just magically, if you can click your fingers and make anything happen, which is sort of what a magician.

[404] does, dramatically, that's a very unsound place to be.

[405] And this is, you know, Penn and Teller, the...

[406] Yeah, yeah, it's just something that Teller, who apart from being a beautiful magician, is a wonderful thinker, as well.

[407] He's spoken a lot about this, that it's actually a very bad drama, if you can make anything happen.

[408] What we want dramatically a hero is people that are struggling with a situation.

[409] Maybe they are trying to get to point A, but actually they end up at point B. And his thoughts and my own sort of...

[410] of sort of dissatisfaction, I guess, with that first stage in my career, led to this shift where I could be in the background, pulling the strings, but actually you're watching a real member of the public go through quite an intense drama.

[411] And that has to be more appealing than somebody going, hey, look at me, aren't I clever, which is sort of the bottom line of what most magic is.

[412] So I think that was a kind of semi -deliberate shift that came from a moment of pause.

[413] Was it quite intentional for you to take, you know, I've seen multiple documentaries you've done where you're proving that magic or the supernatural isn't real and again that's super compelling because we would expect you to be leaning into that and persuading us of the supernatural whereas some of the most compelling stuff I've watched you do whether you're confronting like a psychic that's pretending to speak to the dead or I remember that reading you did where the woman had pulled up outside of the Mercedes and the mini yeah and you had you basically what was it you you read her, not her future, you read into her life.

[414] I think it was that the psychic that I was challenging had mentioned the mini, that she drove a little red minnie and she'd been really impressed by that.

[415] But actually, I'd seen him pull up his car right parked next to her in the car park.

[416] Yeah, well, actually, I think it's the opposite.

[417] I think there's a long tradition of magicians pulling apart psychics and charlatans.

[418] And I think it's because we end up with a knowledge of how those things work.

[419] and it goes right back to Houdini and the seances and exposing the fraudulent mediums in the dark.

[420] You know, it's a long, and probably before that, but there's a long history of it.

[421] So the only thing about it is that if you're just going, no, this is fake, you're not being very entertaining.

[422] And by the nature of what those people do, it's more entertaining.

[423] So they've kind of won the game.

[424] So I've tried to avoid making, when I, I have sort of, you know, attack those areas, rather than just attack them and make it negative.

[425] I've always tried to recreate something and make it more interesting and better while at the same time saying, I'm not really doing this.

[426] So, for example, there was a, in one of the shows I did, I had an audience on stage, this was in Infamous, which was a previous stage show, and I was giving them mediumship readings, right?

[427] So I say, come up if you've lost somebody, if there's somebody that you'd want to get in touch with if you went to see a media.

[428] And it's a sceptical audience, kind of like me, right?

[429] Because they're my audiences, but...

[430] So they'd come up and sit down, and I would start to give them these readings, and I would say, you know, I'm getting a message from your auntie, Jill, is that right?

[431] Do you have an Auntie Jill that passed away?

[432] Yes.

[433] And she's saying, she's not saying anything.

[434] I'm just making this up, but she's saying that you've got, oh, you've got a little dog called Bella that she really loves.

[435] Is that right?

[436] Yes.

[437] And I'm lying to you, but she's saying...

[438] And so I would, like, pepper the...

[439] these like impossible information I was giving with reminders that I was making it up.

[440] And I just found that really, really sort of interesting and theatrically it was really interesting and much more interesting than saying, these people are fake and prove it.

[441] And if you can prove it, I'll give you a million dollars or whatever.

[442] So I've tried to find a more creative approach to that.

[443] Does some people think you are, you are supernatural in your powers?

[444] Some, well, I was going to say, actually after that, about a week into that show, I came out.

[445] There's a girl at stage door said, I wondered if you could put me, I say girl, she was in her 20s, but I wondered if you could put me in touch with my grandmother who's passed on.

[446] And I said, oh God, I'm so sorry.

[447] I hoped it was clear from the show that I can't really do it, that that stuff isn't real.

[448] And she said, no, no, no, I know you can't really do it and it's not real, but I just wondered if you could just put me in touch with her.

[449] Like, it was extraordinary.

[450] How we kind of can balance these things in our heads.

[451] So yeah, I've shown people believe.

[452] all sorts of things about me. I think the way I look at it is a bell curve.

[453] So at one end of the bell curve, it's people that think it's all fake, it's all stooges, it's all set up.

[454] And I never use stooges and that's not what it is.

[455] And at the other extreme people saying, I'm psychic and I won't admit to it, which is also not true.

[456] And then there's this main swell in the middle where people sort of get it.

[457] And that's really all you can, I think, take responsibility for, really.

[458] There's always going to be people at the far edges that will have strange and extreme reactions.

[459] And then, you know, I think there's a certain licence on stage, which is different from TV.

