Mad, Sad and Bad with Paloma Faith - Derren Brown: I Flirted with the Idea of Gay Conversion Therapy

Episode Date: October 27, 2026

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! 🎃👻🖤It’s my favourite time of the year and for our Halloween special, I’ve been joined by a REAL treat… Mr Mind Control himself, Derren Brown!You might know Derren for predicting the lottery or convincing someone they’d woken up in an apocalypse. I knew him as the man I thought had watched my Royal Variety performance in complete confusion. Turns out he actually enjoyed it, so we’re off to a good start!We talk about the things we bury and why they hold so much power, whether we can ever really know someone, and what scares a man who’s made a career out of messing with our minds. Derren also opens up about sexuality, religion and why a meaningful life needs a little sadness.And OF COURSE, it wouldn’t be a Halloween special without a few tricks and treats of our own… anyone for a zombie hunt?See Derren live in Only Human at London’s Apollo Theatre: https://london.derrenbrown.co.uk/ Credits: Producer: Ross Whyatt Assistant Producer: Lydia Brownell Videographers: Harry Sawkins and Lizzie McCarthy Audio Engineer: Miles Wheway Senior Social Media Manager: Laura Coughlan Production Manager: Archan Mohille Production Coordinator: James Cox Head of Content: Ewan Newbigging-Lister Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Drink or treat, it's me. Hi. Derek is? We got you all the way here and didn't even... No, not really, not really. Come in. This is amazing. You're amazing.

Welcome. Hi. Please give me your jacket, shoes, hats and potentially hold that whole outfit if you're on. Just everything. To you, he's an illusionist, mentalist, writer and psychological trickster who spent more than 25 years making audiences question what they see, what they believe and how easily they can be manipulated, from appearing to play Russian roulette live on TV and convincing people they had committed crimes to predicting the lottery and making one man believe he had to land a passenger plane

and another that he'd woken up in a post-apocalyptic world. His live stage shows have taken him from sellout UK tools to Broadway, earning a record five Olivier nominations for Best Entertainment and two wins. This year he's returned to both stage and screen with his latest stage show, Only Human, which is currently playing at London's Apollo Theatre until January 2007. But to me, he's somebody who I've actually never met, who I heard was watching my show at the Royal Variety Performance, with dismay, confusion, but actually he's since told me about five seconds ago

that he actually really enjoyed it. So it's the incredible, formidable, magician I never assisted. Darren Brown. Hi. Hello, hi. It's so lovely to meet you. It's so amazing to meet you.

I love that you do a shoes off policy when you come in, which means all your guests are in the socks. For Halloween. I like it. I ask my guests to remove shoes and socks. And socks? Yes. Analyzing the feet. Analyzing the feet.

My first question. Yes. Oh, okay. Top. You are absolutely. Absolutely right. Oh my God. It's real.

I do feel like when I was for a brief moment a magician's assistant. Which I really want to talk you about. I did, well, you can ask me anything. I did kind of find it a little boring, I'll be honest, because I am quite interested in psychology and all of that. And not many magicians do that. you're a special, stand-alone think-out-of-the-box type of person. Have you ever used your skills to get what you want?

I think when I started, I was like, sorry everything in terms of hypnosis, suggestion, manipulation, all of that. But it was also a bit of a bubble sort of way of presenting to the world. And I think as I've grown up, made more peace of myself, that just became less important. So the reality, I feel it's something I do when I work. I think if I lived like that in real life, it would be exhausting. And I'm making it look like I must have some kind of power that I could do this at any point to anybody about anything.

But in reality, I say it is a very kind of narrow thing that I'm trying to do. So, yeah, no, I'm not walking around kind of, you know. Making plant pots fly in the sky and stuff. Yeah, or being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data from people's, you know, conscious body language. No, it doesn't like that. It's, no. But magician's assistant, how did you, how did you find it? Because I've, like, there is something very oddly misogynistic about the magic world, right? There's this strange story that it's okay to put women in boxes and manipulate them and then we all chop them up. I mean, like brutal, and it's such a

strange, such a strange thing that we've all just taken on board as this sort of slightly old-fashioned entertainment. And also still believe it to be glamorous. And believe that to be And the wonderful thing to do as a woman. And at the same time, the irony is you're doing the hard work. Yeah, you're moving about in all the positions. I sat in a box once for three hours with the rabbit, waiting to come out. It was a really long shot. Right.

