MIND controller Derren Brown can predict and influence your dreams, make you forget things you know by heart and persuade bookies to pay out on losing tickets.
 Yet Brown insists that, despite the astonishing stunts he pulls on stage, on TV and on the streets, he has no special powers. And a ringing phone in his London hotel suite proves the point. We are sitting comfortably in a two-tier suite at the Sherlock Holmes Hotel in Baker Street, the first hotel room I've ever seen with a staircase. When the phone rings Brown wanders upstairs and down but fails to find it. The ringing stops. It's nice to know that Brown is human, because when you see him perform you do begin to wonder. Bizarre magazine said of him that "100 years ago he would have been burned at the stake". This shows a poor grasp of early 19th century history, but you see what they mean. We're here to talk about Brown's all-new Channel 4 series Tricks of the Mind and his current national tour, which brings him to the Liverpool Empire on May 2. I confess I'm half relieved, half disappointed that the man in the pin-stripe suit, open-necked tan shirt and goatee beard doesn't appear ready to pull any stunts on me. "I've never been about trying to convince people of abilities I have or don't have or am pretending to have," he says. "The show is a mixture of genuine psychological techniques and sort of fraudulent techniques and all the techniques and misdirection and showmanship of the magician. For me, when these things come together, that's what makes it interesting." Brown likes to blur the borders between magic and psychology but, whatever you call it, it's very hard to explain. His "Russian Roulette" show, using a loaded gun pointed at his head, was his most notorious stunt. But the best stunts from his previous shows were much more baffling. Like the time he went greyhound racing and persuaded the kiosk clerk to pay him winnings when his dog had lost. Then he recruited a losing punter to do the same, telling him exactly what to say. The punter could not believe his luck. "When we stopped filming, he pointed to his cash and said 'Who do I give this back to?' We said: 'No, you can keep it.' He couldn't believe it - we should have kept the cameras running." | 
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