[460] If you're doing stuff down the barrel of a TV, if you're talking to people at home, there's a level of directness and honesty there, whereas it feels like on stage, there's a kind of theatrical quotation marks around the whole thing.

[461] So I feel like I can do things on stage, which I wouldn't do on TV.

[462] So that changes it too.

[463] It's quite an interesting line, sort of treading treading that in the very early shows very early TV shows it was very much like I am doing this for real that's what I said this and these are not tricks and then once the shows once we realised there was going to be some longevity and there were going to be more shows it was important to me just to bring it back to a place that was honest and kind of ambiguous as well and I've enjoyed that now I like leaning into the ambiguity of what I'm doing because again it means that you can do more interesting stuff with it the you know if there's a lesson in it about how we see the world how the story we tell ourselves is not what's real how we mistake that story for reality you know we mistake the limits of our own um field of vision for the for the horizons of the world you know if we if there's something in there to be said in something as childish as magic if there's some something worthwhile to be said it's much easier to say that if you're not trying to make it about yourself has anything ever stumped you in terms of the supernatural?

[464] You know, your work is predominantly based in psychology, right?

[465] So have you ever done anything and thought, how the fuck did that happen?

[466] Two things come to mind.

[467] One, I was in a restaurant in Bristol, approaching a table, which is always excruciating if people aren't interested.

[468] And I'm walking up with a deck of cards, and I sort of introduced myself.

[469] And it's two businessmen.

[470] of them says oh no no thank you so right with you and i said okay and as i walked away the other one went but queen of hearts 13 cards down and i sort of laughed and walked away and then went into a corner and counted the cards down and the 13th one down was the queen of heart no idea how he did that if you are listening please get in touch that's bugged me for 20 years and the the other thing was actually doing i did a show called miracle which is so this this is also on netflix it was a previous stage show a few stage shows ago and the second and half was healing it was like evangelical uh healing people being slain in the spirit and um had no idea if it was going to work because again very skeptical audience like not you know if you've been to these events with these big big name healers and of course people are arriving expecting it to work and they've got a certain amount of you know readiness for it which obviously helps and I didn't know if it was going to work at all but it did and again I'm sort of undercutting it like I'm I'm doing it and I'm creating these healings in inverted commas for people in the audience but at the same time I'm kind of undercutting it too but it was extraordinary I mean I remember in the first week a woman came up and she'd been paralyzed she was probably in her 40s she'd been paralyzed down one side of her body since she was four or something in floods of tears because she could move her left arm for the first time and night after night things like that sometimes as I imagine just you know some of people with a bad back that felt better, but sometimes really quite dramatic things too.

[471] And it was, although I could explain it, because I knew what I was doing, it was, what you're seeing is the psychological component of suffering, right?

[472] Like if you take an X -ray before and after us, nothing's happened, nothing's changed, but how that person is living out their affliction, how they live, their relationship to their suffering, has that's been made to change so what you're seeing is it's a mixture of two things that are going on there's adrenaline which is a natural painkiller so you make the whole experience full of adrenaline you know in the same way of a lion walked into this room and you previously stubbed your toe you'd run away and you wouldn't feel the pain of your toe right because there's a bigger threat so that's just adrenaline that's fine and then but this other thing that which is maybe kickstarted by the experience of the adrenaline, that you've, this thing that you've lived out, like presumably this woman, her arm had been fine for many years, but she hadn't, she'd just continued to live as if it wasn't.

[473] And all the stuff that you build up around pain, you know, the way people respond to you.

[474] So there's a whole network of social aspects to it, over -protecting something that doesn't need protecting anymore.

[475] You know, it's much more complicated than simply the organic cause of your pain.

[476] There's lots of other things that sustain, it and can keep it going beyond really where it's useful.

[477] So there she was having this extraordinary experience she couldn't explain when really nothing had happened beyond she was just, had been snapped out of something.

[478] That was sort of amazing and kind of wonderful.

[479] Then I started to do the thing of going, maybe I could do this, maybe I could offer this as a show of like secular healing.

[480] It'll only work on some people and you're only dealing with relatively small percentages.

[481] And I did start to think that.

[482] And of course, that's where you start to go mad.

[483] That's when you start to think you're playing God.

[484] And then, of course, people, because when you go to these events, the big name healers I've seen, Benny Hinn and others.

[485] What you don't really see when you watch those things on TV is that there are, in some of these big venues, hospital beds that are being brought in.

[486] There are people with, you know, a kid with Down syndrome that I spoke to the mum, and she'd taken her son to so many shows following them around the country.

