Derren was born in 1971 in Croydon. It was a difficult birth: his mother was in Devon at the time. A precocious and puzzling only child for some years, he liked to paint, foster obsessive habits, and once set fire to a neighbour's boat by accident. Later, after his brother was born, Derren went to study Law and German at Bristol University and fell in love with the city. This was still at the time when marriages between man and city were frowned upon, so rather than risk public derision, Derren decided to just live there after graduating and vowed never to leave. During this time he didn't have two pennies to rub together, which was a shame as it was his only way of keeping warm. He began to perform magic in bars and restaurants, and gave occasional hypnosis shows. Meanwhile he continued to paint unflattering portraits of the rich and famous.
In 1999 he was asked by what was then Channel 4 to put a mind-reading programme together for people's televisions. Their first choice, Cheryl from Bucks Fizz, had turned out to be shit at it. A year later, Easter 2000, at ten in the evening, Derren and his family gathered round a fuzzy grey picture on the corner of their living...
|
Join this Club
Invite friend 
write article
