Derren Brown launched himself with a spot of suicidal attention seeking on TV. But what he really likes is the chance to carry off his illusions live on stage, as he tells Charles Hutchinson.

DERREN Brown may be a mind controller but he does not want to pull the wool over your eyes on one important matter.

"Please make it clear that it is the same tour show as I did last year," he says, as the interview draws to a close.

Point duly noted, the show will however be new to tonight's audience at the Grand Opera House in York, where Brown did not present Derren Brown - Live! on his 2003 tour.

"This live show is back for the pedestrian reason that the last tour sold out because of the timing of the television series. There was definitely another tour in it and it'll be going into the West End from the June 7 at the Palace Theatre," he says.

Brown's star has been in the ascendancy since his infamous Russian Roulette stunt on Channel 4 last October. He survived, perhaps explaining the exclamation mark on the Derren Brown - Live! title of his tour, and he is revelling in the spotlight of live performance.

"Oh absolutely. The main difference for me between television and the live show is how much more enjoyable live performances are. The first big learning curve was learning how to make what I do work on TV; then there was the learning curve of doing it live in front of so many people in a theatre. There's nothing more exciting than doing a show to 2,000 people who are going mad as you walk on stage," says Derren.

"There's also that thing where you know that people are seeing everything in a live performance, whereas on TV it's one step removed so they don't entirely trust it."

Brown returned to Channel Four's Friday night schedule for a new series of Mind Control on April 23, and the more his profile rises, the more the innate scepticism of the British will confront him. He will face it head on, on television, in his live show, in interviews.

"The onus is on me to prove things, and I wouldn't want people just to sit there and credulously accept everything I do. I question everything and that's a far more useful state of mind than accepting everything."

He was fascinated by magic from his childhood days, watching Paul Daniels on TV, yet that questioning nature was never far away. "I remember someone at school at 15 doing a card trick and I harangued him to tell me how to do it, and I can remember pulling apart every magic trick being done by my cousin. I was so unpleasant. There must have been some issue about not wanting to be fooled," he says. "Now I love being fooled by a magician."

Do we all enjoy being duped? "We are open to that but we can resent it if a magician struts his stuff too much or takes himself too seriously. That's when you want to take him down a peg or two."

The same principle applied to Brown when he carried out the Russian Roulette stunt that some observers deemed to be sick publicity seeking.

"The Russian Roulette programme was an establishing exercise; I was on the way up and I knew the press I received was generally going to be 'Have you seen this guy?' It was done to get attention, and if you do that, you're going to get a reaction and it's going to be controversial. At the end of the day it made a huge difference to my career."

Why do magicians or illusionists such as Derren Brown and David Blaine stand out from the Magic Circle crowd?

"What is interesting about being a magician is what you communicate and put across, and charisma and showmanship are part of the process in getting someone on to that conveyor belt of belief," Derren says. "There are magicians more adept than those who are on TV but someone such as David Blaine, when he did his first TV show, which was just a show of card tricks, he communicated this incredible persona and other-worldliness."

Brown did observe Blaine at close quarters during his 44-day starvation stunt in a box above the Thames last year.

"I went down and saw Blaine in his box and after ten minutes there wasn't much to do, but for those ten minutes it felt like a delightful and strange thing that was interesting and good and better for being done," he says. "He does take himself seriously, as Americans do, which is so different from the British."

There is another side to the analytical Brown, that of the portrait artist who has painted the likes of Jack Nicholson and Woody Allen. "In my mind they are very separate disciplines. Painting is me in my studio, away from the world for a few days, whereas magic is about communicating," he says.

Nevertheless, he would like to stage an exhibition, probably in London next year, if only he could find more time for painting. "I haven't got a week off until May next year and I haven't had a week off since February 2003. It is too much work but it's good fun.

"I was worried at the beginning if I could keep coming up with ideas, like comedians worrying about having to come up with new material once they've been on television, but as my work on TV becomes more defined I have come to think of Derren on TV as a character. I decide what will make the best television and that becomes easier because the character is established."

What is that character? "I would hate to put it into words, like I never thought I was short until people started describing me as short even though I'm 5ft 10."

Ah, even his height is an illusion.

Derren Brown - Live!, Grand Opera House, York, Friday, May 7 at 7.30pm. Sold out. For returns, ring 0870 606 3595.

Updated: 09:47 Friday, May 07, 2004