[487] and things that just they're not going to get they're not going to get healed by those kind of dynamics so that's an uglier sort of side of that because people have become very dependent on it and I'm not going to get any help and then there's the lack of any sort of follow -up you know there's plenty of infrastructure in place if you want to donate but no infrastructure if you've been in any way adversely affected by it and you want help or if you've had a healing and now you you don't know how to sustain that or what you're supposed to do other than being told to give more money you know you know when um people discovered through your tv work that you had this skill and talent i imagine you've got lots of approaches to use it for less ethical reasons because i i mean help me get the girlfriend back help me close the deal help me rob a bank a little not um i suppose people would have to ask that wouldn't have the only i remember i've been asked by the fbi i've been asked by the police really to help I mean if it's never gone beyond that discussion because I just I mean even you know there's plenty of businesses as well but it's just it's not my world I feel like I'm an entertainer I'm also quite um introverted I don't quite have that thing of like you know yeah let me get out there and and a change the world or be I don't have the whatever that thing is that I feel like I could just apply this to what did the FBI or the police went out I don't know, because it never went beyond them saying, would you come and talk to us about something and us getting back and saying, no, it's not appropriate.

[488] So I don't know.

[489] Now I want to know.

[490] Your skill stack, when I think about the, you know, because there's lots of people that might have studied hypnosis or they might have studied magic or sleight of hand or whatever, but they didn't end up on the level you're on at the table you're at, on the shows you're on.

[491] When you think about why you got there, I understand the 10 years of the graft.

[492] And I see that in a lot of people that sit here.

[493] I see it in Chimmy Carr, leaves university, goes and does all of these like shit gigs for 20 quid for years on years and years and years and years.

[494] I see it in Lewis Capaldi, the musician who went and played in pubs in Scotland for years and years and years and just absolutely loved it and wanted to stay there.

[495] I see the tenure bit which a lot of young kids don't appreciate because we all want it now and we want it for the wrong reasons.

[496] But what else was it about you?

[497] The way your delivery, your style, that you think in hindsight made you compelling?

[498] It's a really difficult one to answer.

[499] It's difficult, even if I knew the answer would be hard to say it.

[500] I think I don't think it's that, I think it's sort of, it's not quite that intentional.

[501] I think you've probably grafted and done those things I can't speak for Jimmy and others, but probably just because you really enjoyed them in and of themselves.

[502] You probably weren't thinking, I don't do this, if I get ahead, I can secure this for myself.

[503] Probably.

[504] And if that is the case, if you are, just doing it because you love it and that feels like in and of itself what you're doing and there's no particular need for a plan beyond that then you'll keep at it you'll get very you'll get very good at it if if that's if that feels like all you need in the moment anyway why then why wouldn't you you know love it and put your all your passion into it and get very good at it so that helped um uh and then when things did sort of take off a bit my manager also had a similar ethos of just sort of slow burn, slow burn.

[505] There was never any sense of me, you know, being thrown at a public or any sort of overnight success or anything like that.

[506] It was a very deliberate thing of just slowly kind of letting it get out there.

[507] And so that was helpful.

[508] I think as I've, I had a good team around me. It's not like a one, not really a one man thing.

[509] There's always, although I had had my own experience for those 10 years of doing it on my own, Once I got into the TV, there was like a little group of us, which I'm sure is fairly common.

[510] And then I think what does help is letting it grow up with me as I've got older.

[511] I've just let the thing develop with me. Like I don't really know what job to, you know, you asked me before we started, like how I'd refer to myself.

[512] I never really know.

[513] I mean, mentalist, I think technically is what I am.

[514] But I mean, I remember a couple of years ago.

[515] I had the book on happiness come out, which is essentially a book of Greek philosophy, come out the same month as a ghost train open at Thorpe Park and I do remember thinking I don't know what that is I don't know what job that is that allows for those two things it certainly isn't mentalism so so yeah just allowing allowing the thing to grow up with me and in terms of like you know occasionally you know people talk about the brand and so on it's it's a very helpful thing I think just let the thing just be you and not particularly be driven by the limitations of what when I first started I remember reading I used to go on magic discussion forums and so on to see what magicians were saying about me and there was a lot of like oh this isn't even mentalism like there's a certain type of magic called mentalism and I wasn't quite doing that I was doing stuff that wasn't and they would see that as a real sort of negative and I was thought that's interesting that that would bother anybody a who knows what the word even means who cares and be that that would, that I wasn't somehow sticking within that.

[516] So, and that's another thing about playing on your own, isn't it?

[517] And you, you, or being, if you feel like an outsider as a kid, I think as you get older, you value that.

[518] That becomes like a bit of a superpower.

[519] You hang on to that feeling of being an outsider and you kind of use that.

[520] So that's always helped me. And I've just followed my nose for what feels fun and interesting.

[521] and worthwhile.

[522] And as I've got older, I've let those things grow with me. And I find a lot of life much more interesting than magic.

[523] Magic's quite a childish thing, really.

[524] So it means that the stuff I find more interesting about life I can bring into magic.

[525] You know, I think if you've got both feet in your craft or your art form or whatever, as in if the thing feels to you so huge and expansive and all that you know, you're sort of a bit overwhelmed.

[526] by it.

[527] You can't move it anywhere.

