The devout sceptic

It's 9am, and Derren Brown has just read his first mind of the day. Sitting in a West End hotel, wearing a dark suit - there's filming to do later, otherwise he'd be less portentously attired - Britain's favourite illusionist has correctly revealed which letter of the alphabet I had selected at random.

But there's little that's random with Derren Brown. As he states every week on his Channel 4 show, Trick Of The Mind, he uses 'magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship'.

I chose my letter because that's the letter he prompted me to choose. How, though? Will I suss him when I listen back to his carefully chosen words on the tape? 'It's more about what you're seeing,' he says. 'You'd need a video, really.'

Boasting the persuasive manner of a genial GP - 'a slightly dodgy GP, more like' - Brown's appeal is that he provokes thought as well as astonishment.

'I hope so,' he says. 'Magic is often patronising. Someone's saying: "I can do something you can't", and that's why so many magicians end up being hated. I've tried to come up with something that plays to people's intelligence. But it's a difficult balance. I still watch the show and think I come across as a bit smug.'

Now 33, Brown started performing after seeing a stage hypnotist in his first year at Bristol University. In his twenties he did stage work and parties. He wrote some magic books, made some money at casinos.

But then comic and magician Jerry Sadowitz gave his name to a production company that was looking for someone to front a psychological illusion show. Brown's rise has been swift since his first TV special in 2000 - next week he begins a West End run.

Brown prefers the immediacy of live work. 'On stage, it's real,' he says. 'On TV, you can't prove it's not a stooge. That said, if I used actors, my career would be over in a week.

These guys would be paid more by a tabloid to expose me than we could ever pay them to appear. I would just be living in fear.' Talking of which, his Russian roulette stunt was one of last year's more controversial TV highlights.

It took Brown from mild fame to nationwide notoriety in a flash - particularly after suggestions that he'd used blanks (which would kill at point-blank range, anyway).