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Episode: Ep 272: Derren Brown

Author: Plosive
Duration: 01:18:16

Episode Shownotes

Who could’ve predicted that, for the final episode of the series, we’d have Derren Brown in the Dream Restaurant? Oh… Derren Brown is on tour in 2025 with his new show ‘Only Human’. Get tickets at derrenbrown.co.uk Follow Derren on Instagram and Twitter @derrenbrownOff Menu is a comedy podcast hosted

by Ed Gamble and James Acaster.Recorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive.Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography and design).Follow Off Menu on Twitter and Instagram: @offmenuofficial.And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk for a list of restaurants recommended on the show.Watch Ed and James's YouTube series 'Just Puddings'. Watch here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary

In the final episode of the series, comedians Ed Gamble and James Acaster host mentalist Derren Brown at their whimsical restaurant. They discuss his distinguished career and his upcoming 2025 tour 'Only Human,' while interspersing humor about food and magical experiences. Brown shares insights about his profession, emphasizing the misunderstandings surrounding mentalism and its emotional impacts through performance. The conversation humorously covers restaurant etiquette, personal food experiences, and favorite dishes, with Derren passionately describing his ideal meals and cooking adventures, culminating in a blend of culinary delights and intriguing mentalism anecdotes.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Ep 272: Derren Brown) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_10
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00:01:46 Speaker_12
Welcome to the off-menu podcast, peeling the carrot of conversation. Ooh, carrots. Just peeling a carrot? Yeah, just raw carrot. Having a raw carrot like Robert Popper?

00:01:56 Speaker_02
Yeah. It's the final episode of the series! The final one, but not the final one ever, I predict. God, no.

00:02:02 Speaker_02
That is Ed Gamble, my name is James Acasso, this is the Off Menu Podcast, and every single week, we invite in a guest for our dream restaurant, and ask them their favourite ever starter, main course, dessert, side dish, and drink. Not in that order.

00:02:12 Speaker_02
And this week, I predict that our guest will be... DEVON BROWN!

00:02:17 Speaker_12
Lovely bit of business from you there, James.

00:02:19 Speaker_02
Yeah, pretty good. People didn't see it, but I put my fingers to my temples when I predicted it. Yeah, like a mentalist. Like a mentalist. I am a bloody mentalist, mate. Ask my mates.

00:02:28 Speaker_12
I'm your mate. That's a gamble. I'm a gamble. That's James Acaster. Welcome to the Off Menu podcast. We're excited to talk to our very special guest, the wonderful Derren Brown. TREJ, National TREJ.

00:02:38 Speaker_02
It's a National TREJ. And, you know, we grew up watching Derren Brown. Yes. And I think it's a similar feeling to when we had Louis Ferru on. I remember them, you know, arriving on the scene, the TV scene. Yeah.

00:02:52 Speaker_02
watching their early stuff and watching it right through to the modern day. I feel like I've watched everything they've done. So it's evolved amazingly as well.

00:03:00 Speaker_12
It's just, yeah, incredible live shows as well.

00:03:04 Speaker_02
Yeah, very excited to have Darren on. And Benito, this is, you know, obviously Benito doesn't talk on the podcast, but I just think the listeners should know he loves magic.

00:03:12 Speaker_02
That's why he's called the great Benito because he was a magician when he was a little boy. And he loves Darren Brown. So, you know, I think it's just good knowing that for this episode. how much Benito's loving it.

00:03:23 Speaker_12
So Benito will hate it if we have to ask Derren Brown to leave the restaurant.

00:03:27 Speaker_02
He would hate it, and we've chose a very... we'll explain why we've chosen it, but the secret ingredient which will get Derren Brown kicked out of the dream restaurant is... MINI ROLLS! I can't figure out how he did it. It was a trick, I guess.

00:03:43 Speaker_02
I guess you'd call it a trick. A magic trick? I guess you'd call it a magic trick, with the League of Gentlemen, all four of them.

00:03:48 Speaker_02
And there's a whole bunch of different moving parts to the trick, but they basically come in the room, they each pick a mini-roll each off of the plinth. The last person has to take two, because there's one extra.

00:03:57 Speaker_02
They all sit down on some chairs randomly just as sit wherever you like Then he mixes some envelopes up on the table says it all pick it all pick an envelope And then they open their envelopes and their envelopes each say you will pick and then a color different color Yeah, and then he says each of you reach under your seats And they've all got a piece of card that corresponds to the color so that's bonkers And then that could have just been the trick and I would have been like that's pretty impressive because that seemed random and then he gets

00:04:22 Speaker_02
and then he gets them to open the mini rolls and they all eat their mini rolls and then there's that one spare one that was left and then he's like open that one and he gives them some protective gloves and then they open it and there's a razor blade in it.

00:04:34 Speaker_02
Yes. Could have killed someone. That's scary man. It's scary, I always think about it, I don't know how he did any of that.

00:04:40 Speaker_12
The thing is James, I know we're picking mini rolls as a secret ingredient, but I know you really want to talk to Dara Brown about that mini rolls thing, so that feels unfair.

00:04:49 Speaker_02
Well I'll wait until the end. I'll wait until after we've done dessert. And I'll say, how'd you do that mini rolls bit? But also, I want to do a magic trick on him. Okay. I love it when he does predictions. Yeah. I think we should predict his dream menu.

00:05:06 Speaker_02
Yes. Write it down.

00:05:08 Speaker_00
Yeah.

00:05:08 Speaker_02
Put it in an envelope. We'll do that. Put it in the middle of the table.

00:05:11 Speaker_00
Yeah.

00:05:11 Speaker_02
We don't touch it for the whole thing. Yeah. At the end we get him to open it. We don't touch it. Yeah. And then we can see if we predicted his dream menu. We'll do that.

00:05:18 Speaker_12
We'll write out his dream menu before he gets here.

00:05:20 Speaker_02
Yeah. Magic trick. He's going to blow it from his mind. Because he doesn't know Benito's a magician. No. So we know what we're doing.

00:05:26 Speaker_12
Yeah. You know what you're doing, right Benito?

00:05:28 Speaker_02
Benito knows what he's doing, he's got the magic. So hopefully he won't choose mini-rolls, because otherwise he won't be able to do the magic trick at the end. Or maybe the envelope would say, you will get kicked out.

00:05:37 Speaker_12
Also, I really want to speak to Darren Brown, so I hope he doesn't get kicked out.

00:05:41 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah. Maybe if he does get kicked out, we'll just re-record this bit and say it was something else, say it was radishes or something.

00:05:46 Speaker_12
Tickets for Derren's next show are on sale now at derrenbrown.co.uk.

00:05:50 Speaker_02
He doesn't need our help. He doesn't need our help, but you know, maybe you do, the listener. Maybe you need our help in order to get the tickets before everyone else. Yes, I predict you will get the tickets. I predict some of you will get the tickets.

00:06:03 Speaker_12
This is the off-menu menu of Derren Brown! Welcome, Darren, to the Dream Restaurant. Hello.

00:06:17 Speaker_02
Welcome, Darren Brown, to the Dream Restaurant. Been expecting you for some time.

00:06:20 Speaker_04
I have been waiting to come on for some time. This is so exciting. Thank you for having me.

00:06:24 Speaker_12
We're very excited. We're very excited. I'm very excited. Although, what I sense with your genie explosion there... Yeah? You sort of held it back a little bit.

00:06:32 Speaker_02
No, I didn't. Did I? Yeah. Well, I've got a burp trapped here, and I didn't want to burp at Darren. No, fair enough.

00:06:38 Speaker_04
No, that would be an uncomfortable way of starting.

00:06:40 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:06:40 Speaker_04
Not interview, chat.

00:06:41 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah. Chat. Yeah, another chat, and it's quite rude to start. I think I'd have to just, like, excuse myself and just let you two chat, and me leave the room.

00:06:50 Speaker_12
And Darren is excited to be here, and I think that would have maybe killed the vibe straight away, if James had burped on you.

00:06:54 Speaker_04
It would have just started things off on a slightly off note, but you could have stopped and started again, because it's so early in the chat. Yes.

00:07:00 Speaker_02
It's early enough in the chat. Do you like chats in general?

00:07:04 Speaker_04
I like a chat, yeah. I like a chat. This is very nice. I've listened to many of your chats in the car. You're my go-to in the car chat. So this is very lovely being here in the actual room where it happens.

00:07:19 Speaker_02
Yes. Now do you want to like, some people like to imagine the dream restaurant and what it looks like.

00:07:24 Speaker_04
I didn't imagine this.

00:07:26 Speaker_02
You didn't imagine this?

00:07:27 Speaker_04
I didn't quite imagine this. It's an enormous grand, well it's like the foyer of a very expensive hotel isn't it? Is that how you describe it?

00:07:34 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:07:35 Speaker_04
I think so. It's gorgeous. Thank you for having me.

00:07:37 Speaker_02
When we ask people to imagine that, and you're probably going to get a lot of questions like this from us, because we haven't had anyone in your line of work on the podcast before. It's very exciting for us having a mentalist on the podcast.

00:07:47 Speaker_02
Now, when we ask people, when they come on, what's your dream restaurant look like? And they give an answer. If you heard those answers, would you be able to say what that says about them?

00:07:57 Speaker_04
Oh, I suppose so, a little bit. Yeah, I never do this stuff in real life. I kind of like, it's become a real sort of, um, like it would be exhausting to go around being that guy.

00:08:07 Speaker_02
Yes.

00:08:08 Speaker_04
In real life. And also I'm quite, over the years got quite interested in, in, um, stoicism and the whole thing of stoicism, you know, not to try and control the things that are outside of your control. And yet that's exactly what my job is.

00:08:21 Speaker_04
So, yeah, probably with a bit of thought, but I try not to use my magical skills in everyday life.

00:08:27 Speaker_12
But, I mean, you're somebody who likes to chat, famously. Love a chat.

00:08:30 Speaker_12
Do you feel like when you're chatting to someone for the first time, are they constantly on guard as if you are trying to... Yeah, I had a friend who's now a very good friend, who actually I'm seeing immediately after this podcast.

00:08:41 Speaker_04
I found out quite a way into our relationship that it was a good few times of us meeting before he could actually just relax and have a normal chat like this. Because he thought I was constantly doing... I don't know what people say!

00:08:52 Speaker_04
I don't know what it is! That you'd climbed into his brain or something. That I'm climbing into his brain and judging or whatever. Yeah, all that stuff. I really don't. I'm very... No, but I mean, it's a compliment to your work.

00:09:01 Speaker_02
You know, the work's excellent, so... Well, it's like we always get, you know, with people, those go like, I'm probably going to put this in your act, aren't you? And we're not. And we're not thinking that about them at all.

00:09:11 Speaker_02
But with you, it must be a much more extreme version of that, of like, you're probably gonna make me kill Stephen Fry.

00:09:17 Speaker_04
Yeah, that is... I had a lot of... I think pretty much every time I... If I go into a shop and ask how much something is, I get a lot of, oh, you should know, shouldn't you? That's... I've lived with that one for a very long time.

00:09:29 Speaker_12
Yeah, that's a pretty standard response, isn't it?

00:09:32 Speaker_04
To anyone?

00:09:33 Speaker_12
Yeah, to anyone. That's just rude.

00:09:35 Speaker_04
You should know.

00:09:37 Speaker_02
What the hell? Did you do one when you went in and you tricked them into thinking the price was less? Have you done that? Or am I making stuff up in my head now?

00:09:47 Speaker_04
I was paying for stuff with paper in New York and seeing how long I could do that for. That's a laugh. Yeah, I got away with that for some time if you kind of do it confidently enough.

00:09:56 Speaker_04
I think it must have felt like they'd missed something and I think that's quite an interesting space when you just sort of feel...

00:10:02 Speaker_04
Bewildered and like you've slightly missed something and you're not and you it's like somebody comes up to in the street and says, you know It's not 20 to 4 your reaction isn't to go.