[528] If you've got one foot in that thing and your other foot in the rest of life, at least you've got some leverage then to take this thing that you do somewhere interesting.

[529] So maybe that's helped as well.

[530] I see that in your shows.

[531] I see how your other passions are riddled throughout the show.

[532] I remember watching a show in New York, which was just astounding.

[533] It's funny because I think of myself as a smart person.

[534] I think I'll figure this out.

[535] He won't be able to make me look the other way or he won't be able to control my narrative.

[536] He won't be able to get me. And every single time, I've been to your show.

[537] in London, New York, they're all just, I leave in silence.

[538] And how the fuck, do you?

[539] Yeah, like, because you're right, that like misdirection where you've got me thinking this thing.

[540] Yeah.

[541] And then I go, what the hell?

[542] Like, it's this constant, like, disappointment with myself that I'm not as smart as I think I'm.

[543] Oh, that's so nice.

[544] It's always like, what can I, there's, you know, 2 ,000 people trapped in a room with me. What can I, what can I do with them?

[545] It's always a, it's a lovely feeling to start with.

[546] And that, the section on, when you have the painting.

[547] I don't want to give anything away.

[548] The painting.

[549] Is this in the show that you saw on New York?

[550] I believe it was, New York.

[551] I've seen, I've been to two, London and New York, one with my family in London, which was many years ago, but probably I'd say four or five, maybe five years ago.

[552] Yeah.

[553] And then the one in New York, I think, was it, it wasn't pre -pandemic.

[554] It couldn't have been.

[555] Yeah, it was just before the pandemic.

[556] It must have been, yeah, because I'm painting a picture that someone comes up and thinks of a famous person and I start to do a painting and then it's upside down and I flip it around at the end.

[557] Is that what you're thinking of?

[558] Yes.

[559] Yeah.

[560] And the thing that I think stuns me the most is how unbelievable you are as a painter.

[561] Thank you very much.

[562] Something to fall back on.

[563] And the fact you could do that upside down.

[564] You can paint such an incredible image upside down is also stunning.

[565] But that clearly is describing what you've described there, where you've pulled in a love of painting.

[566] Yeah.

[567] I think it's, yeah, I think all that's really, otherwise what's left, you know, just, it's just, hey, look at me, aren't I clever?

[568] And that's just not, you know, that might be interesting for audiences for a little bit, maybe once.

[569] And then that's, that's kind of it.

[570] I bring what I can to it and I just make I make sure the shows are about something else.

[571] You know, showman is about how the things in life that are difficult are actually the very things that we share, which weirdly was written just before, it was all due to go out before lockdown started and it was going to go out the first week of lockdown and was a show about how the things in life that isolate us are actually the things that we all tend to have in common, which then gets played out literally for two years during lockdown.

[572] So I've always tried to make them about something else, something of value.

[573] And I don't think, I love magic, obviously, but I don't think in and of itself it has tremendous value.

[574] It was a childish way of impressing people.

[575] So it's what can you bring to it that will give it value.

[576] Then I think, then you're into a much more interesting, worthwhile area.

[577] In your books about happiness, happy and a little half.

[578] happier.

[579] One of the things that surprises a lot of people is that you're not a fan of goal setting.

[580] And having spoken to you now, I can kind of understand because you have a much more today, this week, do my best approach to life.

[581] But what's wrong with goal setting in your point of view?

[582] I don't know.

[583] There's anything wrong with goal setting for short -term goals.

[584] So obviously, you know, can be very useful.

[585] It's the long -term stuff.

[586] I think we just get a bit hung up on it as a way of, as a way of life.

[587] You know, a friend of mine has a bit of a, always been a workaholic and he certainly by his own account when he was younger was made to feel that kind of needed to achieve stuff in order to feel valued you know which obviously is what most workaholics will say so he decided he was going to build up a company and sell it and become a multi -millionaire and that was sort of the goal and then did spend and all the time that I knew him he was building up a company and sold it relatively young and had a huge amount of money and then she didn't know what to do with his life it was miserable um and actually found himself going to a support group with a bunch of similar millionaires that had all made the same mistake and he'd sort of missed the fact that actually it was the it was the building up of the company that was is what gave him meaning in his life that was that was that was important and it's that old thing isn't it of you know the you know the arrival at the end of the journey is just, it might just be taking your coat off and putting your bag down.

[588] That might be all it is.

[589] It's not necessarily the destination.

[590] You know, it's the, you know, it's the old thing, isn't it, of the journey being what was important.

[591] But it was certainly, he realized that.

[592] And that really changed his life, actually, realizing what he thought was going to be important, wasn't important.

[593] Plus, how do we know what's going to make us happy that so many years before?

[594] You know, we're so terrible at gauging that.

