United Kingdom of Derren Brown

I am sitting in a comfortable, if battered, armchair. The sound of Enya’s ‘Watermark’ fills the room. My breathing has gradually slowed and now keeps time with the wave-like rhythms of the music.

A soothing voice accompanies me as it counts me down through the levels. I start to feel light-headed and have to fight off a sudden urge to open my eyes and bring everything to a halt. I don’t. I’m too curious about the journey into hypnosis. The soothing voice belongs to Derren Brown. I am not on stage in a sold-out theatre; I am in a student room at Bristol University, 30 years ago.

This weekend sees Derren Brown celebrating his career with a two-hour special on Channel 4, 20 Years of Mind Control: Live. The show will include a new live stunt for which he has become famous (or infamous, depending on your view). However, the seeds of what would become the Derren Brown phenomenon were already being sown and gently watered some ten years before his TV debut – and I was there to witness it.

Wills Hall, 1990 at Bristol University was the smaller scale arena where Derren first started to practice his art. He was studying German and Law and I was studying History.

The hall looked and behaved like an Oxbridge college, with its quadrangle and formal dinners (one of which descended into food fight and made the tabloids). It was full of Oxbridge rejects which fostered a certain solidarity.

The most common question was, “Which school did you go to?” I was repeatedly met with blank stares when I answered, “Queen Mary’s Grammar, Walsall.” It took me a while to register that they were asking which public school. It seemed appropriate then, that there was a student there called Derren who spent a good chunk of time correcting those who called him Darren.

In an interview for The Times in 2009, Derren said, “University is where I became unbearable.” Enigmatic, yes. Unbearable, no. He certainly cut a dandyish figure. His slight form could often be seen striding purposefully across the quad, a short cape billowing out behind him as if he had stepped out of a nineteenth century novel.

He was not averse to vividly patterned trousers, garish waistcoats and velvet. He was the peacock amongst the pigeons, the rest of us clad in the student regulation uniform of jeans and hoodies. Had he donned a frock coat and breeches we would not have been surprised.

Even his room was not the typical student one. Where many of us had the same tired collection of Impressionist postcards stuck to our walls, Derren’s room was his gallery. Every wall was plastered with his own sketches and caricatures reminiscent of the style of Gerald Scarfe.

There was Margaret Thatcher freshly ousted from Government along with fellow students. His keen eye for observation was apparent then as he distilled us to animals. I was a chipmunk and one of my friends, much to her chagrin, was a mouse. Those sketches have morphed into the paintings of prominent figures he does today and sells via his website.

While many of us struggled to make it to the five hours of lectures we had a week, Derren was delving into the world of hypnosis. He had a willing pool of volunteers; I was one of them. It was clear that Derren was serious about his art and the ethics around it. He was acutely aware of the darker, exploitative side of hypnosis and, whilst we students were up for the jokes, everything was above board and for fun.

Derren Brown (left) practices on friends at Bristol University

Back to that armchair. Once I overcame my slight panic, I was guided into a visualisation of a garden on a summer’s day. I can still see it now; everything in high definition. Derren told me I had a balloon attached to my finger which was gently tugging and drawing my arm into the air. A twitch of my finger and then my arm rose up effortlessly. Even in my state of deep relaxation I was surprised. Then the fun began. Derren suggested that water would taste like Baileys (this was the Nineties, after all, and the decade of Archers and lemonade). He clicked his fingers and I headed off to hall dinner with friends.

Whilst I was waxing lyrical about how fantastic the local water was (even taking it to extremes and later trialling a Baileys shower), my friend Nikki, also hypnotised, was unable to eat her dinner: every time she raised her fork to her mouth, her mouth clamped shut. With another click, Derren kindly released her of this frustration.

Some of us ended up volunteering to be in his first show staged at the hall, complete with a student audience. It was surreal, harmless fun and involved me becoming obsessed with a microphone and fighting over it with my friend Victoria. Meanwhile, she would put up an umbrella every time Derren clicked his fingers. Not everyone was suggestible though; hypnosis did not always work on the more sceptically-minded science students.

We lost touch. Ten years later, I idly switched on the TV. It was the unmistakable voice that hit me first, the one that had tied imaginary balloons to my fingers. It was a less flamboyant Derren – but still very much Derren – with his Mind Control TV debut. His success came as no surprise and it has been a joy to watch him make use of his talents.

I dug out the three rather grainy photographs I have of his first show. Underneath one was written, “Introducing our resident DIY hypnotist and ace caricaturist, Derren Brown. Eccentric, but one to watch out for in the future. Dig the trousers, Derren.”