Did I tell you about my Derren Brown dream?
Hello everyone,
Yesterday, Derren Brown tweeted a picture of himself in a car chock-full of books, heading off to go cruising (ho ho!). At the moment I have a cold, so I am doing some hard core napping, and had a quite excellent dream featuring Derren Brown and his cruise, which has stayed in my head rather nicely.
Usually I share my quite excellent vivid dreams with Sj who, upon hearing the words “Did I tell you about my dream last night?”, adopts a expression of pained resignation as something of an autonomic response these days. Or she tries to convince me I have indeed told her of my dream and it was, just as I said, very interesting. Unfortunately the brittle, manic quality of her affirmation often gives her away.
Sj is at work, though, so I shall have to tell you instead. No, really, it’s good! You’ll like it! It was very atmospheric & dramatic-feeling. Also, Zoe Ball drowns in it (I harbour no bad feelings towards Zoe Ball. I quite like her - I used to watch her Dad on CITV, and then later on her on Saturday morning stuff. I’m not actually sure where her input came from in this dream).
So. Me and my lovely Sj, and Phill Jupitus and some other people (who, in the manner of a dream, weren’t really important & so quickly faded into not actually existing), were having a look around Derren Brown’s big cruise ship before it launched, and I was expounding upon how interesting it was, because Derren Brown had a massive captive audience, all of whom were fans, that he could do all sorts of interesting mind control excitements on over the weekend*. We all nodded, and spoke Intellectually about suggestion and influence & things. There were other people from TV around the boat, also looking around.
Then the boat started to launch - oh noes! But it wasn’t meant to! A part of me realised that, aha, perhaps this was the point in the first place, and the photo of people queuing for the cruise Derren posted on his twitter & such was but part of the set up. So cunning!
Then close up on Zoe Ball as the big hatch for the ship (yes, the big overhead circular 
hatch that closes on cruise ships, shutting everyone inside. Do keep up) closed above her with a clang, and she cried “No! But I’m not meant to be on the cruise!” (a classic disaster film line if ever there was one, I’m sure you’ll agree).
Down in the little room we were milling around in (nice red carpet, suspiciously military olive-green steel walls), we felt the boat move, and exchanged glances.
Close up on Zoe Ball, as water starts pouring through the big improperly-sealed hatch.
“NO!” she cries, as the water rises around her.
I, as dream-observe-narrator-thingy, think to myself “I’m glad I wasn’t the subject of that particular Derren Brown misdirection”.
Possibly, Zoe drowning was part of his cunning mental manipulation on that one. Later, no doubt, he and a bedraggled-looking Zoe would be laughing about it: “I completely believed it, especially as I ran out of air under the water!” Ha ha! Ahhh, Derren, you rogue!
Close ups on other celebrities in other parts of the ship, with similar mishaps occurring. One of them was Patrick Kielty so, you know, it’s not all tragedy.
Meanwhile, in comes Derren in his little beard & black suit, to greet us in our little nicely-carpeted, suspiciously metal & non-windowed room. We have changed into khaki boilersuits. I am heartily enjoying the distopian vibe. Phill Jupitus looks unexpectedly impressive. He should do more boilersuit sci-fi, I think to myself.
Derren says we really should mingle & have some drinks - part of the suspiciously military-flavour metal wall rotates to reveal a soldier who takes his order. Beyond is more dapper carpet, and some tables and chairs.
“What would you like, Laurie? Maybe some Vimto for Laurie…”
How on earth does he know of my vimto fetish? The man is truly a witch! He even asks for it the way I like it. I am impressed. When my vimto arrives, it’s actually pear Bulmers. But it’s alright, because I have become in the mood for such a drink in the time since he ordered. Damn, he’s tricksy. Sj & Jupitus have a beer (Sj’s is a Leffe).
