There's no mathematical way to 'predict' lottery numbers - every outcome is as probable as another. Tis a trick pure and simple, whether involving camera trickery or otherwise. What I like about Brown is the fact that he shows how he does some of his tricks. I suspect a well-trained 'magician' could work out how he does a lot, but he also does have an incredible memory and ability to influence people in surprising ways. I just like watching stuff like that for some reason.

If no one believes he would be stupid enough, then that just makes it even more likely that he;d get away it.

The subliminal messages one that he's doing on Friday to stick us all to our chairs will be interesting viewing, I'm obviously going to Sky+ it as i'll be at Headingley till late glued to the stand!!!

If he does this do you think he'll also make us not remember whats happened or that we were ever stuck to the chair??

Big fan of Derrens but the programme on friday was poor, padded for 40mins with his usual tricks then a lame explanation of "a few people locked in a room picked the numbers".

The 3rd scenario that he spent 20 seconds explaining sounded the most believable but would he even chance giving himself up? and what about the lotto adjudicator does he not check the balls just before the draw?

But if it was rigged then he could have shown his "prediction" before hand and it would have been 10 times as impressive.

But in the end he did it, maybe he shouldn’t have bothered with the programme on friday and just left it with the live wednesday prediction.

Sorry, not posted until now because I was not able to watch the show until last night, having been at the game on Friday.

I was a little disappointed with the show itself but still thought it was an 'ok' watch.

Of course the show was in itself and act of showmanship and deception deigned to sow seeds of doubt in your mind as it went on!

I have a degree in Civil Engineering and I am aware of the Wisdom of Crowds Theory because it has been applied to engineering disasters, most notably the Columbia shuttle disaster were many of the less senior engineers were kept out of many areas of shuttle development and as such the lack of redundancy in the critical yet simple 'o' ring problem went unnoticed. As I understand it though, it is very much an economists theory and not a mathematicians, and the theory has recently been popularised by economists. It has also been applied to the the USA's failure to 'spot' the 9/11 disaster and lately been acknowledged for the reason the UK intelligence community did spot the airline plotter bombers in time. In summary it is about collective perception and not collective mathematics... as such I think that whole theory of that been the answer is rubbish (IMO).

The coin trick flipping trick he did however might have been based on the Monty Hall law of variable change (if you saw the film 21, there was the basic explanation in the film) and as such, a pure mathematical based solution.

So, my conclusion is that he fixed the machine as he said at the end!!!

I do remember that in the early days of the lottery a physicist did postulate that very, very small differences in the weight of the lottery balls just naturally present as part of the manufacturing of the balls, would possibly lead to some balls being 'picked' by the machine more often than others. Basically the balls that were slightly heavier, albeit by a minuscule amount, would come out more often. I also think that his theory lead to the lottery introducing more machines and more sets of balls to eliminate even the potential for that to be true!

So a machine with 6 heavier balls, as Derren said he might have done, would probably work if they were significantly yet relatively heavier.

It would also explain why he did not include the bonus ball... as he could never predict the order!

I don't understand that bit, He didn't predict the order?

Sorry, did not make that very clear. Yes, he was unable to predict the order. As such if he was going to predict the bonus ball as well he would have HAD to have predicted the order, because he would have needed seven 'weighted' balls not six and then how do you make sure the ball you have picked to be the bonus ball come out last! You can't!

He could have said that these 7 balls would be picked and one of them would be the bonus ball, but that would have looked less impressive.

Get you now

Which in itself adds weight (pardon the pun) to the 3rd explanation of fixing the draw.

Personally I think it was a magic trick dressed up to appear something else and yes I still believe David Copperfield can fly.

time delays at the tv relay stations. He has no control over the BBC's time delay but he could well do over channel 4's.


"I can't show you whats on the bbc now...... waffle waffle waffle.... sync channel 4's signal with bbc 1's... yes ok I can now show you whats on BBC1"

Absolutely, and also I still think that he would have liked to have shown the numbers before not after the draw supposedly (just keeping my options open here) took place. It still bugs me that he used the words, can't show the numbers until after the draw as the BBC have the legal right to be first to broadcast the lottery result! He chooses his words very, very carefully (although he often appears not to) and this careful choice of words and suggestion is how many of his tricks are performed, so using the word result, instead of prediction is interesting. It might be balls (no pun again) but still interesting.

I do think it was either option 3 of fixing the balls in the machine, some very simple delay issue (does live mean live etc) or as you say some other trick we have not thought of... however, I do not think it was a camera trick or a technology based trick.

So option 3 is still the favourite for me.

I enjoy watching Derren Brown but i did find this show rather boring. I did find it funny that he was telling people you can predict the lottery if you don't plan on actually taking part in the lottery.

I knew about the coin trick before the show. Though if i recall some sequences offer you a greater chance of winning than others.

The seat one sounds interesting this friday, and peep show is back!

Apparently, this has been ruled out on a few TV industry type boards and they were saying that they expected the delay to be slightly longer (about a second) than it was and were speculating that the BBC gave C4 a direct feed and C4 were not picking it up of the normal digital signal like we all do at home! As such, the theory there is that the BBC/Camelot were in on the trick and that it was not a live broadcast of a live event but a delayed broadcast of live event in the BBC studio!

But he was in the shot with the prediction balls throughout the draw so it would have to be delayed a long time if it didn't included any camera tricks while the numbers were put on the prediction balls.

Yes, sorry again, they are saying that the draw was filmed live in a studio at the BBC just before Derren Brown went on air on C4 and that is how he knew the numbers. There were even saying the the first C4 bit, was pre-recorded and when they switched back from the camera at the back of the studio to the final camera shot that then stayed on Derren and the numbers that is the first time when Derren actually went live on C4 meaning that the delay was possibly less than a minute.