Even though it’s dark sometimes or it’s scary for the people involved, ultimately I always make sure they’re exhilarated by it. It’s genuinely a real… - Derren Brown

Hello and welcome to Mind Control Night. Three hours of watching my smug balding head so make sure you have plenty of night time snacks, depilatory cream and really good drugs to hand.

To forgive purely because it is nicer to forgive, and to do so when it’s a tough call; to try to speak only kindly of those we know because it is preferable to do so; to enjoy the successes of others because living thus is more enjoyable than the stress of living resentfully: such kind things make us better, lovlier people. And to try to live this way for its own merits, without invoking a supernatural reason for doing so, is to celebrate our humanity and to give kindness back its teeth.

I remember reading about a story about a guy – and this was in England, and no more than a couple of years ago. He’d gone to see a psychic, and was told there was a curse on his family, and in order to release the curse, he had to bring with him the following week £5,000 and burn it... if he didn’t do that, either he or his son would die. The scam is quite a common one – the money is put in an envelope, and apparently burnt, but of course the ‘psychic’ secretly switches the envelope and burns an envelope full of newspaper. What happened was the guy went away, and he knew he couldn’t raise £5000, but didn’t want his son to die; so he killed himself.