[595] We lose flexibility, depending how we set those goals but we become too rigid in them and it's like playing a game of chess Schopenhauer talks about this that was a really good analogy that it's like starting a game of chess deciding how you're going to play and the strategy you're going to use and how you're going to maneuver from the start there is this other thing playing which is you know life fortune stuff that's going to get thrown back at you so how can you decide those things why do we want goals do you think it gives us a sense of certainty well we need it's It's about moving forward, isn't it?

[596] It's important because we need to navigate through life.

[597] And in the first half of life, I think it's really important.

[598] If you didn't have that optimistic sense that you can chase the castle in the air and somehow get it just by setting those goals, I think life would be very difficult.

[599] I think actually it's important.

[600] I'm sure it has evolutionary value.

[601] I think like it's part of our impetus.

[602] So it's not a bad thing, really.

[603] but like all those things we just need to check it and just see its limitations I think a story I see the goals that I had as a story that gave my life meaning when I was younger the meaning was kind of misunderstood it was I thought if I got the Lamborghini then I'd be happy and important and worthy and my shame would be alleviated but as I as that failed me I realized that I was going to have to set about pursuing something else.

[604] Well, those are the two problems.

[605] You either get the goal.

[606] You succeed in it and then what?

[607] Or you don't and you've failed.

[608] I mean, you're sort of...

[609] And the very thing that's giving you pleasure, the very thing that's giving your life meaning, which is moving towards, you know, building up the company or whatever it is, you're doing yourself out of.

[610] You're purposely and intentionally moving to the point where you can remove that meaning from your life.

[611] Have you developed any coping mechanisms for adversity chapter three in your book a book of secrets is about the role friction has the relationship it has with with happiness and we've talked a few times about adversity but is there any any sort of tools that you've learned that you might be able to impart that have helped you to deal with when life throws shit at you well the big stoic thing of how can this thing be fine and it's not i don't exactly put it in that language but that's the language i found how could this thing be fine.

[612] So first of all, is what's happened?

[613] Which side of the line is it?

[614] Is it within my control?

[615] Is it my thoughts and actions?

[616] Or is it out of my control?

[617] Is it something out in the world?

[618] Of course, it's always, the latter, it's always something out in the world.

[619] In which case, how could it be fine?

[620] How could it, how could it be okay that this thing is like that?

[621] And not just to go, oh, it's fine, it's fine.

[622] It's not just about saying it, but to actually let that thought sort of, you know, drip into the soul.

[623] I find that very helpful.

[624] That's also partly just, my personality.

[625] My partner's has a much more sort of anxious personality than I have.

[626] And that stuff doesn't help him at all.

[627] But it certainly helps me. Another thing, there's a great book by David Destino called Emotional Success.

[628] And I thought it was great.

[629] He was talking about motivation and how a lot of our tools for motivation are very sort of top down in the sense that, you know, well, if you do this for 10 ,000 hours or you put in an hour, a day for a whatever, like a lot of kind of work to change one habit.

[630] And he's talking about a bottom -up approach of there are certain emotions that if you get them into place, they naturally create a more motivational state.

[631] And he's a psychologist, and when he talks about motivation, the way he's tested this, he's talking about where you value your future self and what your future self needs more than what you need in the moment, right?

[632] So if you take the example of, are you going to study for your exam or are you going to go out and party?

[633] Well, the person that is going to not party and study for the exam is valuing the needs of that future self that's done well in the exam more than the current self that sat there and would like to go out, right?

[634] So he's taking that as the sort of the world of motivation we're talking.

[635] So he sets up various experiments to see what can you do to maximize people's, you know, the value that they place on that future self.

[636] And the three emotions again and again, which help, compassion, gratitude, and having the right sort of pride about what you do, a good pride for the stuff that you do well.

[637] Not the bad sort of pride where you go, well, I'm good at this, therefore I'm great at everything, but just having a good sort of comfortable pride in the stuff that you do well.

[638] So he would, you know, experiments would be, something happens outside the room before the person comes in to do the experiment that makes them feel grateful about something and then they come in and they have to do a task that's impossible, but how long do they spend trying to do it and they'll spend 40 % longer than somebody that wasn't primed to feel grateful before they came in.

[639] And the gratitude has nothing to do with the experiment.

[640] It's a seemingly completely independent thing.

[641] Something happens that makes you feel compassion.

[642] And then you come in and you have to do some task and you do it better or for longer.

[643] or whatever these sort of skills are that the motivated person has more of.

[644] One of the questions was how many, it's always dollars, but how many dollars, like if you could have $100 a year from now or X amount now, what would that X amount be that would balance it out?

[645] And it's normally $17?

[646] Like it really makes no fiscal sense at all, but most people will say, okay, I'll take $17 now rather than $100 a year from now.

[647] That seems to be the number that people go for.

[648] But if you're primed to feel grateful, if you're asked the same question when you're in a state of gratitude for something, again, totally unrelated, it goes up to $31.

[649] That was a great sort of by -the -by finding when they did the experiment.

[650] It averaged out of 31.