00:10:11 Speaker_04
Yeah, I know it's half 7 or whatever You're you you sort of feel like you've missed something and it's a very very powerful Place to put people in if you like, you know, if you're someone's aggressive to in the street I mean if they're running you with a knife is different but if they're like Intimidating you and you come out with that sort of stuff or come out with the song lyric or something It's it it completely changes the dynamic and undoes their feeling of

00:10:32 Speaker_04
power and I've got out of, you know, a couple of potentially violent situations like that. So yeah, that's the confusion.

00:10:40 Speaker_02
On the Tube the other day I did that. There was a lady on our carriage who was yelling at everyone very, very loudly about how we're all going to die one day and we're going to go to hell if we don't accept Jesus.

00:10:50 Speaker_02
And I was standing up to leave and she was shouting it directed at me. And I just went, is this the right train for Wilson Green or not, do you know? And she just looked at me like, what the f... And then I just walked up and she was there in silence.

00:11:03 Speaker_02
I was like, that seems like a good way of dealing with it. Ask them something normal and they're like, Jesus said I should help this person, but I don't. I went to yell at them. Did she answer the question? No, she just stared at me like I was mad.

00:11:14 Speaker_12
Well, you suddenly brought her into normal society, which she should be doing on a tube, right? Yeah. Do you think I did the right thing? That's great. That was good, actually. I was quite pleased.

00:11:25 Speaker_04
I always think a song lyric is a good one as well. If you've got something up your sleeve that you can just go into confidently. It needs to make sense, just not in context with the situation.

00:11:34 Speaker_02
What's your go-to song lyric?

00:11:37 Speaker_04
My go-to phrase is, the wall outside my house isn't four foot high. I just thought a song lyric was an easy thing to say to somebody. But yeah, that's my go-to. It works. Is that from a song? That's not a song, no. It should be.

00:11:51 Speaker_02
That'd be a good song. You say you don't really think in those terms all the time. You spend a lot of your time doing painting as well.

00:11:57 Speaker_04
I've taken a bit of time off, or at least as we're recording this, I've had a good chunk of time off. Probably by the time this goes out, I shall be touring, but I've been painting at home.

00:12:08 Speaker_04
I paint portraits and I put them on my website and sometimes people buy them and put them on their walls and things, which is nice.

00:12:17 Speaker_04
So that's a really lovely, that's kind of what I do in my, that's what I do in my real life, as opposed to controlling people. But I am writing, yeah, starting to get my head around a new tour for next year. Can I say the title?

00:12:28 Speaker_04
Because I only know the title, isn't it?

00:12:30 Speaker_04
It's called Only Human, and as we talk now, Only Human is only a title, and I haven't written a word of it, and you must have had this situation yourself, where you've, it's out there being marketed, and people are buying tickets perhaps, and you have no idea what it is.

00:12:43 Speaker_04
And people say, oh, I've got a ticket on there on the first night, I'm in the front row, and you're just, I haven't got a clue.

00:12:48 Speaker_12
You want to go, you've done more for this show than I have. Yeah, exactly. I've still got used to over 20 years of doing it, but it's always a little odd.

00:12:55 Speaker_12
Do you have that panic when there's nothing, or do you know the rhythm of building a show so much now that you just know it's going to be fine?

00:13:02 Speaker_04
Yeah, exactly. It's that. We have a month of writing and then a month of rehearsing, and then it starts.

00:13:08 Speaker_04
And it's the sort of thing, and I guess with stand-up, I guess probably with any, even just a play, you expect to change a lot once you get it on its feet.

00:13:15 Speaker_04
But I mean, I really don't know what will work, just technically what will work, until there's an audience. Because a lot of the stuff I do needs a thousand people to watch it, because then they're only going to work with maybe a few percent of that.

00:13:25 Speaker_04
Like, there's just no way of knowing, so it's always a nervous start. But yeah, that rhythm of making it and just going through the first couple of weeks of... One of the shows, Miracle, was faith healing in the second half.

00:13:36 Speaker_04
But every time, if you go and see a faith healer, you know, there's evangelical types, you're going there as a believer.

00:13:42 Speaker_04
And I knew my audiences would be like me, you know, not believe any of it and not be ready for it, not have that psychological preparation for it or anything. So, yeah, it can be a bit nerve-wracking at the start.

00:13:51 Speaker_02
Do you then have to re-engineer? I know on these things you can't really reveal how you do these things, but do you have to go, OK, that's how I'm presenting it, but I'm going to try and trick them a different way because they're different?

00:14:01 Speaker_02
Yeah, exactly.

00:14:01 Speaker_04
Well, I have to, not you so much, but I have to find ways of saying, yeah, this is what the charlatans would do, or this is stuff that's fake and I'm just going to do that now.

00:14:13 Speaker_04
You have to set certain parameters around it, I guess, so people are on side. I was mad actually that one. I remember in the first week somebody came up and they've been paralyzed down their left hand side of their body since they were a kid.

00:14:25 Speaker_04
And she's a lady in her forties and she's in floods of tears because she can move her arm like for the first time. And I haven't done anything other than just, you know, words, but just that, the adrenaline of the situation and the kind of,

00:14:38 Speaker_04
It's the psychological component of suffering, like nothing's changed if you x-rayed her before and after, clearly nothing's changed, but yet her whole relationship to this pain that she'd lived with had just massively altered.

00:14:49 Speaker_04
So that was an amazing show to do actually, Night Tonight, just the sort of things that people would respond to.

00:14:55 Speaker_12
After that though, do you think I should just do that all the time?

00:14:58 Speaker_04
I did! I really did! I thought I could do it in a secular way, like I could say this is just what it is and there's no... I could say all of the things I've just said to you, but I could probably pack out a stadium doing that.

00:15:10 Speaker_04
And then I realized that's how you start to go mad. But it feels really plausible at the time. This works, this is a service that I'm providing.

00:15:19 Speaker_02
I'll be one of the good ones.

00:15:20 Speaker_04
I'll be one of the really good ones, yeah.

00:15:22 Speaker_12
I've seen way more adverts for things like that on the side of buses now, like the O2 arena, like big church meetings and stuff. I've seen loads of adverts for it, and it's always the shiniest looking men.

00:15:33 Speaker_04
Very shiny, yeah, really shiny, with a lot of white suits, and I've been to a few of those things sort of incognito. It is amazing what a weird world you're stepping into, because it is...

00:15:43 Speaker_04
not to offend anyone that's into this kind of thing, but if you're as an outsider sitting there, it's a weird mix of sort of amazing and kind of disgusting at the same time.

00:15:53 Speaker_04
Just it's a bit, which is, you know, it's a strange, you know, the Venn diagram of those emotions. It's odd to be in the middle of that, but because it's such a closed world and they really go for it. And I remember, you know, seeing some poor

00:16:04 Speaker_04
kid like a six-year-old girl on the stage being exorcised of demons and the adrenaline and the whole thing of it was sort of amazing but it was also kind of really gross at the same time as well so yeah it was a very odd day.

00:16:16 Speaker_02
Odd world. And when you go to that, are you like, are there certain things that you're watching and going, oh, I could incorporate that into what I'm doing? Or are you going just to kind of understand?

00:16:24 Speaker_04
No, yeah, exactly what I was doing. I was kind of researching and sat there with glasses on and a baseball cap.

00:16:31 Speaker_02
Try not to be noticed. Well, you've already noticed, but you haven't spoke to us about it. But for the listener.

00:16:37 Speaker_12
I know that you weren't here when me and Derren walked into the studio. You saw what we're about to describe and went, all right.

00:16:44 Speaker_04
There's an envelope that says prediction on it and a pen.

00:16:47 Speaker_02
We would like you, please Darren, to sign across the sealed bit of the envelope on the back. We've made a prediction that we will reveal at the end of the podcast.

00:16:55 Speaker_04
Oh, okay, that's exciting. Should I sign across it?

00:16:57 Speaker_02
Yeah, so we can't do anything with it. And you know what, you can put it wherever you like as well. You don't have to put it in front of you.

00:17:03 Speaker_04
I'm putting it in front of me so you don't touch it.

00:17:05 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah, put it right there.

00:17:06 Speaker_04
Wow, you can do it on me.

00:17:07 Speaker_02
It's good, isn't it? Pretty good. We don't do this for everyone.

00:17:10 Speaker_04
No, well I wouldn't make any recommendations for anyone else. I've never noticed this in the podcast.

00:17:17 Speaker_02
We always start with still or sparks and water, Dan. Do you have a preference?

00:17:20 Speaker_04
Yeah, well sort of. So I don't have any very strong feelings about it, but I do like a... I like a San Pellegrino.

00:17:27 Speaker_04
San Pellegrino, as you know, is nice and soft and kind of... But yeah, I don't like that kind of aggressive, bubbly... You know, it should be a simple act of hydration, not a surprise sneezing fit, which is...

00:17:41 Speaker_04
So yeah, I don't mind too much, but I think I'd probably go... I would probably go still. And not too cold. And I don't like the jugs that are full of ice and lemon, because they plop in your drink.

00:17:54 Speaker_12
Is it the plopping that you don't like?

00:17:56 Speaker_04
It's the plopping. It's really unnecessary and also I've got so used to like, you know, warming up and things before shows and you know what it's like, you don't want cold water for that because it kind of shocks your throat.

00:18:07 Speaker_04
So I've got, I quite like a sort of tepid water like Ben's given me here.

00:18:12 Speaker_02
A lovely tepid.

00:18:12 Speaker_04
You supply to your guests a kind of room temperature.

00:18:15 Speaker_02
effortless, minimal effort. Yeah, it is to be fair. There's nothing plopping in your drink here.

00:18:19 Speaker_04
I didn't get offered a choice of still or sparkling.

00:18:21 Speaker_02
No.

00:18:22 Speaker_04
No, that's weird, isn't it?

00:18:23 Speaker_12
That we don't offer a guest the choice of still or sparkling in real life only.

00:18:26 Speaker_04
No, it's all fake.

00:18:28 Speaker_02
That is weird, actually. I've never thought about that. Yeah. But it is weird that we give you some tap water and then we say, would you like still or sparkling? as a hypothetical. We've not talked about the plopping a lot before.

00:18:39 Speaker_02
We've not talked about how much it plops when there's stuff in there, especially the ice.

00:18:43 Speaker_12
And when ice gets caught in like the lip of a jug, you're not sure when it's going to plop in, but it always plops in at the least convenient moment.

00:18:49 Speaker_04
And also it sort of diverts the water stream. And then someone gets the lemon and then no one else has got any lemon. Yeah, that's all really annoying.

00:19:00 Speaker_12
You should get the lemon because you're Derren Brown.

00:19:02 Speaker_02
You should know how to get it every time.

00:19:04 Speaker_04
I always reach in and just take it. That's kind of a restaurant-y thing, isn't it? There are many restaurant-y things. Well, not many. A few restaurant-y things I don't care for, and that's certainly one of them.

00:19:15 Speaker_12
Do you eat out a lot?

00:19:16 Speaker_04
I do, yeah. I like food. I'm definitely a foodie, but I actually decided to opt for a sort of home restaurant situation for today. I don't like when waiters point at your food. I don't like it when they get really close with their finger.

00:19:36 Speaker_04
Maybe this is just like a nicer restaurant thing. But has anybody else brought this one up?

00:19:41 Speaker_02
No, I'm not sure. We're not at the plopping, we're not at the pointing.

00:19:44 Speaker_04
Okay, all right. I'm gonna work alphabetically through mine.

00:19:48 Speaker_04
So, yeah, that thing with the finger, when they come in, they go, this is a carrot, and this is a... and they're pointing, and they're not actually touching the food, because you can slide a sheet of paper between their fingers to prove it.

00:19:58 Speaker_04
But that's an annoying habit that I don't like. It's sort of like... It's like, it's like, um, Operation, the game. It's like that.

