Derren Brown has spoken about his love for Bristol in a recent BBC Sounds interview. The magician and hypnotist, who is bringing his latest show ‘Only Human’ to the Bristol Hippodrome in May, said that Bristol is “the best place to be”, with “the best audiences in the country”.
Speaking to BBC Radio Bristol‘s Claire Carter, Derren said: “I used to live in Bristol and I just adore it. I remember one year I was there and Dara O’Briain had been at The Hippodrome in the same dressing room before me, and he left a note saying ‘enjoy the best audiences in the country’, and you are. Ask any touring performer and they’ll tell you Bristol is the best place to be.”
The star, who is also a graduate of the University of Bristol, also told of how he regularly returns to the city – not just for tours, but just to visit. He said: “It’s my favourite place in the country. It is such a joy.
“I studied Law and German many years ago up at the top of Park Street. I remember hearing then that they had the highest stay-on rate of any university in the country, and I can see why. So I stayed there for another 10 years and ended up having to move to London, but I get back all the time, so I’m around Bristol a lot and I just don’t know a better place.”
What’s more, for Derren Brown Bristol is somewhat of a birthplace for his love for and prowess in the world of magic and hypnotism. During the interview he went on to say: “I started off doing hypnosis and magic at university and then, after I graduated, I would do magic round the tables in restaurants and places.
“I was down at a restaurant called Byzantium in St Mary Redcliffe. People would see me there and invite me to come and work at their parties and weddings and things. So I sort of built this up in Bristol, and then my first theatre show was at the Tobacco Factory and that kind of got that going.
“I think by this point the TV had started – this was back around 2003 or something like that. But for me it feels like the birthplace of all of that. I got into hypnosis while watching a hypnotist perform at the Students’ Union when I was here, so it’s all very much rooted in being in Bristol.”
Even Derren’s eating habits changed when he was in Bristol, he says, as Claire asks him about his hatred for blue cheese and mushrooms. “When I was a student in Bristol we were driving up the top of Whiteladies Road and I don’t know if it’s still there, but there was a pizza place on the right”, Derren recalls, “and the other guys in the car said ‘let’s get a pizza’ and I was starving.
“They went out, got a pizza and they said ‘are you alright with sausage’ and I said ‘oh yeah’, thinking it was sausage and, of course, it was salami. When it arrived, salami was one of the many things I couldn’t stand, but I was too hungry and I couldn’t pick it out of the cheese, so I had to eat it, and I did this thing in my head to trick myself into liking it.
“So I was going ‘mmm’ in my head, and it worked – and I really enjoyed the pizza. So I started to do it with everything. I worked my way through so many things and all I was left with was blue cheese and mushrooms, which I can’t stand. But that’s my tip – just do that in your head with food you don’t like.”
Tickets for Derren Brown’s Only Human show have now all sold out – you can find out more about it here.