[651] In other words, people were valuing the future needs more than the needs now, if that makes sense.

[652] It could actually be shown with something as simple as that gone.

[653] Well, I read a bit, Chapter 12 of your book, was on exactly that, and I actually said before you arrived, I sent it to my friends.

[654] I sent that one paragraph in your book about that instant gratification, delayed gratification.

[655] Because when I say it makes sense, it makes absolutely no sense.

[656] In a sense of like, I can't understand how gratitude, how making someone feel grateful with a completely unrelated incident, would make them choose to have more money, well, we'll make them delay their gratification in life as relates to money.

[657] Exactly.

[658] And I think the reason why there's no kind of rational link, because it's sort of, it's like an emotional basis.

[659] He's talking about an emotional heart that then kind of spirals upwards.

[660] Because if you find yourself acting more compassionately, which say just sometimes happens anyway, right?

[661] You might just be feeling compassion.

[662] You might be feeling very grateful to somebody.

[663] That then affects that person's behavior and then that feeds back and affects yours.

[664] And there's a certain kind of upward spiral thing that happens that definitely puts us in, I think, a more, just a better kind of state than, say, when we're feeling the opposite of those things, feeling hateful and resentful.

[665] So I do get it.

[666] Sorry, go on.

[667] Listen, does that mean that people that are lower in gratitude are more short -termist in their decision -making?

[668] They probably binge foods that they probably shouldn't have.

[669] They probably make other kind of reckless decisions they probably shouldn't make because of their own state of emotions and gratefulness and compassion.

[670] Perhaps.

[671] I mean, it sounds like you'd have to ask.

[672] I don't know.

[673] I don't think he says that in this book.

[674] But I can certainly imagine that, again, say if you're going through your life feeling generally resentful, I can't imagine that person being very motivated.

[675] It's so interesting.

[676] It answers actually a lot of questions that I've had with, like, friends of mine where I've wondered why they make such short -termist decisions.

[677] But I think there's an emotional question that I should really be asking, which is, like, how do you feel?

[678] And we don't often pause to ask that.

[679] We kind of assume that their character is they are lazy or just stupid at, like bad at decisions.

[680] whereas really like go to work on the emotions and you can change that which is it's an it's a I thought it was a very yeah very compelling way around of looking at it rather than the normal top down approach we come across love uh -huh you described yourself as a bit of a introvert and someone that likes their own company yeah um sounds a little bit like me what's your journey been like with understanding love and then at 35 you came out um What's that journey been like?

[681] Well, I've had two long relationships and then a few little bits in between.

[682] And I think there's definitely a lot of learning in the first one that I think I've now brought to the second one.

[683] Of course, it's what we do.

[684] It's next you have another relationship.

[685] You bring all those lessons that you can't change them when you're in one, but you get to start afresh the next time.

[686] We're quite different as well.

[687] It's not like we're not similar people at all.

[688] I have that sort of a bit of emotional detachment than I can easily go to.

[689] He is very engaged.

[690] And as people that little on the anxious side tend to be very sort of hypervigilant about stuff.

[691] So, you know, packing to come to London to do this show is two very, very different worlds always leads to argument.

[692] I'm kind of travel light and his, no, no, but we might need this, we might need this, bags and bags, bags, bags.

[693] So we see each other sometimes, you know, as caricatures of ourselves because we're quite different in those ways.

[694] My kind of stoic whatever will seem to him just sometimes is to be laziness or not really not engaging with something, not that thing, not being, not taking it seriously.

[695] And for me, his, his, what I see is, anxiety or impatience to him is a strong sense of justice.

[696] He has a real strong sense of justice.

[697] Something's not right.

[698] He'll want to go and sort that thing out and fix it.

[699] And I think love for me is allowing that other person to be another person.

[700] We probably start off our relationships, just projecting everything we need onto a person.

[701] And we barely do them the service of allowing them to exist.

[702] as an independent creature.

[703] We just want them to be the thing that we want them to be.

[704] And I think if relationships are going to have any longevity at some point that has to shift into actually this person is a mystery and I might spend the rest of my life trying to get to know this person.

[705] I think that's okay and I think that's also the same within ourselves in the parts of ourselves that we're alienated from.

[706] Again, the things that we just put outside of the story that sense of what the other is of the great mystery it's there in magic it's there in within ourselves the sides of us that you know we need to live more comfortably with and in our relationships as well here is a great mystery that we sit down with every day and have breakfast with and talk to and misunderstand and disappoint and occasionally delies at each other and it's you know it's kind of wonderful and sometimes it's hard work and I think seeing your partner as somebody you could spend a lifetime getting to know and as a source of wonder and mystery I think is a very helpful thing One of the messages that I took from that is about expectations and being really conscious that you keep your expectations in check because when you don't, frustration and unhappiness might prevail and I think about this a lot with my partner who's the complete opposite.

[707] I consider myself to be like very logical.