00:20:06 Speaker_12
Um, like... Well, they hover it just, just above.

00:20:09 Speaker_04
Yeah.

00:20:09 Speaker_12
Have you ever been tempted to get your plate and just move it up really quickly so their finger goes right in your food?

00:20:13 Speaker_04
That's a really good... You have to grab the whole table.

00:20:14 Speaker_12
No, you know, no, you could do the whole table.

00:20:16 Speaker_04
No, you'd grab the plate and lift it. No, I haven't done that, but that would defeat the point because contamination is the risk. Yeah, but then you'd get a new one, right? But they'd be so embarrassed.

00:20:23 Speaker_04
But they'd give you a new one if you just lifted the table up into their finger.

00:20:26 Speaker_02
I'll tell you who would struggle with that. Martin Freeman. He's very weak. He can't even lift a plate.

00:20:32 Speaker_04
Oh, he was on my show being weak! I see, I thought you were just being mean about him.

00:20:35 Speaker_02
No, no. Derren Brown got him to lift a plate, he couldn't lift a plate. You can just say Derren when he's in the room, James. Derren Brown put a phone on the back of his neck. He told him all this stuff about crystals. He said, this is really powerful.

00:20:48 Speaker_02
He said, Martin, this is a really powerful phone.

00:20:51 Speaker_04
And then he couldn't lift the things up.

00:20:53 Speaker_02
He couldn't lift stuff up. He couldn't lift a pencil up. That's right. He couldn't lift a plate up. It was embarrassing. It was a plate with like a sandwich on it.

00:21:00 Speaker_04
That's right. God, yes. He's a nice man.

00:21:02 Speaker_02
We've watched all your stuff, man.

00:21:03 Speaker_04
You have. We've done your research.

00:21:06 Speaker_02
We know it all. But like, yeah, I mean, when you're doing something like that with someone like Martin Freeman, are you like, man, I'm gonna make you look so weak on TV. You're loving it.

00:21:15 Speaker_04
I don't think anyone remembers that, apart from the fact he is brilliant. But I don't think anyone's ever mentioned the making Martin Freeman weak. That's very niche. It's a good one.

00:21:26 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's great. It's a good one.

00:21:28 Speaker_04
Maybe he mentions it. Maybe he mentions it.

00:21:30 Speaker_02
I think we had him on the podcast. Maybe we did bring it up. I don't know if we brought it up or not.

00:21:33 Speaker_04
So he's very well-dressed.

00:21:35 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:21:35 Speaker_04
Very well-dressed.

00:21:36 Speaker_02
It was during lockdown. He was on Zoom, so we couldn't see his outfit really. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if he's still a little dicky-bo. Still looked pretty good, I bet.

00:21:43 Speaker_12
But I like that your interpretation of it is, wasn't Martin Freeman embarrassed when he came out and said he was weak? But he probably just thought, oh, I'm on a Derren Brown show and Derren's done a trick on me.

00:21:54 Speaker_02
When Devin told him all the stuff, when Devin was like, all that stuff I told you was nonsense by the way. You could tell he was like, I'm just a weak man. In his eyes he was like, oh no.

00:22:03 Speaker_02
You give him a whole spiel about how the energy in crystals is the same as our energy in the phones.

00:22:07 Speaker_04
I'm really trying to remember what it was, it was so long ago.

00:22:09 Speaker_02
The vibrations in the phones are the same as the vibrations in the crystals. I'm going to put it on the back of your neck now Martin, now try and lift this. It can't lift a plate. It can't lift a pen.

00:22:19 Speaker_04
Ultimately, I'm cleverer than you is the bottom line of anything I do.

00:22:22 Speaker_02
That's the take-home. That's the take-home, especially for Martin Freeman. Stronger.

00:22:26 Speaker_04
Stronger man than you.

00:22:29 Speaker_02
POP LOBSTER OR BREAD! POP LOBSTER OR BREAD, DAMON BROWN! POP LOBSTER OR BREAD!

00:22:32 Speaker_04
Bleed, Jesus. Bread. I'm going for the... There's a great... I used to live not far from Dalston, and there is a place there called the Dusty Knuckle, and it's... Do you know it?

00:22:43 Speaker_09
Yeah, yeah.

00:22:44 Speaker_04
And I found out many years later that they employ, I think it's people, ex-prisoners, perhaps?

00:22:52 Speaker_04
Which, given it's got a slightly charitable edge to it, you might expect that to sort of take the edge off the quality of the bread, if anything, but it doesn't!

00:22:59 Speaker_12
The bread's amazing! It's phenomenal!

00:23:02 Speaker_04
Yeah, exactly. So I fell in love with that when I lived. in London, haven't had it for a while, but their sourdough.

00:23:08 Speaker_04
Of late, I've discovered, I've been in Bristol a lot recently, and Hart's Bakery in Bristol also does a very good, and also Reg the Veg, which is the world's greatest... Reg the Veg.

00:23:21 Speaker_12
Is A Heart the one that's under Temple Meads? Yes, under Temple Meads Station.

00:23:24 Speaker_04
You come out and go down there. Phenomenal place. Have you ever passed the Bristol? I often do.

00:23:28 Speaker_12
Really, really good. Great sausage rolls.

00:23:31 Speaker_04
Very good sausage rolls.

00:23:32 Speaker_12
Yeah, I love that place.

00:23:33 Speaker_04
It's brilliant. There you go. So yeah, I'd go for a really good Sourdough?

00:23:37 Speaker_12
A nice sourdough, yeah.

00:23:39 Speaker_04
It's sort of the hipster of the bread bowl, isn't it? I sort of hate myself saying it.

00:23:42 Speaker_12
But it is tasty though, isn't it? That's the thing.

00:23:44 Speaker_04
It is.

00:23:45 Speaker_12
And butter?

00:23:46 Speaker_04
Warm with butter, yeah, none of the oil nonsense. Yeah, warm and butter. A little bit of salt, cracked salt. Isn't that lovely? I never know whether, when it's warm, you feel they've just cooked it. It probably isn't.

00:23:56 Speaker_04
They probably just stick it in the microwave for a bit, or warm it up.

00:24:00 Speaker_02
For the dream, you want it out, you know, just cooked, right? We won't microwave it in the Dream Restaurant.

00:24:05 Speaker_04
No, you wouldn't do that.

00:24:06 Speaker_02
It wouldn't be microwaved in the Dream Restaurant. All bread is fresh out of the oven.

00:24:10 Speaker_04
Wow.

00:24:10 Speaker_02
Have you ever baked yourself? No, not myself. Is that the next TV show? Yeah, that's the finale. You're still writing this show. This live show. Tonight, I will bake myself. You bake yourself.

00:24:25 Speaker_04
I tried to... I had the lockdown thing. I tried it like I did a lemon drizzle and a couple of things. And then that was it.

00:24:32 Speaker_12
Did you? Did you embrace? Didn't do any baking. Realised very quickly that shops were still open and stuff. You could go and get a loaf of bread. You could buy your own scones. You mainly did barbecuing. I did a lot of barbecuing.

00:24:43 Speaker_02
Oh that's nice.

00:24:44 Speaker_04
I'm making rotisserie chicken quite a lot at the moment. I've got rotisserie in my new oven. Nice. That's nice.

00:24:49 Speaker_02
That is fun. Do you find, I would find it very easy to just watch it.

00:24:53 Speaker_04
Yeah, yeah, you do. You put the light on, you just sit and watch it.

00:24:56 Speaker_02
Grab a stool or a cushion. And listen, I don't want to keep on chipping in ideas for your new show. You've got to find new ways of hypnotising people. A rotating chicken? Watch a rotisserie chicken.

00:25:07 Speaker_04
You go into a trance that way. That's not a toy, is it? Brilliant idea. A giant chicken, clearly fake, but a giant chicken on stage, rotating.

00:25:22 Speaker_02
And they get hypnotised, and then when they're hypnotised, you swap them with the chicken, and then they wake up and they're spinning on the spit, and you're like,

00:25:29 Speaker_04
And is it all chickens in the audience now?

00:25:31 Speaker_02
The audience is for the chickens.

00:25:33 Speaker_04
But the chickens headless because how are they watching? You haven't thought this through?

00:25:37 Speaker_02
No, I haven't thought it through. They're headless at first, then you restore their heads with magic.

00:25:42 Speaker_04
I love as we're talking, Ben's just like making notes.

00:25:44 Speaker_02
Ben's writing stuff down.

00:25:46 Speaker_12
Every time Ben writes stuff down, you know it's a... Well no, Ben's probably writing down the idea for the trick and then he's going to do it himself.

00:25:52 Speaker_02
Ben used to be a magician when he was a little boy. That's why his nickname is the Great Benito, because he called himself the Great Benito.

00:25:59 Speaker_02
He had a waistcoat and a magic box and everything, and would put on magic tricks in the living room, calling himself the Great Benito. So he probably is writing down ideas for his magic show. Do you ever have that in your shows?

00:26:10 Speaker_02
Can you ever look out and spot a magician in the audience? Like a fellow and go, oh, they're watching this differently and I'm not sure.

00:26:16 Speaker_04
They make notes like Ben does.

00:26:17 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:26:18 Speaker_04
Yeah. Gags and things and they write them down. It's a little bit, a little bit annoying.

00:26:22 Speaker_02
Yeah. A little bit irritating. Maybe sometimes you look out into the audience and there's a, you know, evangelist preacher doing the opposite of what you do.

00:26:32 Speaker_02
They're there in the cap and shades and they're getting ideas for when they exercise a six year old.

00:26:35 Speaker_03
Yes.

00:26:40 Speaker_02
Your dream starter.

00:26:41 Speaker_04
Right. Well, I'm at home doing my own cooking here. This is integral to the setup. But yeah, the restaurantiness means, I guess, someone else is, you know, washing up and doing all that stuff. But I've got a very nice lobster risotto that I make.

00:26:57 Speaker_04
Before, though, going into this, parmesan and red wine. I, years ago, read in an interview with Christopher Walken that that was his favorite snack. And I tried it. I thought it was quite nice.

00:27:09 Speaker_04
And just of late in Venice, I had really good parmesan, like at least 50 something months aged. And that with a good red wine, with a good Sangiovese perhaps, is phenomenal. So there is that on the table as people are sitting down.

00:27:24 Speaker_04
I know it's quite a starter, but it's like a sort of a snack. A little chef's welcome.

00:27:31 Speaker_04
So that that will kick us off and then we would we would move into the lobster Risotto that really sounded like you were lining one of us up for an impression on a u.s.

00:27:41 Speaker_12
Talk show. He said Christopher I A lot of people have got a good walking and I'm not one of them.

00:27:52 Speaker_02
Someone asked me to do a gig recently. Oh really? They shouted out, yeah, the audience started shouting out, because I'm not very good at impressions. Right.

00:27:58 Speaker_02
So I couldn't run anything on this podcast, they started shouting out impressions, they shouted Christopher Walken. And I, in my head I was like, well everyone can do that. Yeah. Went for it, couldn't do it.

00:28:06 Speaker_12
Oh you gave it a go. Why don't you give it a go now and saying I love parmesan and red wine? I love parmesan and red wine. It's not bad, is it?

00:28:16 Speaker_02
Not the worst thing I've ever done.

00:28:17 Speaker_12
You threw your body into it as well, which I really like. I was trying to, you know, think, carry this watch, I possess! I think that's, yeah, that's a lovely way to, if I walked in somewhere and there was parmesan and red wine on the table.

00:28:30 Speaker_04
Crumbled up, not grated. Chopped up into little manageable bits.

00:28:35 Speaker_02
You want to get a good chunk, you want to get a good taste of the cheese.

00:28:38 Speaker_04
At least... I didn't even know that was a thing here. You struggle to get more than 36 here.

00:28:46 Speaker_12
But it's really good, it's really good if you get it... Do you want the whole wheel on the table as you come in? So you can just sort of chip it away.

