September 9, 2009

Winning the lottery is an illusion

I hate the national lottery. It’s voluntary tax on the working classes. So I was not particularly interested to hear some illusionist called Derren Brown appeared live on television to predict the winning numbers in the National Lottery.

The illusionist claimed to have printed his prediction on six white balls earlier in the day and these remained in shot, but facing away from the camera, throughout the programme.
After watching the live lottery announcement on BBC One, Derren walked across to the six white balls and turned them around to reveal the correct numbers.

So, how did he do it? Now call me a cynic – but I suspect maybe it was all an illusion.
Discussion boards are already rife with theories and speculation about how he managed to pull off the trick.

One popular suggestion is that there was a slight time delay in the BBC’s broadcast of the lottery draw and someone had given Derren the numbers just ahead of the broadcast.
Others believe that the programme used a split screen effect which allowed someone to arrange the correct balls once the result had been announced.

Or, perhaps the balls were sitting on a special device which printed the numbers onto them as soon as they were revealed on the BBC show?

Derren claims to have spent a year working on this latest trick - did he simply work out a system where he could predict the numbers? And how can we get our hands on this information?

All will be revealed - apparently - in a special programme at 9pm on Friday night on Channel 4. In the meantime, don’t hold your breath. Giving the game away on such a basic illusion, will no doubt prove to be an illusion.

Winning the lottery is an illusion

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