[708] I need to understand everything.

[709] I'm very maybe scientific in my viewpoint.

[710] Whatever the opposite of that is, she is.

[711] And so you can find yourself in conversations where the basis of reality you're conversating from is completely different.

[712] Yeah.

[713] She will believe that a rock has energy and that.

[714] And I will obviously not believe that.

[715] But we're completely opposites.

[716] But that's also why it works because there's not an expectation that we become the other person.

[717] She will tell me something.

[718] she knows I don't believe and at the end of her saying it she will not wait for me to nod and agree yeah because she knows I doesn't believe and that's fine yeah yeah and vice versa and it's that's what when you're saying except that we're two different people yeah actually being able to do that and her not trying to change me into like a spiritual whatever me not trying to turn her into a scientist yes allows for the upside of that difference which is like I can marvel at the world she lives in and go oh that's interesting I'm trying that you know what I mean and also I think a big allied to that is the thing of not which is such a guy thing to do isn't it is not fixing yeah not um most of our frustrations come from the fact we just haven't really been heard or seen or understood during the day so we've been bashing our heads against some wall we come home and hers yeah exactly exactly so we they come home and then just offload this stuff and when because i i know i do it when my partner does this to me but he sort of offloads all this frustration.

[719] And I'm sure you do it too.

[720] It sounds like you do.

[721] It's to go into this mode where we're saying, well, it's okay.

[722] It's probably just this.

[723] And why don't we think about it in this different way?

[724] And we're just doing exactly the same thing they've had all day.

[725] We're just not hearing.

[726] But it's just not an intuitive thing.

[727] It's such an easy mode to go into.

[728] Darren, are you happy?

[729] That was the name of your book?

[730] I think so.

[731] Yeah.

[732] I think as I've got old.

[733] the happiness is it was easy to say I remember being asked that when I was single for a while by Hugh Grant of all people we were sat opposite each other at dinner and talking about happiness maybe I was writing the book at the time I don't know and he said are you are you happy though and it was he was said it in a sort of a mood of like no one's really no one's really happy are they and maybe just the way he asked it but I said yes and said it very confidently and felt it very confidently.

[734] And I think he didn't know what to make of that.

[735] Or maybe he just didn't believe it.

[736] And now when you ask, I still feel it's yes, but I think things are more complicated.

[737] I think there's more complicated in relationships.

[738] I've got older.

[739] I'm 51.

[740] I think that's a good sort of, you know, I said things, things just change.

[741] The currents of life shift a little bit.

[742] So I am, but I, I think it's I don't think it's about happiness first of all I think it's about meaning and it's about you know things in life that are bigger than you and how you throw yourselves into those things which is what gives religion its meaning you know that need for transcendence or finding the thing that's bigger than you we all need it somewhere because if you don't have meaning in your life that's when you have problems not really happiness is sort of a very difficult thing to pin down and we can be unhappy but it's when we feel meaningless that it's that things get bad um it's a bit of a shit question isn't it are you happy in many respects yeah it sort of is and it's also you know what is it you know they used to mean the story of a life it was something you couldn't say about anybody until they were dying and look back over their whole life you know it's meant our relationship with god we weren't even supposed to be happy on this earth because of uh you know because it was something that we could only have through union with with god it's meant so many things over ages, but now it does just sort of mean a mood, which is, it makes it sort of a difficult one to answer.

[743] But I think, I think life is, life is good.

[744] It's just interesting and sometimes difficult, but in a ultimately good way.

[745] I think life is full of shit questions.

[746] And in some respects, it's like a form of misdirection.

[747] The fact that I, we never pause to reflect if questions are actually valid.

[748] Because if I'd said, what number is fork?

[749] you mean you would say that's not a valid question but because are you happy or the questions like have you found your passion there's an assumption in there that there's one of them there's one passion you have to go searching for it all loaded into the question and nobody nobody when you ask those questions pauses to think of whether the question's valid and then the the frustration we encounter when we can't properly fit into a invalid question I see I see that causing so many young people so much pain because culture pops up these like questions you've got to is it love?

[750] well I love peanut butter is this person right for me is another is another really unhelpful but is it love I mean it alludes to a yes or no answer and then I have to know that your definition of love what you mean by that because as I was saying I love peanut butter I love my dog I love my mum and it's all very unhelpful like this is why I love going back to what you said at the start like how do you feel a nice open question which allows for a bit more maneuvering and I think people are tormented by these invalid questions yeah your show there's nothing like it that exists in the event space, really on TV.

[751] I mean, I prefer seeing it in person because cameras can create certain dimensions.

[752] But seeing it in person just bends the mind because it makes almost anything seem possible in life.

[753] I'm talking about sales and ambition and creativity and imagination.

[754] If that's possible, then anything can become possible.

[755] And I think that's a cause of great inspiration.

[756] So I would just employ anyone that's listening to this.