00:28:55 Speaker_02
And in the middle is the card that one of them chose.

00:28:58 Speaker_04
That's exactly right. Or this prediction in this envelope.

00:29:02 Speaker_02
Were you trying to give Darren another idea? I just think we could do an off-menu Darren Brown collab for the next tour and everything is food-based. You crack the wheel of parmesan and there's a card in the middle. People do that all the time.

00:29:13 Speaker_02
Darren's done it. Like with fruit or something. And there are things in there that they chose. That's a really good, it's a very good review. You could do it with a wheel of cheese. I don't know. I don't know if you could.

00:29:23 Speaker_04
I'm trying to work out how you get something into a wheel of cheese. I've got one method but I think it takes about four years. Worth it.

00:29:35 Speaker_02
It's a 50 month trick. You must have done a painting of Walken. I have, yeah, I have, over the years, done a couple actually, yeah.

00:29:44 Speaker_12
How do you choose your subjects for your portraits?

00:29:47 Speaker_04
Just kind of great faces, I mean, I spent a couple of weeks very close to the big, big paintings as well, so it's got to be someone whose face I want to paint.

00:29:56 Speaker_04
So I've just started one with Jack Nicholson, who's got a great, a great face, and just finished one of Beethoven, who's also got a great... well, he's interesting with Beethoven, he doesn't really know exactly what he looks like, so he's just kind of working... Saint Bernard.

00:30:07 Speaker_04
Other people's paintings. A Saint Bernard! It's a dog. You think Beethoven looks like a Saint Bernard? Why did you say Saint Bernard? Are you American?

00:30:14 Speaker_02
Well, that was what it was in the film. Yeah. James thinking of the film. Beethoven the dog! Sorry!

00:30:19 Speaker_04
Yes, of course. Sorry, sorry, James.

00:30:21 Speaker_02
They can't say Bernard in that. Yeah, they do. Of course they do, because it's an American film. So how have you settled on what Beethoven actually looks like then for your one?

00:30:30 Speaker_04
I felt there's an artist I found who got hold of the death mask and was able to do like really accurate reconstructions and luckily they do all look a bit like the paintings. Yeah. Otherwise, that would have been a shame.

00:30:44 Speaker_04
And yeah, so I worked with that. I work from reference shots anyway, so I love it. It's just a way of spending two weeks or whatever just like locked in a creative thing. It's brilliant. It's my favourite thing. Is it therapeutic? Yeah, it really is.

00:31:00 Speaker_04
It really is. I don't know, do you find it hard if you've been touring or something and it just sort of finishes and then you're like, and you get really irritated, you blame everybody else, you realise you're just in this slightly kind of thing.

00:31:12 Speaker_04
So having something like painting to go into, it doesn't involve anybody else, I can just go away and do it and it's the best.

00:31:18 Speaker_12
Yeah, maybe I need to do something like that, because I finish a tour and go, all I'm thinking about halfway through the tour is I can't wait for some time off doing nothing, and then I'm sat there doing nothing going, oh, I feel really angry.

00:31:27 Speaker_12
I'd love it if we started painting, Ed. Yeah? Yeah. I'd like to see your paintings. I'll paint you. OK.

00:31:33 Speaker_04
That's nice.

00:31:34 Speaker_12
Yeah. No one really knows what James looks like though.

00:31:36 Speaker_04
No.

00:31:37 Speaker_12
You'll have to track down his death mask.

00:31:40 Speaker_02
I've got one. Yeah. I'll lend you my death mask. Thank you, mate. This lobster risotto sounds delicious, but let's get into it proper, how you make it and like what.

00:31:47 Speaker_04
Oh, OK. Well, you make a bisque to start with. So you roast or dry pan your lobster shells with veg and then fish stock or water and perno and tomato puree, fennel, chili.

00:32:05 Speaker_04
This recipe, I should say, it comes from a chef called Will Parks, who is now at the rather brilliant Pig Hotels. He gave me this and there's a couple of other things I should probably not say, so I don't give away all his secrets.

00:32:18 Speaker_04
And then you use this, and fennel and chili, and then you start off, you've made a stock, and then you use that stock in your risotto, which I use cognac and vermouth with, and then you reduce it, you reduce the stock to a bisque, and then you add that bisque at the end into your risotto along with your lobster meat and lemon and some chives, and that's it.

00:32:40 Speaker_04
And it should have the consistency of hot larvae, it should tip Like hot lava. Do you know this? You're supposed to be able to tilt the plate and a risotto should just move like lava, as opposed to a wallop of stodge that you often get.

00:32:56 Speaker_04
I thought that was a good thing. That's always stuck with me. Move like lava.

00:33:01 Speaker_12
Lava is a very funny thing to compare it to.

00:33:03 Speaker_02
Sure, because it's not something that loads of people have seen.

00:33:05 Speaker_04
Yeah, you're right, or seen move. Maybe it's not very, also very hot as well.

00:33:10 Speaker_12
You don't want your risotto that hot. Also, you would have thought with Italian food, the last thing they want to think about is lava.

00:33:15 Speaker_04
I was thinking that as well. In fact, I had this in Naples, which is not too far from Herculaneum. What's the other one called? What's the big one called? Bombay. Bombay!

00:33:26 Speaker_12
A good themed risotto though, wouldn't it, in Pompeii, if you go to a restaurant? Very insensitive analogy to use in that part of the world. Get little shaped things under there.

00:33:33 Speaker_04
People going... Model the rice into frightened shapes.

00:33:37 Speaker_12
Maybe that's what happened, we don't know, right, about the history. We don't know. Maybe someone just made a massive risotto, and everyone got trapped under it. Got out of hand. It was too hot.

00:33:45 Speaker_02
Get out of the way, it moves like lava! It moves like a... they wouldn't have the words. I just think of Dante's Peak when the grandma's pushing the boat, she's waist high in the lava.

00:33:57 Speaker_12
A couple of great film references from you today. Yeah, pretty good. Beethoven and Dante's Peak. The harking back man.

00:34:04 Speaker_02
It's the Pierce Brosnan Dante's Peak. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the grandma gets out of the boat. I guess it's not lava, it's like lava infused water. Like it's this lake that is like absolutely... It's lava stock. Like yeah, it's lava stock.

00:34:18 Speaker_02
It's absolutely mad hot lake that you shouldn't get in and she's not gonna get the grandkids to the end of the lake if she's in the boat. So she just gets out the boat and she pushes it but she's like,

00:34:27 Speaker_04
Does she sacrifice herself?

00:34:28 Speaker_02
She sacrifices herself, yeah. That's nice. And she absolutely hates it, like when she gets in the water you can tell she's like, this wasn't worth it, I shouldn't have done this.

00:34:36 Speaker_04
She's a fool to herself, she regretted it at the moment she got in the water.

00:34:39 Speaker_12
Yeah, yeah. It'd be a much better scene if she just put her toe in and went, absolutely no way. Yeah, nope, sorry. Chuck one of the kids in.

00:34:45 Speaker_04
I haven't seen Dante's Peak, like that doesn't even really ring a bell as a film.

00:34:48 Speaker_12
No, it feels like the sort of thing I have seen maybe 25 years ago.

00:34:53 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's just classic, you know, before the Ketamonodian opened up and we had the... Oh, classic. Everyone's nodding now, I get it.

00:35:02 Speaker_02
And it was like that period of film where you were going to see Daylight with Sylvester Stallone, Independence Day, obviously the big one that spawned all of them. Stargate. Stargate, absolutely. Me and my mum, as a surprise, took me to see Stargate.

00:35:14 Speaker_02
I went bananas for it. I loved it. Really loved Stargate. Twister. Twister.

00:35:20 Speaker_04
With Philip Seymour Hoffman.

00:35:22 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You must have Twister on VHS, Derek. I first think actually I did. Derek, you do, you do have it. You must have drawn for that too, what happened?

00:35:46 Speaker_04
I have, yeah, I have. But I could do another one, actually, because that was a long time ago and I don't think it was very good. Do him in Twister.

00:35:52 Speaker_02
Do the Twister one.

00:35:52 Speaker_04
Yeah, just twisting.

00:35:54 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:35:55 Speaker_04
In a Hawaiian, like a Hawaiian shirt and it was... The cap on. Yeah, it wasn't a very subtle kind of role, was it? He hadn't maybe been cast.

00:36:02 Speaker_12
What I've noticed is every time you suggest something to Darren, he goes, yeah, yeah, sure, I'll do that. Sure, yeah, I'm just being polite. No, he's gonna do it all. The chicken idea was like, yeah, great, okay, good.

00:36:13 Speaker_02
I haven't suggested to someone so many things before that they should do. But I just think it's because if I can influence Darren Brown...

00:36:20 Speaker_12
Yeah.

00:36:20 Speaker_02
Then I'm the ultimate influencer. So I just keep on saying you should do this, Derren.

00:36:24 Speaker_12
Yeah. And if he doesn't want to... Yeah, but Derren's just going to keep going, yeah, sure. And then he's not going to do any of it.

00:36:28 Speaker_02
Yeah. But that's like a tip for anyone in your audience now who you try and influence. They just know all they have to do is say, yeah, sure, to him. And he can't, he can't control me. Yeah, sure, Derren.

00:36:36 Speaker_04
I'm tempted to bring out the chicken just as a little niche. Yeah. Where would that get the biggest laugh in the country?

00:36:42 Speaker_02
If I brought out... I mean, most audiences are going to laugh at that. It's not, they're not made of stone. That's funny.

00:36:48 Speaker_04
I mean where would they know you and get the reference?

00:36:52 Speaker_02
Kettering? Anywhere around Northamptonshire.

00:36:56 Speaker_12
And then you follow up by saying, we all remember what it was like before the Odeon opened.

00:37:06 Speaker_10
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00:37:18 Speaker_10
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00:37:28 Speaker_10
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00:37:39 Speaker_10
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00:37:48 Speaker_10
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00:38:03 Speaker_10
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00:38:07 Speaker_01
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00:38:25 Speaker_01
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00:39:35 Speaker_04
Dream main course. Dream main course. Right, now I feel very strongly about this. Meatballs. Meatballs.

00:39:42 Speaker_04
So, again, we're in my home, and if there's a thing I really dislike, I'm trying to make it begin with a P, but it doesn't, is, in restaurants, is the whole, the tasting menu thing. I really, and that's the opposite, in my mind, of what a

00:39:58 Speaker_04
Meals should, you know, be, and I like to kind of be with friends and for it to feel social and easy and not like a, you know, like listening to a lecture course on two dots of sauce on a leaf.

00:40:10 Speaker_12
It's the pointing places again, isn't it? You don't want the people pointing at the food.

00:40:13 Speaker_04
Yeah, it's annoying. It kills the vibe and, you know, it's just like you don't listen to the origin story of what you know. It's just got a taste of more grass. Um, so I do the opposite of that.

00:40:27 Speaker_04
So this is in my home and I've got my friends over and I've sort of, I won't name my friends cause it'd be upsetting to the friends I haven't invited. Yes.

00:40:33 Speaker_12
But they know, they know if they've not been invited.

00:40:36 Speaker_04
Oh, they'd never know. They'd never know what happened. I'd be very, very careful about that. The only thing, the restaurant aspect of this is providing is a round table. I've always, I love the people sitting around a round table. I don't have one.

00:40:47 Speaker_04
Can't really fit a round table in the kitchen at home. It doesn't quite work. So we've got a rectangular one, but then you're always a bit stuck out on the end. So it's a round table.

00:40:55 Speaker_04
And I don't know what this is, I don't know whether I saw, somewhere between, maybe it's in the Godfather, or maybe it's in a Woody Allen film, and there's just some people, and they're in a restaurant, and they're making, there's meatballs and tomato sauce and spaghetti, it's that Italian-American thing, and they're just like, it's the passing around the table, and the chat, and everyone's talking over each other, and I don't know if that only happens on TV and in films, but.

