Remember how you used to try and make kids turn round at school by staring at the back of their heads? And how they used to go home early crying with… - Derren Brown

There is no hypnotic phenomenon, no matter how remarkable it may appear, which cannot be re-created outside of a hypnotic state through such ordinary devices such as suggestion, hype and the exercise of charisma.

I have retained a belief that it is the popular sporty kids at school who grow up to have the least interesting lives, and the unhappy young souls who develop into the most extraordinary adults. Whoever heard of a creative genius being understood as a child and well loved by his class mates? Who like to imagine an artist who emerged into adulthood content with his lot? And, conversely, how satisfying to hear that almost without exception, the untroubled, popular kids at school have ended up blandly as accountants, solicitors or ‘in IT’. Hold on, misfits, your day will come.

[one part of the show is] a reenactment of a powerful experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963 to look at how normal people can commit atrocious acts, simply because they’re following orders. Milgram’s parents were Jewish refugees in World War II and his pioneering work speaks volumes about the nature of responsibility.