Derren Brown: The Events

How To Control The Nation

Derren Brown: The Events is a show on Channel 4 consisting of 4 one-hour specials. The first was a controversial one about how to win the lottery - controversial because some weren't very happy with the explanation of how he did it. To be fair, it'd be a bit dull if he'd said exactly how he'd done it and he wouldn't have featured in the newspapers all week. But we don't really care about the lottery - it's week 2 when things turned much more interesting:

Derren Brown attempted to take over the country...with chairs!

The 'event' this week was to stick the British public to their chairs. This I experienced once before in a disturbing glue-related incident back in '98, of which everyone involved swore never to speak of again. Derren took a different approach and attempted to do the sticking with a subliminal video.

The aim of this show was obvious. Anyone who has seen Derren's work in the past will know that he is a witch (if you've read his book then there is a small chance that you might be of the opinion that he's not a witch and just very clever...or maybe a very clever witch). If you're after more evidence, just look at this scary photo:

I am fairly sure that once Derren had the country glued down then he and his witchy coven planned to fly down on their broomsticks and take over the country. This is possibly no bad thing, as with a wave of his hand and a slight nod of his head he'd have everyone convinced the recession was over so we could all stop worrying and spent our time on the more important task of worshipping him.

Sadly for Derren and his witches, his plan failed in the Johnson house and I didn't stick. One lone crusader against the evil witch army!

Then I went on Twitter and found out that a load of people also resisted and I felt slightly less special.

Personally, I have my doubts as to how much of the 'sticking' was due to the actual swirly video that was shown and how much was due to Derren's preamble before it. From what I remember from his book, you need to say 'as you' a lot when convincing people to do things, and this he did indeed do. I did attempt a similar trick on my son once to try and get him to stay in bed and go to sleep, but I can't say that I was very successful.

Anyway: Me 1, Witches 0. Go me!

- Damian, September 09

Some links for people who feel this article doesn't really cover what Derren did at all and want to find out more:

Derren's Blog: Were you stuck to your chair? Did you Stick?

Channel 4 website: How to Control the Nation.

Wikipedia: Derren Brown: The Events.

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