00:41:18 Speaker_04
That's the thing for me, like it's comfort food and it's that social experience and everything that's the opposite of a fucking tasting menu. So we're having that.

00:41:29 Speaker_04
And I learned to cook a bit out in Italy, once in Florence and then again in Ravello in the Amalfi Coast. There's a great woman there called Mama Agata who teaches Italian cooking, which I love more than anything.

00:41:44 Speaker_04
And I first made meatballs there and then I've sort of, which is a kind of Neapolitan way of doing them, which is a bit different. And now how I do them is with, again, sort of a bit of fennel and a bit of chili and garlic.

00:41:56 Speaker_04
There's a bit of a running theme, bringing everything together. And your milky bread. Do you know this? You ever made meatballs? No. So you soak stale bread in milk and then you kind of take the crust off. You mix it up with beef and pork, mince.

00:42:10 Speaker_04
herbs and a bit of garlic, no onions, egg to bind, and parmesan, I think parsley, I guess, and you mix all that up and you need to deep fry those, you make them into little meatballs and you roll them in flour, then really you want to deep fry them, and then meanwhile you're making your tomato sauce with your tomatoes and olive oil, and I'd go maybe light capers and anchovies and a bit of olives and stuff in there,

00:42:35 Speaker_04
In fact, actually, I think, to be more accurate with this, it's the perfect meatballs that I don't ever think exist. There's always something disappointing when you order. Sometimes you do fancy meatballs, and they're never that nice.

00:42:46 Speaker_04
They're a bit bland, or it's just not quite, but it's the idea of the perfect meatballs in the tomato sauce. Maybe not spaghetti, but like the thicker spaghettis, like bucatini or spaghettoni, or what's it called?

00:42:58 Speaker_04
Pici that you can make with, it's just semolina and water, and you roll them out by hand. But then you don't get the starchy water that you get from the sort of dried spaghetti, which I think you need in the sauce.

00:43:09 Speaker_04
So good spaghetti and really just there's something that's always missing. I don't know what it is, but there's a perfect meatball out there. And this is the dream restaurant.

00:43:18 Speaker_12
Absolutely, it would be the perfect meatball. There's nothing missing from these.

00:43:21 Speaker_04
I've thought about these perfect meatballs so much since first listening to your podcast.

00:43:25 Speaker_12
Size is a difficult thing with meatballs, I think. It is. They're rarely the perfect size.

00:43:29 Speaker_04
Yeah.

00:43:30 Speaker_12
Golf balls are too big.

00:43:32 Speaker_04
I think actually they're kind of polpette, the actual... I think they're only like a cherry size. And normally you'd have them just on their own without any tomato sauce. That's very much an American thing.

00:43:40 Speaker_04
But I think it's one of the few things maybe the Americans really got right when it came to bastardizing Italian food. And that's the whole spaghetti tomato thing. So, yes, that. But I would go, yeah, a little bigger than a cherry.

00:43:52 Speaker_12
Slightly bigger than a cherry.

00:43:53 Speaker_04
Yeah.

00:43:53 Speaker_12
Big cherry size.

00:43:54 Speaker_04
Big cherry. Strawberry?

00:43:56 Speaker_12
Yeah.

00:43:56 Speaker_04
Strawberries are slightly bigger than cherries. But not the shape of a strawberry. No.

00:43:59 Speaker_12
That would be mad.

00:44:00 Speaker_04
No, it's just an idiot. But, yeah, nice round, strawberry-sized rounds.

00:44:04 Speaker_02
I don't know what you mean about chasing the perfect one, though, because I think, as English people, meatballs, spaghetti meatballs, specifically, are one of the things that we see drawn before we eat.

00:44:16 Speaker_02
Like, before I'd ever had spaghetti and meatballs, I'd seen it drawn in cartoons and it looked delicious.

00:44:21 Speaker_04
You say that, there's a little cartoon circle just next to your head on the wall behind you.

00:44:25 Speaker_02
That does look a bit... And I doubt it'd look.

00:44:28 Speaker_04
I do that stuff!

00:44:29 Speaker_02
They look like spaghetti and meatballs right there. Darren, stop! I think you see it in those cartoons, look delicious in the bino or whatever, or in like Lady and the Tramp. There's all those forks stuck in them.

00:44:46 Speaker_04
It's kind of cartoon, yeah exactly.

00:44:48 Speaker_02
So then trying to, and we're singing songs about them as well, we're singing songs about my meatball rolled away and all that, all covered in cheese, because somebody sneezed. It lost me there. On top of spaghetti, all covered in cheese.

00:45:04 Speaker_02
How would Christopher Walken have sung that?

00:45:06 Speaker_03
I lost my...

00:45:08 Speaker_12
Somebody snitched! I thought you meant the rude song you sing at school.

00:45:12 Speaker_02
Here we go.

00:45:13 Speaker_12
I don't know this. Do you not remember spaghetti and meatballs and a banana?

00:45:16 Speaker_02
Do you not remember that? No, I've never heard that before. I just pointed at his penis for the listening.

00:45:21 Speaker_12
It's a rude version of La Bamba. Spaghetti and meatballs and a banana. And the meatballs are the balls. Yes, we know. The spaghetti is the pubes.

00:45:30 Speaker_04
Whoa, whoa, whoa! What's the banana?

00:45:35 Speaker_12
I believe leaving the headline until last, it's the penis. It's the winkle. I thought that's what you meant.

00:45:42 Speaker_02
But my point is, spaghetti and meatballs were a big part of your life as a kid before you've even tried it. I think so. Before you've even eaten spaghetti. So you've got this thing in your head.

00:45:51 Speaker_02
So it might be impossible because a lot of the time with food and drink, we're chasing the first time we had them or whatever, or the best time we had them. With this, we're chasing like what it conjured up in us when we saw these drawings.

00:46:05 Speaker_04
Godfather or whatever it was. There's a whole thing that comes with it, which is why you need a dream restaurant to make it happen. I don't even quite know what it would be that would make them the perfect meatball.

00:46:16 Speaker_04
I suppose they would have a bit of a crunch to the outside maybe, and then maybe the sauce would just be really rich and not just like an apologetic tin of tomato. It would actually have a real something to it.

00:46:28 Speaker_12
I think it is about the atmosphere as well, right? You described you passing it over or someone's dishing it up and it's just not fussing, is it? It's just like warming and homely.

00:46:37 Speaker_04
Yeah, yeah, yeah. My partner has a habit of serving. By the time I've sat down, he's served everything out and put it on plates, which to me is... I'd never say anything directly. I might say it on the podcast that he might listen to in the car.

00:46:50 Speaker_04
But it slightly kills that part of the process, which I think is important.

00:46:55 Speaker_04
And also when you see it in films and stuff, the sauce is always sat atop the spaghetti, which I think is kind of wrong, because you want to mix the spaghetti in with the sauce for that starchy goodness to thicken the sauce and the rest of it.

00:47:08 Speaker_04
But I guess it just doesn't look as good if you're designing or directing that film. You want it to be a bit messy as well, don't you? You want it to... Yeah, you want it messy.

00:47:16 Speaker_12
Slop it on and get involved. Are you tucking a napkin into the collar?

00:47:21 Speaker_04
I should totally do that. You should do that. If you're having spaghetti and meatballs. It'd be kitchen roll in our house. Yeah, yeah. So it might, you know, come up, like, bend up a bit. Yeah, yeah.

00:47:31 Speaker_04
But expensive kitchen roll, like, you know, the stuff that really absorbs. Yeah, bounty. I was thinking Regina Blitz, but I don't want to... Vagina blitz. Yeah, that's a thing. Isn't that a drag queen? Yeah.

00:47:44 Speaker_02
Brilliant. Thank you. That's what he reminded me as well.

00:47:46 Speaker_02
I forgot about this until you started talking about it, but like I used to work in the school as classroom assistant and there was like an annex center where the kids who couldn't be in the main school would go to school and there's only about three of them in it and they would all be like one-on-one with different classroom assistants.

00:48:00 Speaker_02
There was a kid from my class was sent there so we'd take it in turns to go there like once or twice a week and me and him were given the job one day of cooking for everyone and I learned how to make meatloaf from Jamie Oliver's cookbook and he suggested that we made that into spaghetti and meatballs and have it with spaghetti and do that.

00:48:18 Speaker_02
We did that for everyone and it was a really nice communal thing. And that was a very nice memory that I'd half forgotten about until now.

00:48:24 Speaker_04
I was really, really fussy when I was a kid. I barely ate anything. I was a proper fuss eater.

00:48:29 Speaker_04
And then when I was at uni, I was in the back of a car, starving, and the people I was with, they went out and got a pizza and called from the shop, do you want sausage on it? And I said yes, thinking that meant sausage.

00:48:42 Speaker_04
And salami was an absolute no-no. I was so hungry, but when it came, it was all mixed in with the cheese and everything, so I couldn't pull the salami out. So I kind of thought, all right, I'll just have to trick myself that I like salami.

00:48:54 Speaker_04
So I did this thing of, as I was eating it, not out loud, but in my head, I was going,

00:49:00 Speaker_04
I'm doing that and not giving myself a moment to go hang on where's the salami taste I don't like where is it where is it there it is I don't like it and it worked and I ate it it was lovely and then I started doing it with everything and I just wiped out all these things I didn't like by just doing this by going mmm in my head.

00:49:15 Speaker_04
The only thing left was mushrooms and blue cheese which I can't stand. You Derren Browned yourself.

00:49:21 Speaker_02
I Derren Browned myself at a young age. Are you aware that that's like a saying?

00:49:25 Speaker_12
You know it's a verb you know your name's a verb right?

00:49:29 Speaker_04
I use it without even realising the irony. I just Derren Brown that.

00:49:34 Speaker_12
Me and James watched someone try and Derren Brown someone else out of hating a food, do you remember? Oh my god, it was the best. Fucking hell. Yeah, I do remember what happened.

00:49:46 Speaker_12
It was when we were doing Celebrity hunted Right, and it was before we started filming.

00:49:52 Speaker_02
We were all just hanging out in Shrewsbury prison was where we started We had like two days in Shrewsbury prison for them to just shoot like five seconds of us escaping from the prison But it was such a great two days

00:50:03 Speaker_12
So we were with the Speakmans. I don't know if you know the Speakmans. They're like therapists but they do a lot of work with people around that sort of stuff and they're on This Morning quite a lot.

00:50:13 Speaker_12
There's a very funny video of them speaking to a woman who throws up every time she thinks about custard. But we were also with Bobby Siegel who was on University Challenge. And he didn't like Marmite. So they went, right Bobby?

00:50:27 Speaker_02
Also, for context as well, Bobby Siegel is the most positive person you've ever met. He's actively trying to be positive about everything.

00:50:37 Speaker_02
And would never in a million years, if someone was doing any sort of like mentalism on him or hypnosis, ever admit if it wasn't working. He's a people pleaser. So it was perfect.

00:50:49 Speaker_12
We watched him go through all of these exercises they set up with Marmite of him getting like, Now imagine I've got my Marmite here, Bobby. What are you going to do? Move closer to the Marmite, closer to the Marmite.

00:51:00 Speaker_12
And then he was imagining eating the Marmite. And what do you feel about Marmite now, Bobby? And he went, yeah, I like it actually. You could tell, total bullshit.

00:51:08 Speaker_02
A bit of an enthusiastic face going like, it's good, isn't it, Bobby? You like it, Bobby?

00:51:12 Speaker_12
And did they then get him to try it for real? The next morning at breakfast, they got him to try some Marmite. He was like, ah, it's nice, yeah. And they walked away from the table.

00:51:18 Speaker_12
You could just see him, like, absolutely gutted that he'd eaten Marmite.

00:51:21 Speaker_02
He was eating it on its own, like, he had a pot and he was putting his finger in and just into his mouth. So much Marmite that even people who love Marmite wouldn't do that.

