Derren Brown

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:42

My castaway this week is the illusionist and mentalist Darren Brown. He started out doing table magic in Bristol restaurants, but over the course of his 20-year career, sleight of hand has become sleight of mind. His award-winning shows have evolved to encompass an ever more daring blend of psychology, illusion, hypnosis, suggestion, memory, and perception. He's played Russian roulette on live TV, predicted winning lottery numbers, convinced a bunch of middle managers to commit armed robbery, and hoodwinked one man into believing that the apocalypse has taken place, leaving only him and a few zombies behind. If there is a common thread in this varied portfolio, it might be an enduring fascination with the nature of belief, the stories we tell ourselves about what is true. Once an evangelical Christian, he is now a committed atheist. He's written a book about philosophy and happiness and has a sideline in uncovering tricksters who manipulate other people's credulity for their own ends, debunking the methods of psychics, mediums, faith healers, new age gurus and ghost hunters. He says, I think as you grow up, you realize that being impressive is actually not an important thing. Being nice, open and kind, they're the things I warm to in people. So the TV shows have become less about, hey, look at me, I can do this, and more about me facilitating things for others. Darren Brown, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Derren Brown2:03

Hello, that was a r lovely introduction, thank you.

Presenter2:06

Not many people can call themselves a mentalist. For those who might not be familiar with the term, how do you describe that art form? Mentalist.

Derren Brown2:13

is the technical term for what I do. And it really

Derren Brown2:17

I suppose it probably covers everything from, I don't know, from psychic mediums through Uri Geller through to magicians doing tricks with a sort of mental theme. But my interest was definitely in the psychological.

Derren Brown2:29

aspects of it, sometimes in psychological methods, sometimes a psychological effect, even if you're using conjuring techniques to get there. Can magic be meaningful, I wonder? Absolutely, yeah. I it's taken me fifteen years of doing stage shows to kind of

Derren Brown2:42

realize it because it's so caught up in vaudeville silliness in a way and the childish urge to impress. But what I think it does have going on, which is interesting, is that magic's a very good analogy for how we generally face the world. We have this infinite data source coming at us. There's an infinite number of things that we could think about or pay attention to, but we choose what to pay attention to, and we edit and delete. and so on. And we start to make up a story of what's going on and then we mistake that story for the truth. And that's exactly what a magician's doing. You know, you see a card trick and then you say, well, I just thought of a card and then it disappeared and then it was in my pocket. And you miss out from that story all the other little bits that are actually very important, but they didn't seem important at the time, which is normally how magic works. It's not that that hand is quicker than the eye. It's just you only paid attention to certain things because you only thought certain things were important. But that is what we do every day in life. There's always other stuff going on that we don't see and don't know about. That's a really, I think, a big lesson.

Presenter3:42

We're gonna hear your first piece of music now. Tell us about it. Why have you chosen this one?

Derren Brown3:47

I realized putting this list together, this is the only happy piece. They're all, I really apologize if the show impresses anybody. Yeah, this is A Gloria by Vivaldi, and this became, particularly when I was on tour and still do tour, I would put this on and step out. And even if you were in an unlovely part of the country on a rainy day, this would really brighten things up. It's a real beautiful start to the day. It's just, well, it's glorious. You see what I did? I used the word gloria and changed it.

Presenter3:52

Make the most of this.

Speaker 25:07

We have stresses God.

Speaker 15:18

To the story.

Presenter5:23

Vivaldi's Gloria, sung by the choir of St John's College, Cambridge, with the Wren Orchestra, conducted by George Guest. Darren Brown, some of your allusions have been extremely controversial, particularly when you played Russian Roulette live on television, which was in October 2003. Do you get a kick out of pushing the envelope and seeing how far you can go?

Derren Brown5:43

It's never been about that. I mean, I've had done shows that have

Derren Brown5:48

created some controversy, but I've done plenty of others that haven't and have been quite sort of, you know, quiet and understated. The key for me has only been finding a strong idea, like a clear dramatic hook, like we're going to end the world for somebody and then they wake up and it's

Derren Brown6:04

Full of zombies, or could you get someone to murder somebody using nothing but social compliance at a big party? Everyone's an actor apart from one person that doesn't know they're being filmed and so on. So, kind of ideas that feel to me like, oh, I'd watch that because that sounds interesting, and then having a subtext that makes it worth doing and feel intelligent and not just about the shock value. And that's really all I think about. If you aim to be controversial for the sake of it, you you'd end up with a very thin and um sort of meaningless show.