[757] if you're looking for a once in a lifetime, very unique experience that you can't get anywhere else, they've got to go and see the show.

[758] They've got, and I really mean that.

[759] I'm not just saying, you didn't tell me to say this.

[760] I really mean that.

[761] You'll never know.

[762] But thank you.

[763] But I really, really mean that.

[764] There's nothing like it.

[765] So great date idea, great family idea.

[766] So I'm definitely going to come.

[767] What can I expect that's different from the other shows that I've been to?

[768] Well, it is, it's got a real heart to it, this one.

[769] You get all the feels as.

[770] Some people say.

[771] It's also got, I mean, it's got the best, if this is all right to say, the best reviews of anything I've ever done in 20 odd years, which is nice to know because it is such a personal show.

[772] So that's a lovely thing that it's been received so well.

[773] I do swear the audience to secrecy.

[774] So it's hard to go into details.

[775] Other than, yeah, it is about the things that connect us as people and how the difficult things in life are the things that try.

[776] join us up.

[777] It's also a show based on audience participation, like they all are.

[778] And I should say I would hate the idea of being dragged up on stage.

[779] So I throw out frisbee's to choose people, which means it's the easiest thing to hand to the person next to you if you, you know, if it lands on your lap and you don't want to get involved.

[780] So there's no pressure to get involved at all.

[781] But it is a big show of audience participation.

[782] And it's, it's more than people expect, I hope.

[783] We always try and make the show properly over -deliver, give you more than you thought it would.

[784] I'm so excited.

[785] I genuinely, I can't wait.

[786] Really, really excited.

[787] Thank you so much for your time.

[788] We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest and they don't know who they're leaving it the question for.

[789] I get to see it when I open the book.

[790] So excuse me if I take a while to read the handwriting.

[791] Oh, this is for me, right?

[792] Yes, great.

[793] Oh, God.

[794] Okay.

[795] Top or bottom.

[796] Imagine.

[797] Imagine if that was the question.

[798] If you could only speak with, call, see, touch for people.

[799] for the next four years, who would they be?

[800] I feel this is quite a boring answer, but it's honest, so my mom, my partner, probably my two really good friends, Sharkey and Stephen.

[801] I'd have to include Jenny in there somewhere, so maybe they could alternate weekends or something.

[802] Yeah, friendship's really meaning a lot to me now as I get older, not old, but, you know, getting older.

[803] Really, I think it happens, something on your 50th birthday or something, suddenly your friendships really mean a huge amount to you.

[804] And they did it before?

[805] They always did, but just not in such a conscious.

[806] What changed?

[807] I don't know.

[808] It's just a real, real sentimental, like, valuing of them.

[809] Nostalgia as well, like, really, I just find myself just those kind of, yeah, sentimental sort of leanings.

[810] And my friends just suddenly, they've obviously always meant lots to me because they've been my friends, but suddenly even more so.

[811] I love meeting up with people I haven't seen for years now.

[812] I love doing that much more than I used to.

[813] So yeah, that's it.

[814] Mum, partner and a couple of really good friends.

[815] That doesn't include my dog's.

[816] I forgot I didn't forget I had two dogs, but I have a clear favourite, which is unfortunate for the other one.

[817] I was only thinking of doodle and I forgot about humbug.

[818] It's okay.

[819] It said people.

[820] Yeah.

[821] So sorry, that's not a very clear answer but a lovely question.

[822] Thank you so much for your time.

[823] Thank you for the inspiration.

[824] Thank you for coming and doing this.

[825] You're someone that I've been honestly quite obsessed with since for the last 10 years watching on TV, watching on Channel 4, coming to your shows and stuff.

[826] So it feels like a real honor to get to speak with you.

[827] And as I said, I read your book in the jungle.

[828] It was very much the basis of inspiration.

[829] In the jungle?

[830] You didn't say that.

[831] Yeah.

[832] So I took it, took a brief, I took a suitcase out to the jungle and I wanted books on happiness and yours was on the shelf.

[833] So I took it.

[834] Was it that one or was it happy?

[835] It was the other one.

[836] Yeah.

[837] And I'll be honest, I, this sounds like it really, because I bought it, not knowing it was you, interestingly.

[838] Yeah, yeah.

[839] And then when I saw, I got to the jungle and I saw the name on it, I couldn't, I had to Google to check it was you because I couldn't believe you'd written a book on happiness.

[840] You get this a lot, don't you?

[841] Yeah, I do.

[842] A while back, I got a, the only time I've ever dropped my own name trying to get a restaurant table in Soho.

[843] And I did, and I got the table suddenly.

[844] I pulled that off, went in.

[845] and then at the end of the meal, the waiter said, oh, would you mind signing one of your books?

[846] I said, yeah, of course.

[847] And he came back with angels and demons.

[848] Oh, fuck.

[849] It's fantastic.

[850] Thank you so much, Dan.

[851] Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

[852] What a joy, thank you.