00:51:31 Speaker_04
I love Marmite, but even like a tiny bit of it on its own, I have a real, like it really makes me wretch.

00:51:35 Speaker_02
You want to hang out with the Speakmans? I think what they did with him, and maybe you can vouch if this would work, so they basically said, think of a food you love, and we're putting that over here.

00:51:45 Speaker_02
So they like gestured it's over in this part of the room, and as we move this pot of Marmite closer to that, how do you feel about it? And then eat the Marmite.

00:51:56 Speaker_04
That was what I remember it being. I remember I cured someone of a cat allergy like that, and using a sort of similar thing, just really curious to see if it would work. And I say cured, but it definitely worked

00:52:14 Speaker_04
there and then, because when he was talking about cats before, he was even just talking about them and thinking about them, it was making him sneeze and everything, and then he didn't afterwards, so there's that.

00:52:24 Speaker_04
You've created, like, but that's not a real cat yet, it's just how you feel differently.

00:52:28 Speaker_04
And then apparently he was better with the cats, but I think it didn't really last, like, you know, after a few weeks, a couple of months, whatever, he was back to where he was. So, really, yeah, hard to say, but it does have, it can have some effect.

00:52:39 Speaker_02
We felt Bobby Seagull was just being polite.

00:52:41 Speaker_04
I think he was just being polite, yeah. What he should do is go, mmm, mmm.

00:52:44 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah, I think he was actively making those noises. So maybe it did help a little bit, him doing that.

00:52:50 Speaker_04
I find Marmite and mint saucers the other thing that I love, but I can't have it on its own.

00:52:54 Speaker_12
It's just a thing, it's just something... It's rare that you're in a situation where you might end up having a marmite or mint sauce by itself.

00:53:01 Speaker_04
But you're going to do it once if you like both of them.

00:53:03 Speaker_12
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.

00:53:04 Speaker_02
There was a salad in the pub that I used to work in, this chain pub, that was just basically, I mean, I can't remember any of the other ingredients, but there weren't many other ingredients, basically just mint sauce and red onions.

00:53:14 Speaker_02
I got hooked on it one day, I couldn't stop eating it. Just this salad.

00:53:20 Speaker_04
It certainly explains your breath.

00:53:22 Speaker_02
I'll stink.

00:53:23 Speaker_03
For the listener, I'll stink.

00:53:33 Speaker_04
It's not terribly interesting, but I just thought I'd like a nice, like a rocket salad, because with the meatballs, you know, I'm sure there are better side dishes in the world, but if you're having this rocket salad with some of that parmesan and perhaps a nice balsamic, nice olive oil, that would be very nice.

00:53:47 Speaker_12
This is a very coherent menu.

00:53:50 Speaker_04
It's a little too carby, I suppose. Risotto followed by pasta.

00:53:54 Speaker_12
Yeah, but people, like, I would do that at an Italian restaurant. Yeah, because you're like, you're there to enjoy it and you want to get stuck in, yeah.

00:54:02 Speaker_04
I suppose they'd appear at the risotto and the pasta would probably appear on the same preemie platy course, wouldn't they?

00:54:07 Speaker_02
Yeah, but you're the customer, right? Exactly, yeah. So this is a very nice simple salad.

00:54:12 Speaker_04
Yeah, a nice simple salad, yeah. I think you, it could be a bowl of rice, mashed potato, I guess. It's more carbs, but no, it's just, yeah, nice little, Wild rocket, quite nice. Grew my own rocket for a little while, it was delicious.

00:54:26 Speaker_04
And then never returned to that idea again.

00:54:28 Speaker_02
Were you making salads pretty regular? Did you overdo it? I had a lot of rocket to use.

00:54:32 Speaker_04
And again, good parmesan. I'd probably just end up eating the parmesan on its own. There's nothing like that. That and a good bottle of red.

00:54:41 Speaker_02
It's in the first episode of Chef's Table, that series where, and I've forgotten the name of the chef, Massimo, is it? But like, he tells the story of when they saved all the... Yeah, all of the rounds.

00:54:54 Speaker_04
It was the broken, by promoting the idea of cooking with broken parmesan, wasn't it?

00:54:58 Speaker_02
Right, yes. Yeah, yeah. And they do the tapping, what it should sound like when you tap on it. And that stuck with me a lot. That kind of like, the sound of that sounds delicious. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. On a wheel?

00:55:11 Speaker_04
Or does it doesn't work with a wedge?

00:55:12 Speaker_02
No, yeah. That's like a wood clock. You can't go around the supermarket just tapping on all the wedges.

00:55:18 Speaker_04
Have you done the avocado?

00:55:20 Speaker_02
Okay.

00:55:23 Speaker_02
yeah yeah tap it on the wheel and what's what is the sound is it like a dead heavy sound or is it like it's like uh yeah it is dead i guess but then there's like a bit of a hollowy sound to it as well so like yeah you get that kind of like it's like a dampened drum or something and when you hear something when you hear something knock back you know it's ready yeah knock from the inside i'm ready it's the cheese knocking back

00:55:49 Speaker_02
What's the longest you've spent on a trick for it not to work?

00:55:58 Speaker_04
That's a good question.

00:56:00 Speaker_02
I think that's a good question, right?

00:56:01 Speaker_04
I remember being on stage on Broadway and I messed up a trick at the beginning and it was like, it was quite a long trick, as in like, you know, 15-20 minutes, quite a long time to spend on one thing on stage with four climaxes that we're gonna have and I just knew none of them were gonna work and that felt like, and that felt like the longest time I'd spent on a trick for it not to work and I made the same mistake the night after and the same mistake the night after.

00:56:22 Speaker_04
But by the end of it, I learned that people didn't mind. It's a weird thing, you mess something up, it's sort of okay.

00:56:29 Speaker_12
Do people almost want to see you mess at least one thing up?

00:56:32 Speaker_04
Yeah, I think I have to. And if a show's gone too smoothly, I will mess something up on purpose. It's like a juggler dropping a ball. I guess you have to.

00:56:41 Speaker_04
I remember I did a show once and I couldn't get the, neither me or the person on stage couldn't get the lid off the marker. And I could hear him backstage running around trying to get another one. Those weren't any other markers.

00:56:52 Speaker_04
And it got reviewed that night and it was like this really lovely human moment. I guess they thought I was doing it on purpose.

00:56:58 Speaker_04
So I do it sometimes on purpose because actually now people aren't looking at what you're doing or thinking about other stuff. If they're watching somebody struggle to get a marker off a Lid off a marker.

00:57:09 Speaker_04
But yeah, failure is an important thing, thank God.

00:57:11 Speaker_12
And people need something to compare it to, right? Yeah, sure. They need to... The really good stuff seems really good if they can see what happens when it goes wrong. If they can see what happens, yeah.

00:57:20 Speaker_02
Sorry, the amount of time you must spend... There was one where you get a... There we go. Darren's not going to remember this at all. Oh, there'll be another one. I forgot to remember this.

00:57:28 Speaker_02
There's one where you get them to bet on the horses and you said that you'd done it. So for people who haven't seen it, it's like a series of every time you tell them to bet on a horse, it wins. And then they win massive at the end.

00:57:45 Speaker_04
It slightly killed the surprise for anybody watching it. Yes, spoiler alert.

00:57:50 Speaker_02
Too late to say that?

00:57:51 Speaker_04
What do you want me to say?

00:57:53 Speaker_02
They don't expect that because that spoils it even more. Oh yeah, yeah, how it worked.

00:57:58 Speaker_02
Yeah, so the way you've done it is you've done it with a series of people and it's really, it's not like, it's just that if you do it enough times it will eventually happen like that and then that person will think that this amazing trick has been done with them or something.

00:58:09 Speaker_04
How long are you spending on that? Yeah, so that took a very long time. So yeah, it all started with the idea that, you know, if you'd get every week, you'd get a thing in your email saying this horse is going to win like in two days time.

00:58:21 Speaker_04
And then you, perhaps the first time you're like, really? And then you don't even think about it. And then you realize it has, and then you get it.

00:58:27 Speaker_04
there's another result the next week, and maybe this time you actually watch the race, and it does win, and does it again, it does win, and then when it gets to the fourth one, or the fifth one, it's like, would you, do you want to buy this system?

00:58:37 Speaker_04
It's expensive, but you'll be able to do this whenever you like.

00:58:39 Speaker_04
And yet, you just start with enough people, and the one in six that happen to get the winning horse, the winning prediction, because you obviously divided that big group into six, and given each group a different prediction.

00:58:50 Speaker_04
So you take that group of six, which if you start with enough people, it's still a big group of people, And then you split them into six for the next race, and them into six for the next race.

00:58:57 Speaker_04
So there'll be one person by the end of it, which we had, who had just got a series of impossible predictions. And sure enough, she was willing to put her life savings up to buy this system.

00:59:11 Speaker_04
And then we told her, after she'd given us the money, well, here's how it'll work, so let's see. Oh, no, there was a twist at the end. I won't say it, just in case there's anyone out there that still wants to watch it. People have to watch it.

00:59:27 Speaker_02
Your dream drink, Darren Brown?

00:59:29 Speaker_04
Dream? Well, I'm going for a bottle of... Well, it all starts with a parmesan, I suppose, so a nice Sangiovese, maybe a Brunello di Montalcino, which is probably my favourite red.

00:59:42 Speaker_04
I'm not drinking a lot with it, but just like, yeah, I'd probably just like a glass and a half.

00:59:48 Speaker_12
Very specific. Wow. Yeah. Are you... Why the half glass there?

00:59:52 Speaker_04
I like to drink exactly the same amount as milk goes into a Cadbury's Flake. That's... and then I stop. It's a very good system now.

01:00:00 Speaker_04
Not enough people stick to the... It's an example of a martini afterwards and I just can't do a martini if I've had more than like maybe a glass and a half.

01:00:07 Speaker_12
Yeah, that's why I start with a martini and then I think I can carry on. Do you? I start with a martini.

01:00:15 Speaker_04
I think it's a nice digestive afterwards and opens you up a little bit.

01:00:19 Speaker_12
I think if I got to the end of the night I'd be like, no, there's no way I can have a martini now, I'm going to absolutely lose my mind. I quite like a Tommy's Margarita to start things off, don't you?

01:00:30 Speaker_04
So Tommy's Margarita is, there's no triple sec or other alcohol in it. It is just tequila, a good 100% agave tequila, not the horrible stuff, and lime and agave. And I was friendly with, remember Kenny Everett?

01:00:46 Speaker_04
Do you remember Cleo Rokos, who was Kenny Everett's sidekick? Red-headed bombshell. So she's a good friend and she has a tequila brand of her own called Aquareva. And that got me. This was before tequila became a huge thing.

01:01:00 Speaker_04
She was very much at the forefront of this kind of big tequila revival. And she was obviously very passionate about the drink. and got me quite passionate about it too.

01:01:08 Speaker_04
It is a magic drink, you know, there's no hangover if you don't, as I'm sure you know, if you don't, as long as you stay hydrated and you don't mix it with any other drinks.

01:01:17 Speaker_04
So the nice thing about a Tommy's Margarita is because there's no other alcohol in it, you really can just drink this drink all night and you will feel fine, if slightly held, like I'm holding my my head in my own hands now.

01:01:30 Speaker_04
There's a slight... I've done this... I have drunk them all day once, and the next morning everything's fine, but it's... maybe it's a bit like everything's been taken away and replaced with identical...

01:01:40 Speaker_04
There's something slightly off, you can't put your finger on it, but there's no bad feelings.

01:01:45 Speaker_12
I think I prefer a traditional hangover to feeling like all of my stuff has been replaced with identical versions of themselves. You've not got the Tommy's Margarita on your menu yet, do you want that as you come into the meal, before the meal?