Presenter6:34

And and what about danger? I mean, have you or anybody who's taken part in one of your tricks ever been in danger? I know your mum was a bit upset about the Russian roulette at the time.

Derren Brown6:44

Well, she was as we would expect nervous for me, but also I guess trusted that I knew what I was doing. I did smash a screw through my hand recently whilst practicing a magic trick where you put a nail or a screw under paper cups or paper bags or something. I was going to go on the James Corden show in America. Because this was only for me to just run the words. No one needed to put the screw. This is a six-inch screw, like on a little bass pointing upwards under one of three cups. No one needed to put the screw under the cup, and I certainly didn't need to smash my hand down on it. And also because we were just running it for the words, I didn't do the thing that allows me to be confident where it is. So either way, I smashed my hand down and had this five-inch screw. Hilariously, I've seen so much footage of other people doing this, which I can no longer watch. And when I did this, my first thought was, oh, I'm now one of those people. I've now done it. I had this screw. And it was a screw. Normally it's done with a nail. A screw's a different animal. I tried unscrewing it as well, which really hurt. Never do that. And I had to go to the hospital and have this thing removed. It's time to go to the music. We're going to hear your second disc today, Darren Brown. What's it going to be? This is the Goldberg Variations by Bach. This has followed me around for a long time, this bit of music. I think I first heard it in the film Silence of the Lambs, and it becomes a bit of a motif of Hannibal Lectus. I love that film. I watched it as a student.

Presenter8:04

Is it true that he's part of your stage persona or he was an influence?

Derren Brown8:08

Yeah, there are a few little sort of touch points for the sort of character, for want of a better word, I guess. Um character in the sense that often as I'm forming the sort of plots for illusions, Sherlock Holmes is one that's been Willy Wonker's another one, and Hannibal Lecter, which is unpleasant because obviously he's a serial killer. So that's where I discovered this bit of music.

Presenter9:30

Bach's Goldberg variations performed by Murray Peria. So, Darren Brown, you were born in nineteen seventy one in Croydon and describe yourself as a precocious and revoltingly charming child.

Derren Brown9:42

Tell me more. Yes, I was, and probably still am. I had long.

Derren Brown9:47

Platinum locks, by which I mean my hair. I was an only child till I was nine.

Derren Brown9:56

Which means I would obviously play on my own, and I think that you're something you take with you into later life if you've grown up playing on your own. Most of my interests now are quite sort of solitary. Apparently, when I was could barely speak, I was taken to my great aunt's house and came in through the front garden. And then when I said hello to her, my opening words were, Oh, great aunt, I think your garden is simply marvellous. This is like at the age of you know, two or something. I found an anagram of Derren Victor Brown. I worked out his born crowd inverter.

Derren Brown10:29

Victor being my middle name. So there's probably a little bit of me, even at an early age, that enjoyed sort of charming and manipulating.

Presenter10:36

How did that go down?

Derren Brown10:37

Down at school. I think I was the classic not not sporty.

Derren Brown10:41

Quite good at English and art. I was very good at drawing witches when I was five. I remember when I started at kindergarten, a lot of witches. I went to kind of a sporty school and my dad was a swimming teacher, was the swimming teacher, the swimming coach at school, which made it very difficult to get out of games, which was mainly what I was trying to do, get away from sports. I was not bullied, but I was certainly kind of intimidated by the sporty kids, particularly as a sort of, you know, was going to be a closeted gay kid for quite a long time as well. So I don't look back fondly.

Derren Brown11:17

on any of that.

Presenter11:19

We're going to hear your third disc now. What have you chosen?

Derren Brown11:22

This is Mozart's Piano Concerto number nine. But I've chosen this one because it was the first C D I ever bought. And this was around the time that C D's were quite rare and new. And I had been to this concert at the Berlin Philharmonic

Derren Brown11:39

In Berlin, I was on a sort of a school exchange. I have so many memories tied in with this. I had bought this CD at the end of the concert, but I had cleared out two rows of the concert, cleared out two rows with my weird sniffing. If you can imagine the loudest snort that you, if you really, really pushed it and tried for the loudest sniff, you could do. I had to do this like a lot all the time, particularly once I was thinking about it. It's just excruciating thinking back to it. And I remember people around me offering me a tissue and me saying, no, thank you, I'm fine. And then the interval happened and came back after the interval, and there was just no one around us, so I completely cleared it. And then on the way out, I bought this CD because I wanted to have a CD. And it's become part of my kind of DNA now. I listen to it every day. And when I'm thinking about the desert island, I think all these things would remind me so much of home and would have such a lovely, comfortable nostalgia to them. So I couldn't not include it. Says the opening.