On one wall of our small room (we choose not to go into the bigger room. We feel safe and familiar in our small room, and the big room has soldiers in, standing about looking official) is a bank of lights, a bit like in the original Star Trek’s medical bay, but in a long thin line (like KITT’s red light). They are obviously readings of pressure and Important Water Information from outside, as we are below the waterline, and had been sneakily looking around the deep recesses of the ship. It’s understood that we’re in a room directly against the hull, and the strip of lights on their black background could just as easily be a window into the murky water.
Derren is back again, telling us we should chat amongst ourselves. We are all watching every damn thing he does, like when you watch him talking to someone on telly, saying things like “Ooh - do you think touching her arm was something important there? His nostril just twitched! Is he breathing in and out in a special way? Did his little pointy beard just rotate? If we noticed that, we were probably meant to. Yes.” with wise nodding.
There is a groaning from outside, as of metal at depth, and our little room lurches. It’s quite fun, like a flight simulator ride. The lights flicker, and the door Derren entered through (at the top of a short flight of metal stairs that his shoes went tick-tack on as he walked down) does an interesting sealing-shut noise. There is activity in the other room. Derren frowns. We exchange knowing looks - he is a wily showman. Phill Jupitus has a badge on his grand khaki overalls, but I’m not sure what’s on it. The lights go out & there is another lurch, and I think “I’m quite glad I didn’t have to do a trapped-in-a-room-filling-with-water thing like Zoe Ball, but my second least favourite scenario to be part of would be apparently sinking to the bottom of the sea in a metal box”
And, indeed, we have definitely detached from the main ship, and there is a most certain sensation of downward movement. The lights are flickering, and me and Sj and the Joop are all thinking a similar thing, along the lines of “We were probably never on a boat in the first place, and this is an ingenious moving platform-style affair”. But we’re not entirely convinced, as we did quite obviously walk onto a big cruise ship to get into this room. Some of the soldiers look troubled. Phill Jupitus holds his bottle of beer & looks at the ceiling, as it makes troubling denting-metal noises.
Derren is at a little speaker set into the wall, but the radio is breaking up and hard to makes sense of. “Hello, it’s Derren Brown,” he keeps saying, but the operator on the other end can’t hear him properly and is asking him to repeat himself. Finally they hear him, but misunderstand what he’s saying, and through the static we hear:
“No, sorry. Derren Brown is dead.”
Derren looks up at us, clearly disconcerted. The lights go out.
Dun daaaaaaaa!
Wasn’t that good? Wasn’t it, though?
I Loved it! There was drama! There were dystopic boiler suits! There was a very clearly visualised red carpet (it had darker red flecks in)! There was Derren’s little troubled face (me & Sj do like how well he does his little troubled face). AND there was cider! And Leffe! And Phill Jupitus looking quite the funky sci-fi chap with his overalls and oblong specs.
What followed was far more generic-muddled-dream and less filmic in quality generally: Derren hypnotised me, I felt wooshy and quite relaxed, dimly aware that others were being amused, but not really caring. At one point he even had swirly round eyes, ala The Penguin’s hypno-umbrella. But the first bit was the best bit.
At the end of the dream, he drove me and Sj and Phill into a canal in a car†
I was aware that this was a ‘conquer your anxieties and make you stronger’ sort of bit of the hypnosis as he did it (at the end, it would be the self-affirming treasure to go home with) but all the same, my last muttered words before I woke up were decidedly unimpressed: “Derren Brown, you bastard.”
*I believe he is, in reality, just doing a few shows, possibly in a sparkly jump suit with Jane MacDonald. In my dream, the boat and all the people on it Belonged To The Machinations Of Derren. And Andy Nyman & Coops, his loyal henchmen/co-planners.
†(driving a car into water is a regular theme of my wake-up-with-a-start dreams, ever since I saw a clip of a Dutch information film from the 80’s about what to do if you drive into a canal. They recommended kicking the windscreen out with your feet, but I’m not sure how easy that is on modern cars - here’s Richard Hammond on Top Gear practising the ‘equalising pressure’ technique.).