01:01:57 Speaker_04
It could be a welcoming drink. And then you're moving on to the red wine. Moving on to the Parmesan, the red wine.

01:02:06 Speaker_12
So this is a very Italian menu. Have you spent a lot of time in Italy? Do you remember the first time you had these Italian wines that you thought, this is my jam?

01:02:13 Speaker_04
I don't know a huge amount about wine, but as with anything like that, it's like, if you can have one little area or one little part of it, and then it makes it feel a bit more manageable.

01:02:21 Speaker_04
I remember having Brunello on the holiday in Tuscany somewhere, and loving it, going, that's it, that's what I like.

01:02:29 Speaker_12
That's my one.

01:02:30 Speaker_04
That's it. Yeah. And then from that, I guess you sort of build out and go, I quite like that too. No, I can't remember the difference. I don't know which one I'm drinking. But that's definitely my whiny home. I cook Italian food all the time. I love pasta.

01:02:45 Speaker_04
I would have pasta all the time. And I can. You literally can.

01:02:49 Speaker_12
You're Darren Brown.

01:02:50 Speaker_04
Exactly.

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01:03:55 Speaker_11
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01:04:31 Speaker_02
We arrive at your dream dessert. Very exciting.

01:04:33 Speaker_04
Here already?

01:04:34 Speaker_02
Yeah.

01:04:34 Speaker_04
Has it gone quickly? Has gone quickly, yeah.

01:04:37 Speaker_02
You have no idea how many other, you know, tricks and specials of yours I've held back on asking about, so I've done quite well. I appreciate it. You ever worry about people that you've done stuff on?

01:04:49 Speaker_02
You ever go, I hope that guy's alright or I've got to push the guy off the building?

01:04:52 Speaker_04
Well, there's so few of them that it's easy to keep in touch and maintain a friendship with them. So that's what's happened. So like in the last one, It was a few years ago now, but on Netflix and Channel 4, called Sacrifice.

01:05:05 Speaker_04
I remember the guy, laying down his life for an illegal Mexican immigrant, but he himself was very much anti all of that immigration stuff, as to whether he could be changed.

01:05:20 Speaker_04
Yeah, so he came over, I flew him over to watch the show, and watch it, because it's all very weird when you, it's not just, it's not just your experience of going through it, and we knew that would be fine for him, and there's a, you know, there's obviously take care of people, but then there's actually seeing your experience then rendered as a TV show with, you know, music and close-ups and bits edited out that might have meant a lot to you, but just don't make the final cut and so on.

01:05:43 Speaker_04
So, he came over and watched it, and then we watched it again with Martin Freeman, because he was a big fan of Martin, and I wanted to. I didn't expect him to come up twice.

01:05:57 Speaker_04
Because he was a big fan of Martin Freeman and Martin's a friend and I wanted him to feel, you know, sort of proud of it and enjoy it.

01:06:04 Speaker_04
And then we watched it again with the other guys that had done the other shows like that that I've done that had all been through these similar journeys so he could feel like part of a very niche

01:06:13 Speaker_12
Oh, that's nice.

01:06:13 Speaker_04
Group. Army. I think of them as an army.

01:06:16 Speaker_02
I would like to see that as a special actually. All those guys living in a house together. Yeah. Yeah. They've been through different things. One of them thought zombies were real. Yeah. He's walking around.

01:06:25 Speaker_04
Waiting for the signal.

01:06:26 Speaker_12
Yeah. To attack. Just all of them in a house constantly paranoid that it's another, that something else is happening, but it's just... I do get occasional emails from people that think they are part of a show.

01:06:38 Speaker_04
And in the middle of, there was one we did called Remote Control. It was like a big game show thing and the audience were in masks. And it's, they're making decisions about whether good or bad things happen to somebody who's out being secretly filmed.

01:06:50 Speaker_04
And there was a runner on that show who was in one of the sort of, you know, secret filming units over the road from the pub where this guy is and all this stuff's happening to him.

01:07:01 Speaker_04
And, you know, Ron is a very important character in a crew, keeping everything ticking over. And he just totally freaked out, thought the whole thing was about him. And he literally ran down the street screaming.

01:07:12 Speaker_04
He totally lost his shit and ran down the street in the middle of a live thing, screaming.

01:07:18 Speaker_12
I mean I get the impulse, I completely understand, but it's even more embarrassing when someone has to go, it's not. And you might be a narcissist. Yeah, total main character syndrome, literally main character syndrome.

01:07:32 Speaker_04
The other one that comes to mind is on apocalypse that you mentioned, during the night time sequences, so obviously I have to go and sleep,

01:07:41 Speaker_04
But we felt like somebody should, if Stephen, our guy in it, at all like freaked out in the middle of the night, like if it was me watching, I would get in there, hypnotize him and make sure everything was fine.

01:07:53 Speaker_04
And even that meant, you know, the whole show had to go down the toilet, it wouldn't matter. But basically, there's always that thing I can run in and sort it out if I need to, if it all goes horribly wrong.

01:08:01 Speaker_04
But I needed sleep, so I would sleep and he would sleep. But we had a backup hypnotist, just in case he was doing a night shift. I was just watching Stephen sleep, just in case anything like that happened.

01:08:14 Speaker_04
And I won't mention his name, I normally don't, I won't this time because I don't want to embarrass him. But he needed to go to the loo. So somebody said, do you mind if I need to go to the loo? And of course it's fine, like nothing's happening.

01:08:24 Speaker_04
So I said, yeah, yeah, there's actually just, well, the nearest one is actually within the sort of filmed area. So, you know, be quiet, but it's within this sort of like bunker that Stephen's in. But it was like there was a port-a-loo somewhere.

01:08:34 Speaker_04
So I said, yeah, just best you just use that. So off he goes to use the loo. And then there was something, they were going to do a very quiet rehearsal of a zombie crowd scene that was going to happen the next morning.

01:08:48 Speaker_04
So backup hypnotist is in the toilet. Then there's like, OK, do you mind? Sorry, just stay in there for a bit because we just got to rehearse. Don't don't come out.

01:08:55 Speaker_04
And there's like a load of silent zombies pretending to shake the thing, the fences, and they kind of run through their bit. And no one tells backup hypnotist in the toilet that he can come out at the end of it.

01:09:08 Speaker_04
So he just he knows he's there to do a job. So he just sort of sleeps, I think, in the portal. It was certainly there for a very, very long time. So there are entire sequences of that show where there's a back-up hypnotist trapped in the portal room.

01:09:20 Speaker_02
You'll see his outline if you look carefully. It's led against the wall, sleeping.

01:09:24 Speaker_12
You should have just filmed that and made that a different show.

01:09:27 Speaker_02
So yeah, your dream dessert, Damon.

01:09:29 Speaker_04
Okay. Well, I'll tell you at home what it is, and what I was going to say, for reasons of honesty and transparency, is a single Charbonnel et Walker salted caramel truffle. So... I love it. Because normally I'm full, right? I make these carb-y things.

01:09:46 Speaker_04
I can't do a pudding on top of that. So, they're on the mantelpiece in the front room. I get the big pots, because again, you can't. And they're all in their little frilly things.

01:09:59 Speaker_04
And I take it, and I normally try to do it with no one around, and I sit down, and I'm very mindful. They're lovely. I'm very mindful about enjoying this one chocolate. However, given it's a dream restaurant, I figured,

01:10:11 Speaker_04
Something could happen whereby you'd lose some of the fullness and general gastric discomfort at this point, and you'd open up a bit of space for a nice pudding, otherwise it's a bit pointless. So, I'm going to go apple crumble.

01:10:26 Speaker_04
Must be a popular choice.

01:10:28 Speaker_12
Yeah, pretty popular. It comes up, yeah. Not normally after risotto and spaghetti.

01:10:32 Speaker_04
No, I mean, this is it. It's not practical.

01:10:35 Speaker_12
No, but we're employing the genie's powers here, you know. You're not feeling full, you're ready for apple crumble. Exactly, yeah. Hearty.

01:10:42 Speaker_04
Might even put a little Charbonneau walker on top. Yeah, we'll give you the Charbonneau walker.

01:10:45 Speaker_02
You're having that afterwards, because you described it so nicely.

01:10:48 Speaker_04
You're absolutely right, James.

01:10:52 Speaker_02
You've got to have it on its own afterwards, but the crumble is...

01:10:55 Speaker_04
Yeah, apple crumble. And sometimes blackberries in there too. Oats. I sort of, I do oats. My mum's always like, have you put oats in there? Okay. She's not sure about the oats. Her way of doing it. And oats I think are a little out there.

01:11:09 Speaker_04
It's a bit new school. Yeah, a bit new school. But I quite like them. I think I quite like the oats. So yeah, nothing particularly imaginative with the apple crumble, but it's just, Again, it's just all comfort food for me.

01:11:19 Speaker_04
Risotto is big comfort food as well, isn't it? It's all red wine. It's all about that. And again, maybe with ice cream, but probably with custard.

01:11:28 Speaker_12
Hot or cold custard?

01:11:29 Speaker_04
Oh, no hot custard, don't, yeah, don't do that. Do people have cold custard?

01:11:34 Speaker_02
We both like, on a hot dessert, cold custard. Really? We both like it, yeah.

01:11:38 Speaker_12
But it's the same, you say you might have ice cream, that's basically just very cold custard, isn't it? It's got the coldest of all custards.

01:11:44 Speaker_04
It is, but I'd rather go custard over ice cream. I do love an ice cream. In fact, my other option would have been vanilla ice cream with Swiss roll. Chocolate Swiss roll, from when you were a kid.

01:11:56 Speaker_04
So a bit like, essentially, a deconstructed arctic roll, which we all had, I'm sure.

01:12:00 Speaker_02
Joe, what we can tell you, because you have chose the apple crumble, every episode there's a secret ingredient, if the guest chooses it, they get kicked out. Have I mentioned it? Sort of. Mini rolls, for you.

01:12:10 Speaker_02
We chose that because of a trick you did with mini rolls.

01:12:12 Speaker_04
I was doing my best.

01:12:15 Speaker_02
I think that was that was dangerously close to it. Okay, you're allowed to mention it. It's fine Yeah, you haven't chose chose it. So we're fine. Yeah, okay, but like But if you chose it as your choice, but no chocolates.

01:12:30 Speaker_12
Yeah, because the Swiss roll is not a mini roll is not the same as a Swiss roll. Well we would have to have that debate. Yeah. If a mini roll is the same as a Swiss roll.

01:12:37 Speaker_04
What happens if somebody says it? Do you just cut it dead, get out?

01:12:41 Speaker_02
We say that you're not getting any of your food that you ordered, you're not getting any of it in the dream. It's only happened once.

01:12:48 Speaker_02
It's only happened once and then we read them their menu out, tell them it's all going in the bin and you'd be surprised at how badly it gets received by the person. They're still pretty angry that they don't get the meal.

01:12:59 Speaker_12
Even though it's a completely imaginary menu, they're livid that they don't get it.

01:13:02 Speaker_02
They're so disappointed. They're disappointed by it. For you, it was mini rolls because of the League of Gentlemen thing you did. Yes. I will say though, that mini rolls thing is the only thing that I'm going to just straight up ask you how you did it.

01:13:15 Speaker_02
I know you're not going to tell us. And I know it's a waste of time, I know that magicians and ventriloquists and everyone get arses all the time. But it's been bothering me ever since I saw it, probably over a decade ago.

01:13:26 Speaker_02
I would like you to just tell us how you did it, please.

01:13:28 Speaker_04
One martini. But it's a razor blade in a chocolate roll, isn't it?

01:13:36 Speaker_02
And there's a whole bunch of other things beforehand of like they sit down on chairs, you mix some envelopes up and they open the envelopes, it says what color chair they're gonna sit on and they reach into their chair and they've all got the color that corresponds to that.

01:13:47 Speaker_02
There's a whole bunch of different things that have to all be in place.