Presenter14:26

The first movement from Mozart's Piano Concerto No. Nine in E flat major, performed by Maria Joao Pirosch, with the Gulbenkian Orchestra conducted by Theodore Guschelbauer. Darren Brown, we've heard a little bit about your dad, who coached swimming at the school that you went to. Tell me about your mum.

Derren Brown14:44

She was quite glamorous. She was a former model. Then she had a number of different jobs after that. Her last sort of long term job was a um running a doctor's surgery, the sort of admin side of that, and she did for a long time and loved.

Derren Brown14:58

They're lovely. And they've always had this very relaxed approach to me sort of well, it always felt very relaxed from my end of me just doing what I enjoyed. And I never felt any the only thing I ever felt any pressure to do is to learn how to drive and I don't drive. And I was I did the lessons and failed and then I said, well that's it, I had to go and I failed so that's it. I never went back. And that felt outrageous that they'd even try and persuade me to do that. And I wrote them a letter at my end of my first year at university thanking them because I realized I was amongst all these other law students that were really nervous and felt all this pressure to do well in their exams. Not for themselves, but for what their parents would think. And I'd never come across that. I didn't know that was a thing. So, yeah, I'm very grateful for that.

Presenter15:39

During your teenage years it sounds like your early attempts at sleight of hand weren't of the legal variety. As a teenager you acquired quite the shoplifting habit.

Derren Brown15:49

It's so awful. I'm laughing about it, but only out of embarrassment because it's so shameful. But yeah, I did. I um and I stopped. It was never anything.

Derren Brown16:00

you know, expensive. But I remember looking round my bedroom once as a teenager and uh realizing now that my parents are probably listening to this, but I looked around on every single thing in my room I'd stolen.

Derren Brown16:12

Your jumpers must have been massive. Yeah, big bulky jumpers, lots of inside pockets. I've stopped now and I stopped because Beth I set off the alarms sneaking out of the music department of Harrods with a Luther Van Dross cassette tape in my pocket.

Derren Brown16:27

And I was so embarrassed so and I could see two store detectives walking towards me. So I did this whole display of oh, how did that get there? Oh, how embarrassing and put it back. And that was it. I thought, Right, that's it, no more. So I have not stolen since.

Presenter16:38

Not since Luther. Did your parents know about that?

Derren Brown16:41

They do now.

Derren Brown16:43

I think I probably yeah, I probably mentioned it.

Presenter16:45

What was it about, do you think, though?

Derren Brown16:47

Just a absolute sort of pragmatic thing of I loved the gadgets, they were too expensive to buy, so I'd steal them. And I think the sneaky, the challenge of uh this is before, it's before the magic thing took off, but it it was the joy of the misdirection and the the fun of pilfering and not being seen and I mean it just uh it was just joyful, but terrible. I'm not remotely um condoning it.

Presenter17:10

What's your next piece, and why have you chosen it?

Derren Brown17:12

This is the Abamer dicht from Bach St. Matthew Passion, and it's one of the most beautiful pieces of music I think ever written. What I love about this, it's a yearning for mercy from God, from Peter, who's just denied Jesus three times. So as an atheist now, I

Derren Brown17:32

Still feel the experience of transcendence is something that's hugely important, and we need to find it somewhere in life, not necessarily in a spiritual way. And what's always touched me about a lot of religious music, and you see the same thing architecturally with cathedrals, the same thing of reaching out. There's a sort of a yearning and a reaching that you can hear or see and stand and walk around, and which is a very human thing. It doesn't really matter what you're reaching for, whether there's anything there or not. But the act of reaching and yearning is, I think, a very touching and fundamental part of the human experience, which I think a lot of atheists miss when they have pops at religion nowadays. And for me, this is just a lovely articulation of that. It's a beautiful piece.

Presenter19:17

E Barmedik from Bach's Saint Matthew Passion sung by Michael Chance accompanied by the Brandenburg Consort conducted by Stephen Cleobury

Presenter19:27

Derren Brown, after a gap year, learning to ballroom dance in Nuremberg, which honestly I feel warrants a whole programme of its own.

