FREE TRICK! 'One Hundred to One'

Can you be an Instant Magician? Well, no. But heck, you're going to try anyway, so at least I might as well help a bit. This won't give Derren Brown too much to worry about, but it's kind of cool. And the real secret, like with DB, is all about Presentation. Otherwise it'll be seen straight away for what it truly is: a cute, quirky puzzle. So make sure you give 'em plenty of buildup about Free Will vs. Predestination, your Precognitive abilities, or your deep intuitive grasp of what numbers are 'right' for a person. (Ladies, please forgive me, but you LOVE this stuff. Go ahead, Tell me I'm wrong...).

So let's get to it: after the appropriate preamble, you announce boldly that you will be able to predict the outcome of an impossibly random event. The room turns suddenly cold, as a dozen awestruck onlookers suck in their breath. You dramatically place an envelope - if you want, a large one, emblazoned with a bold Question Mark, depends how OTT you want to be - on the table. Your audience experience genuine awe; perhaps for the first time in their lives. So it's true then: telepathy; time travel; all that stuff David Icke went on about. And you can prove it.

Selecting a willing victim, you challenge them to think of ANY number from 1 to 100 and write it down as a word, without revealing it. Emphasize the positively bewildering freedom of choice involved. They are then to count the number of letters in their chosen number, and write THAT, new, number down below the first, again as letters. Taking the new word, they repeat the process - counting the letters, writing the new total as a word. And again, and again until soon, they are unable to continue; because they are cycling around one number, over and over again. Mention the probability-defying odds of anyone knowing this final number in advance. You stand back as they stampede for the envelope, tearing from its mysterious heart just one sheet of effulgent foolscap. There, printed boldly in the centre, is THAT SAME NUMBER. Look around: see that look on their faces? That's what a Paradigm Shift looks like.

Sadly we must now plummet earthwards again and address the banal, because I sense a question similarly cycling round your synapses: how did you, how could you possibly, know the number?

Well, because it's always 4. Just try it, and you'll find it's one of those delightful Things that come close to being 'real magic'. Have fun, and please let me know how you get on...