01:13:49 Speaker_04
It's tiny men in the table, it's the ones that escaped from the pay.

01:13:54 Speaker_02
Yeah, I mean that is I think I think about it a lot. I think I don't know.

01:13:58 Speaker_04
I'm genuinely I Genuinely cannot remember. I watch I do occasionally watch those things back. I have no idea. Yeah That was good. I saw it. Well, yeah not

01:14:10 Speaker_04
quite as sadly as that sounds, but occasionally I'll just watch it because someone will be talking about it, and I'll be like, I haven't seen that video, I'll find it, or just something will come up on my, you know, computer or something, and I'll just find myself watching it.

01:14:19 Speaker_03
I haven't got a clue.

01:14:21 Speaker_12
But that's how you know it's a good trick, right? You've even tricked yourself in the future. Even tricked myself.

01:14:25 Speaker_04
Yeah. Yeah.

01:14:26 Speaker_12
That's silly. That's an idea. Don't be cliche.

01:14:30 Speaker_02
Uh-huh. Trick yourself in the future. Yeah. Are you gonna add any more to that trick? Two hours of me watching a chicken. Just get the ball rolling. Trick yourself in the future.

01:14:38 Speaker_02
Do a load of things, record them, then you sit down and you're the person it's happening to, and by then you've forgotten about it.

01:14:43 Speaker_04
Yeah.

01:14:44 Speaker_02
And do it, you just trick yourself, you're like, fuck it now.

01:14:46 Speaker_04
So the audience are watching me do tricks on myself, and I'm like, I have no idea.

01:14:50 Speaker_02
Watching you react to the video. Of course, they will all think you just pretend to be tricked.

01:14:55 Speaker_04
But you will know. Can they see what's on the video, or are they just watching my reaction? They can see what's on the video. They can see what's on the video.

01:15:00 Speaker_12
Yeah, yeah. Is this how you normally write shows? Someone comes in and says just a completely random idea and then goes, just get the ball rolling. Is that how Andy Nyman does it? Just get the ball rolling. Just trick yourself in the future.

01:15:10 Speaker_02
Things like that.

01:15:11 Speaker_04
Peace out. It's a weird thing with that. People do say things and then like you have to stop them because sometimes it does lead to half a thought or you've had a similar thought. And then they're like, well, I gave you that idea.

01:15:24 Speaker_04
I know you didn't, that was a rotating chicken. That was something else. But yes, the idea of rotation is something that we... And it does, yeah, it happens quite a lot.

01:15:32 Speaker_12
The chicken's the headline of that idea, I think. If you change it from chicken, I think it's no longer... Just turkeys. It's fine.

01:15:39 Speaker_02
And, to be honest, if the chicken's not rotating, I'm not going to think it's me. If you've just got chickens knocking about, I'm not going to go that with me. It's only if it's a rotisserie chicken being used to put someone into a trance.

01:15:48 Speaker_02
And then they're on the rotisserie at the end. Then it's me. But then even then I'm not going to get annoyed, I didn't get credit, I'll just know in my heart, I'll be really proud of that.

01:15:56 Speaker_04
Yeah, there's an inner satisfaction, isn't there? That's enough, that is enough.

01:15:59 Speaker_12
I'll be really happy with that. It's about time that my hypnotist used the idea of a chicken, right? It is about time. We've never seen that before. It's the opposite.

01:16:05 Speaker_04
Would he draw like a spy or she or they draw like a spiral on the where the heads been removed?

01:16:11 Speaker_04
Exactly the center of the spiral and then the spiral sort of works its way out Yeah on that plane that sort of front end of the yeah chicken So if you're sat in front and your view isn't obscured by the drumsticks, yeah Yeah, I think so be more powerful in there and also like if the if the audience can't see that spiral Yeah, it adds to it right because they think they just hypnotized by the chicken.

01:16:31 Speaker_02
Yeah, but actually there's a spiral on the neck

01:16:33 Speaker_04
And I don't know, but I guess a biro would work, would write very satisfyingly on the front of it.

01:16:37 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah, I think it would feel good to write on the neck of a chicken with a biro.

01:16:42 Speaker_04
You wouldn't, sorry, just to say, you wouldn't need to draw a circle, you could hold the biro still and let the rotisserie smith do the work for you.

01:16:49 Speaker_12
Very satisfying. This is going to be a weird show, your next show.

01:16:52 Speaker_04
I don't think that's weird at all.

01:16:53 Speaker_12
What, let someone hold a biro on a chicken neck and then it rotates and you draw on it?

01:16:57 Speaker_04
They've got to slowly move the pen to the side, slowly to the left.

01:17:02 Speaker_12
Alright, I'm in.

01:17:03 Speaker_04
We've finished with an extra dry, painfully, brutally dry vodka martini. maybe Connick's Tale, with a twist. With a twist. Yeah.

01:17:19 Speaker_02
We're not going dirty.

01:17:20 Speaker_04
Twist is chocolate truffle.

01:17:23 Speaker_02
If anyone's seen Derren Brown, he always ends with a twist. I was too excited to say that, but I think that was very good to say that even Derren Brown's menu ends with a twist. Yep, and then if you just said that, great.

01:17:33 Speaker_02
Read your menu back to you now, see if you feel about it.

01:17:34 Speaker_04
Those might as well be mindful.

01:17:35 Speaker_02
Okay, go. A Tommy's Margarita when you arrive.

01:17:38 Speaker_04
That's nice.

01:17:39 Speaker_02
You would like still water, not too cold, nothing in it, no plops.

01:17:43 Speaker_02
problems of bread you would like sourdough warm with butter and salt then some parmesan and red wine on the table for starter you would like a lobster risotto main course perfect meatballs in tomato sauce with a thick spaghetti side dish of rocket salad with parmesan balsamic olive oil drink you would like a glass and a half

01:18:02 Speaker_02
of Brunella di Montalcino. Dessert, she would like an apple crumble, hot, with hot custard, and then a Chardonnay Walker salted caramel truffle. Add an extra dry vodka martini. Did you say the crumble? Yes.

01:18:23 Speaker_02
I hypnotised you and you forgot that I said the crumble.

01:18:27 Speaker_04
It worked. That's amazing. Hearing you say it back, as beautifully as you did, yeah, that's gorgeous.

01:18:35 Speaker_02
Well now, you've heard that. Please, now, confirm to the listener that envelope hasn't left you.

01:18:41 Speaker_04
This has been in front of me all the time. If this contains my menu choices, there's no explanation.

01:18:45 Speaker_02
You've had it there, and you've signed it over the thing. If you could open it and just read to the listener what it says inside. You can hear the envelope being opened. It says prediction on the front of it.

01:18:57 Speaker_04
I've removed a sheet of paper.

01:18:58 Speaker_02
Yes. Here we go.

01:18:59 Speaker_04
I'm removing it. It says Darren's menu.

01:19:02 Speaker_02
Here we go.

01:19:03 Speaker_04
Water, olive oil.

01:19:05 Speaker_02
That was all. We got that one wrong. That's wrong. Oh, I see. But you always get one wrong at the top.

01:19:09 Speaker_04
I did have a moment there thinking, oh my God, this is actually going to be... You always get the first one wrong. Yeah, yeah. Failure. Dropping a ball. All right. Papa Dom's or bread. You put egg McMuffin in a cigarette.

01:19:25 Speaker_12
Always get the second one wrong.

01:19:26 Speaker_04
Always get the second one wrong. Starter, clams, main, candy floss, flambeed.

01:19:34 Speaker_02
Well, okay. Not far off.

01:19:37 Speaker_04
You're not far off. Side, spaghetti, hoops, boiling hot. Nearly. Like lava. Nearly. I got it like lava.

01:19:44 Speaker_12
Spaghetti hoops is close.

01:19:45 Speaker_04
Drink an ice cold beer. Dessert, nothing.

01:19:50 Speaker_02
We ran out of room. We didn't really space out the menu enough and we ran out of space. We had to just leave it dessert. I'm framing this. We've got spaghetti.

01:20:04 Speaker_04
Yeah, I mean, in a sense, they're all correct. You've got the spaghetti hoops, and spaghetti hoops are circles like meatballs. A nice cold beer, in a sense. Candy floss, comfort food. Clams, well, I mean, clams are by the sea, Pompeii's by the sea.

01:20:23 Speaker_04
They probably were feasting on clams when it all struck.

01:20:27 Speaker_02
We talked about all of this. Olive oil was in the salad? Yeah.

01:20:31 Speaker_04
Eggnog muffin. Had a cigarette. That's my favourite, I think you peaked early. Yeah, that one is wrong and olive oil was correct, that's what I said. So, yeah. Pretty good. Phenomenal.

01:20:44 Speaker_02
Pretty good. You just got Devin Browned.

01:20:48 Speaker_12
Thank you so much for coming to the Dream Restaurant, Devin. It's been a dream. Thank you. James, you embarrassed me in that interview. What? You're a little nerd. I've never seen you nerd out so hard. I just know stuff. I like knowledge.

01:21:05 Speaker_12
Yes, you were very excited to meet Deron. So was I. Lovely to chat to Deron. What a nice man. What a great venue. I've got more stuff I could have said.

01:21:12 Speaker_02
Yes, I know. So many episodes and questions I've got.

01:21:15 Speaker_12
I'm well aware. I looked round at you during that interview and you were pinching your leg at some point. Yes. saying all the different shows he's done.

01:21:24 Speaker_02
Don't ask him about all the shows, James. Calm down.

01:21:27 Speaker_12
Back off. You've got to prioritise. It was lovely to speak to Darren. I enjoyed his menu very much. And he didn't say mini rolls, although we were skirting a little bit close to it, weren't we?

01:21:38 Speaker_02
Yes. He'd already established that Swiss roll was his backup dessert, but that he wasn't going to choose it. So I thought, we can let him know. Because if he did say Swiss roll, we would have had to have debated that.

01:21:51 Speaker_02
And I guess, ultimately, mini rolls, the clue is in that it's a mini roll.

01:21:56 Speaker_12
It's a mini roll, and it's chocolate and Swiss rolls are not traditionally chocolate.

01:21:59 Speaker_02
It is specific, so yeah. We've got to get off his back on that one.

01:22:03 Speaker_12
And also, we predicted his entire meal. It's pretty impressive that we predicted his entire meal. We Derham Brown, Derham Brown.

01:22:09 Speaker_02
There was a moment when he opened it, where I thought... He might have done something to the envelope. He might have done something for us. Is he about to do something for us?

01:22:20 Speaker_02
Was he going to hold the envelope and tell us what we've written down before opening it? Yeah. Or he might reveal. If you listen back to the podcast... Yeah. During every course, I actually said these things. Yes. If you listen back.

01:22:33 Speaker_02
I got it in there, you didn't notice.

01:22:34 Speaker_12
That would have blown my mind. That's how good he is. We're amazed by stuff he didn't do. Well done, Darren. Tickets for Darren's new show, Only Human, are on sale now, so get yourself along to that. I know we'll be going at some point. Yeah, absolutely.

01:22:50 Speaker_12
All of us, for sure. I want to see that spinning chicken. In his show, Only Human. Yes. It's still time to change it, call it only chicken.

01:22:59 Speaker_12
That was of course the final episode of the series, but we'll be back before you know it for Christmas specials, best ofs, all of that sort of stuff. Other than that, we'll see you in the new year.

01:23:09 Speaker_02
Yes, no need to text me and ask me when those are though, mum. So that's the end of the series now, that's been established, you don't have to text me saying that you're annoyed about that.

01:23:18 Speaker_02
And then you don't have to just be like, where are these Christmas specials and where's the compilation? They'll be at Christmas. They're all coming out. We're giving you content, Mum.

01:23:27 Speaker_12
He sounds very ungrateful to me, Di. I'm so sorry you have such a wretch of a son. Thank you so much to Darren for coming on the podcast. We will see you again soon. Bye-bye. Goodbye.

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