Presenter19:34

You applied to Bristol University to study law and German. What plan did you have for yourself at that time?

Derren Brown19:40

Well, I thought I was going to be an international lawyer. I realized soon I didn't want to become a lawyer or a German. And then from then on, I it all just became about what was

Derren Brown19:49

fun in the moment and I just remember thinking, if I take a cross section of my life, does it feel like it's in the right place? And it did, and then that was that was all I ever wanted or and I never moved beyond that.

Presenter20:01

So a lot of people who didn't have very happy experiences at school, they quite often reinvent themselves in university, and it sounds like that was the case for you. During this period, you've said your luck was bad spandau ballet, gay leisure pirate, which I think sounds

Derren Brown20:07

Yeah.

Derren Brown20:10

For you.

Derren Brown20:16

Mm.

Presenter20:16

Amazing.

Derren Brown20:17

Yes.

Presenter20:17

Talk me through that?

Derren Brown20:18

I wore a cloak for many years. I had long hair. A, I had hair. B, I had long hair. I may have had a drop earring for about a week. Yeah, I sort of fancied myself as a sort of philosopher-poet, but was, yeah, somewhere more in the gay female leisure pirate. And I used to go to a cave that was hidden on one side of the Avon Gorge. It's sort of under the suspension bridge, if anyone knows Clifton. I'm sure it's still there. And I would sit, light a bonfire, and read Nietzsche. Because that's what I was like. And the fake eye?

Derren Brown20:56

I had this liquid latex, which I would use sometimes with painting as a way of masking areas of the paper. I put some of this latex on my eye, just a little bit, one morning, because it look it looked like you like special effects makeup, it looked like, you know, you I'd hurt my eye.

Presenter21:11

Curiosity got the better of you. We've all been there.

Derren Brown21:12

You've all been there. Exactly. I went down to breakfast and I loved the attention. When friends asked, so what did you do to your eye? I made something up. I just rather than saying, oh, it's just latex, I made something up. And then I felt obliged to um

Derren Brown21:25

Put a bit more on and continue this story, which then I couldn't back out of because day by day, and I'm adding more and more until in the end I'm disfigured on one side of my face. But I couldn't back out of it because I was telling people that cared that this was a real thing. I mean, so odd when I think back. I remember the guy upstairs because we had like communal baths and things. He thought it was his fault because he'd been making beer in the bath and he thought the fumes had made this happen. And it's just terrible. This is all.

Derren Brown21:56

really weird twisted bids for attention. I think once I started performing, it felt like it took care of all that. I could take all that pathetic, insecure mess and just funnel it into um you know a kind of valid arena of you know of performing. Maybe it helped, helped a lot.

Presenter22:15

Time for some more music. This is your fifth disc. Why have you chosen this one?

Derren Brown22:20

Yes, this is the cello sweets again, Bach.

Derren Brown22:22

I've always loved music that needs unlocking and music that is sort of private. Most of the music here has a sort of private feel and a solitary feel. I first heard this played to me by the friend I used to go to the cave with and read Nietzsche. What I loved about it was it felt just like an outpouring. It didn't feel like anybody could have sat down and composed it. I'm choosing the version by Stephen Isolis, and it's a beautiful, woody recording. The main reason why I've chosen this version, though, is that I know Stephen and he will not let me live it down if I didn't choose his version. So this is the finest version in the world, Stephen Issilis.

Speaker 123:12

Yeah.

Speaker 223:12

Uh

Speaker 123:12

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Presenter23:58

The prelude from Bach's cello suite number one performed by Stephen Isselis.

Presenter24:03

So Darren Brown, you were trying your hand as a magician in Bristol. What was a typical week like for you? What kind of gigs were you getting?

Derren Brown24:10

There were a couple of restaurants I would work at, and from that I would get the occasional private booking, you know, for someone's wedding or perhaps a corporate event. It was just enough to tick by.

Presenter24:21

Was it easy to be with people and not be kind of on?

Derren Brown24:24

No, I think it just goes back to the whole

Derren Brown24:27

Closety gay thing. I think it's um you just develop a sort of way of being that's constantly deflecting. I kind of had to, I think, learn how to just be normally with people, because what what wasn't helping was the magic as well,'cause I if I you know, I'd always have tricks and things in my pocket and then I was just always waiting to impress, which is um such a red herring in life, isn't it? The desire to sort of impress. It feels like

Derren Brown24:52

That's what you should be doing. So, the one thing you shouldn't be doing is trying to impress, because it's the one thing people aren't impressed by. I mean, it's such a, you know, it just shoots itself in the foot as soon as you start. But that's really for years that was my thing. I was always having to do a trick, and actually, just having a normal conversation, developing normal social skills, which is why, you know, a lot of magicians, you look at them and you can see the lonely child somewhere in the background. It took me a long time. And actually, I think getting well-known helps because you become suddenly much more aware of making a good impression and what people actually sort of think of you becomes more of a thing. And again, now I'm the opposite. I never do tricks for people in real life. I find it really childish and silly and dishonest, and all sorts of reasons why I don't like doing it. It's time for some more music. This is your sixth disc.

Speaker 125:15

Ty all summary in the background.

Presenter25:41

Why have you chosen it?

Derren Brown25:43

I love Richard Strauss. I love the four last songs, but I didn't know which one to pick, so I went for Morgan instead, which is a separate, beautiful song. It has a lovely blend of beauty. It's a song about two lovers walking down onto a beach, looking forward to going down to the beach and kissing, and it's a sort of lovely thing, but it's achingly sad. And I think that is, for me, a very powerful

Derren Brown26:13

thing. I think life is centripetal in that it it pulls us towards the center, not to the outside. And we have a million distractions and things that keep us busy, but ultimately we're pulled back to the middle, which is why I'm not a big believer in

Derren Brown26:27

Optimism and believing in yourself and so on because when those things let you down on a bad day you've got nowhere to go other than oh I must have just failed. I much prefer the stoic approach of making peace with failure and fortune and moving in easy record with it rather than trying to fight against it, not trying to control the things that are out of your control. But what it means is that that central point in life has to allow for melancholy and has to allow for a certain dose of sadness to have a sort of a sweetness to it. And it means that then those low points or those sad points actually can bind us together in a way that's beautiful and gives us room to love. And this piece of music, I think it really does that. It's sad and it's beautiful and beautiful things pass and that's why they're sad and it's it's all of life for me.

Derren Brown27:19

For the near tears of

Derren Brown27:32

Oh, Steve Man.

Derren Brown27:37

Yeah.

Speaker 228:13

It was strong.

Derren Brown28:13

Uh

Presenter28:16

Morgan by Richard Strauss, performed by Dame Felicity Lott and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by Nima Yervi.

Presenter28:26

Darren Brown, there is an interesting moral dimension to the art form that you practise. You've managed p to get people to do some unbelievable things, to steal a painting, agree to hide what they think is a dead body. How conscious are you of the ethical complexities of what you're doing?

Derren Brown28:43

Hugely. One thing that really helps is the fact that I really only make one or two of these shows a year. So there's a lot of time, as opposed to those kind of makeover life turnaround shows that, you know, maybe it's every week somebody's sort of, you know, churned out on this sort of conveyor belt when there's less time for attention. So it's hugely important to us. If you're putting somebody through a dark journey, A, there's got to be a good reason for doing it so that their experience of it and their story of it to themselves is worth doing. First of all, they're vetted beforehand. That's a whole interesting thing in itself as to how, without letting somebody know they're part of a show, that they do go through this vetting procedure, which has to be rigorous. The actual experience itself is carefully sort of curated and orchestrated so that they're always on the right side of feeling safe. The sort of immediate aftercare is hugely important. And this isn't just me doing it. We also have independent people that are there too.

Presenter29:35

It's time for your seventh disc today. Why have you chosen this one?

Derren Brown29:38

Number seven is Rufus Wainwright. I love Rufus Wainwright and again it's another sort of sad and beautiful thing. I paint a lot and Rufus has become my go-to painting music. The story of the song I understand is that so Rufus's father is Loudoun Wainwright III, a huge name in folk music, who had left the family when Rufus was younger. But they came together and Rufus had done an interview with Rolling Stone magazine and had mentioned his father and got these magazines out at dinner and made a joke about, oh, I've got you back into Rolling Stone magazine, Dad. And his father was furious saying, you know, I don't need you to get me into Rolling Stone and so on. And it led to this huge argument that brought up all these issues. That's as I understand the story and it's just a beautiful, gorgeous, sad song.

Derren Brown30:30

No matter how strong I'm gonna take you down with one little star

Derren Brown30:41

I'm gonna break you down and see what you're worth What you're really worth to me

Derren Brown30:59

Dinner.

Presenter31:00

Rufus Wainwright and Dinner at Eight. Darren Brown, not all of the journeys are dark. In some of your m more recent programmes you've explored the positive changes that participants can make, overcoming their fears and anxieties and even in some cases physical ailments that they're suffering that have a kind of psychological

Derren Brown31:19

Yeah, the last stage show I did was based around faith healing, and it was, I think, of all the things that I've done, the most extraordinary experience to perform. I'd thought about doing it before, but it made no sense that it would work with my audience because there's no way we'd advertise it as a healing show. Didn't want people coming needing healing, that's a very different thing. People would be sceptical like me, and just all that kind of psychological priming that you have if you go and see one of these events for real just wouldn't be there. So I didn't know if it was going to work. And it really did. And I know that if you took an x-ray before and afterwards, nothing has changed. All I've done is I've created a bit of adrenaline, which is a painkiller, so that's one part of it. And the other part is interrupted the story that people might be living out about what their ailment is that they just carry around with them every day.

Derren Brown32:10

For some people, that's enough.

Presenter32:13

And how do you explain that?

Derren Brown32:15

It's exactly that thing. I think it's the story that we tell ourselves, the stories. But again, it was a small percentage of the audience. And if you take 2,000 people, that 1% or whatever is always going to be extraordinary, anyway. So that's your starting point. You can kind of, if you just grit your teeth on the first night and hope it's going to happen, you can kind of rely that something extraordinary will happen. And the oddest.

Derren Brown32:36

things that seemed so physical. I thought somebody m you know, my somebody might say, Well, my back hurt and now it doesn't but really physical things were just

Presenter32:44

But like like

Derren Brown32:45

I remember a guy with trigger finger one night. I just remember this because I had a friend, it was a guy who was 70 who had trigger finger and it was a horrible, horrible thing, just you know, couldn't move his thumb and finger. And this guy just he couldn't believe it, he was able to move. And most nights there'd be something that would really knock me back. Slip discs that seemingly had gone movement that was people were able to do that they weren't able to do before. I mean, it was just extraordinary.

Presenter33:10

It's time for your final disc to do. Tell me about this one.

Derren Brown33:13

This is Ben Fold's The Luckiest, which was first played to me by my friend James Rhodes, who is a now well-established concert pianist. It's again beauty and sadness meeting at an achingly beautiful level. Whenever I hear this, I just am filled with a sappy love for my partner and immediately rush upstairs and get him to listen to it, which is not interested in the song. It's a dark thing. Not remotely interested in it. But I love it. And it's lyrics that are sad and again bring that sort of note of melancholy into beauty, which is so important and so important not to try and shut that out, but to let it sit and be part of the whole experience.

Speaker 133:41

Didn't solve it.

Derren Brown34:07

I don't get

Derren Brown34:11

Many things right the first time, in fact.

Derren Brown34:17

I am told.

Derren Brown34:19

That'll love

Derren Brown34:23

Now I know all the wrong turns to stumbles and falls brought me here.

Presenter34:32

Ben Folds and The Luckiest. So, Darren Brown, I'm sending you away to our island with three books the Bible, the complete works of Shakspere, and one of your choosing. What will it be?

Derren Brown34:38

To the bottom

Derren Brown34:41

I've always loved Boswell's London journals, which I was going to choose, but right now I'm really in love with Jung, Carl Gustav Jung. So I would take I've been reading around him for many years, but I've just started reading the original works. So I'm taking the collected works of C. G. Jung, and that will keep me going for a while. I just hope my interest is maintained in them. And I'll have plenty of time for sort of self-therapy on this island, so I think that'd be a good place to start.

Presenter35:06

Thanks, Hammy. Dig into your archetypes. Enjoy.

Derren Brown35:08

Enjoy.

Presenter35:08

What about a luxury, something to make your time on the island, more bearable?

Derren Brown35:13

I'm a lover of stupid gadgets. I had a hot towel dispenser, I remember, which I never used, and a bread maker, which I've never used, endless things. I'm taking my camera. I have a Leica camera, which goes everywhere with me. And I'm sort of aware there won't be a huge amount of street photography to do on the island, which is sort of my main thing. But I think it'll be an interesting photography project, given the limitations of the one palm tree and any number of fish. And interesting light. I think the light would probably be interesting. So as long as I can take film and or charger and spare SD cards, then I'm taking my little camera.

Presenter35:50

And finally, which one of these disks would you save above the others if you had to?

Derren Brown35:57

I'll go f for the Goldberg variations. They're the longest and they just keep on giving and they keep on unlocking more and more. It's hard to let go of the Strauss, hard to let go of Morgan. But yeah, I'll go Goldberg variations.

Presenter36:10

Darren Brown, thank you very much for sharing your Desert Island discs for you.

Derren Brown36:13

Thank you. It's been such a joy, thank

Presenter36:14

Thank you so much.

Derren Brown36:15

Yeah.

Presenter36:23

As we leave Derren on his desert island getting stuck into his collection of young, there's just time for me to remind you that there's a whole range of fascinating castaways in our back catalogue. Among them are Victoria Wood, the Doctor David Knott, rugby referee Nigel Evans and Yoko Ono. And you can hear all those and many more programmes on BBC Sounds.

Presenter36:44

Darren chose the cellist Stephen Isselis' recording of the Bach Cello Suites. Back in two thousand seven, Stephen was also cast away on our desert island by Kirsty Young.

Derren Brown36:55

I certainly don't remember any sort of life without music.

Derren Brown36:59

Because my father played the violin and my mother was a piano teacher, so I think I would go to sleep as a baby or certainly as a little child to the sound of them practising.

Derren Brown37:08

You know, we were surrounded by music. I mean, in the introduction there, I said that the cello was chosen for you, so as you could complete the family sound. But given that it was almost foisted upon you, you were happy, once you had time to think about it, that this was the instrument that had been chosen for you. Well, actually, I think when I first started, I must have been four or five, and I used to think it was terribly funny to play on the wrong side of the bridge, which makes this horrible squeaky sound. And I wouldn't stop doing that. So they made me stop lessons. And I still remember lying on the floor and crying my eyes out, feeling so humiliated. It must have been quite a moment for me still to remember it. And then so they sent me back when I was six and grown up. And of course, by then, I was dying to play the cello, to redeem myself. You own more than one cello, and is it three? Well, no, I have access to.

Derren Brown37:58

To three or four, yes. And they all have different characters. Very different characters. It's my old Guadnini cello from 1745, which I played for a long time and I now share with one of my best friends, who's called David Waterman. And then I'm trying to buy a Montagnana cello from 1740. It's much tougher than the old. I mean, they really do have these incredibly different characters. And then the Nippon Music Foundation of Japan have, for the past eight years, loaned me a Stradivarius from 1730, which is a beautiful instrument, a sort of dreamy, delicate, poetic instrument. I love it. So yes, I got a complicated love life when it comes to cellos.

Speaker 138:00

And they all have

Derren Brown38:35

I mean, I should mention at this point that you you have a long-term partner, you have a son, but the way you talk about these instruments it's as though you have a I wouldn't dare say an equal relationship with them, but it's clearly a a very deep significant connection. It is. Um I very much feel that the cello is part of me when I play. And yes, it is like a marriage, and yet I don't think I can be accused of adultery.

Presenter38:58

The cellist Stephen Isilis. Next time on Desert Island Discs, you'll be able to hear the artist Lubaina Himid. Join us then.

Speaker 239:13

60 seconds. We choose to go to the move. Three feet down two and a half.

Speaker 139:17

Neil said, we can't land here. Everyone is sitting there not knowing what has happened.

Speaker 239:18

And

Speaker 239:23

Thank you. I'm Kevin Fong, and 50 years on, I'll be telling the story of the Apollo moon landings in a brand new podcast from the BBC World Service.

Derren Brown39:32

Well, that's just crazy to try to do something as dangerous as that around the moon.

Speaker 239:36

100 feet, 3.5 down, 94. Wow.

Derren Brown39:39

What a

Speaker 239:39

Uh Yeah.

Speaker 139:40

I've got Yeah.

Speaker 239:41

Roger 1202, we copy

Derren Brown39:42

Uh

Speaker 239:42

Uh

Speaker 139:42

I'm looking at my displays and I am in big trouble. Thirteen minutes to the moon.

Presenter39:48

Available now on

Derren Brown39:49

BBC Sounds