Is the rabbit, just like me and the rabbit, just waiting for a reveal. How long did you do it for? Was it a big chunk of your career? No, but I didn't just exclusively. do that. It was like at a time where you're struggling for money so you're like, well I've got magician assistant job on Tuesday, life drawing model

on a Thursday and then I was singing a little gig on a Saturday. Yeah, yeah. Because I just didn't want a normal job. Just interrupting to say we've launched a mad, sad and bad patron. This is a VIP area for the biggest fans of the podcast and the normal weekly podcast

isn't going anywhere so don't worry. But now you can sign up to our Patreon for £3.19. a month and you'll get shit loads of perks like weekly bonus episodes with our lovely guests where we'll unpack even more juicy stories and answer your own submitted Mad Sad and Bad Dilemmas and you'll also get an invite to our Patreon group chat where you'll get to Chimwag with all the other lovely fans and get behind the scenes gossip from the people who make the show so if you want even more from me and Mad Sad and Bad then head over to patreon.com forward slash

Mad, Sad, Bad Podcast and sign up. Can't wait to see you there for more crazies. Can we have a little chat about boobs or whatever you decide to call them? Because it's October, which means it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And honestly, checking your chest is one of those things that we should all do. But somehow life gets in the way. So we've teamed up with candy kittens and copperfield, the UK's only Breast Cancer Awareness charity for young people to give you a little nudge.

Not in a preachy way, but in a sweet way. They've created a limited edition wild strawberry pack. It's pink, it's delicious, and every pack sold helps raise money for breast cancer awareness. But this isn't really about sweets. It's about remembering to look after yourself. We spend so much time worrying about everyone else, don't we? Work, family, friends, whether we've replied to that text or put the washing on. And yet something as simple as getting to know what's normal for our bodies

and checking our chests can slip right to the bottom of the list. So consider this your reminder. Check your boobs. That includes guys, gals and non-binary pals too. So tell your mum to check hers, your sister, your best mate, your partner, whoever needs to hear it, check your chest. Breast cancer can affect anyone. We all have breast tissue.

It only takes a few minutes and it genuinely could save your life. If you're not sure where to start, head to talk. to cobbafel.org. They've got brilliant advice on how to check, what signs to be aware of, and advice on what to do if you notice an unusual change. If in doubt, always get it checked out with your GP. And if you fancy doing a little good while satisfying your sweet tooth, pick up a pack of the limited edition candy kittens wild strawberry. Every sale will donate to Cobbphil and support their mission to ensure all breast cancers are diagnosed early and accurately. Look after yourself and remind someone you love.

to do the same. So Mad, what do you think is the maddest show you've done? I like Mad, Sad and Bad, because they're all three things that we all like not to be called. Mad for me, yeah, there's the madness of the shows. Madness also for me means the thing that doesn't fit the story, right? So the story you tell yourself about who you are. So the things that don't fit that, we try and bury them. So they could be perfectly good things.

So like, you know, the kid that's told to shut up making that noise when they're practicing the violin. So they stop and they never play again. And then weirdly they grow up and they bury any kind of attempt to create anything beautiful because they think it's just, you know, noise. But the person that's, you know, struggling with some sort of ambiguous sexuality and then buries all of that and becomes an anti-gay, homophobic kind of campaigner. And there's burying all this, all this stuff. All of the stuff that we bury and don't sort of try and accommodate at some level gains this kind of power. So I'll answer your question in a second.

The stories we tell are like, you tell a story around a campfire, right? You've got a cozy little fire, and then all around you is the forest, and the forest is dark, and there are monsters in the forest, but we're having this cozy story here. So any story we tell is always excluding the monsters,

all the stuff, all the mad stuff that doesn't fit, while we're trying to just stick with this slightly too cozy version of what sort of life is. And then creatively, the maddest ideas, sort of in a way come from a similar impulse. We're often sitting around talking up ideas for shows and we're getting into a certain way of thinking

about what a show should be and then somebody, either me or somebody else, goes, oh, can't we just, I don't know, I can't end the world and it's zombies and someone's got to find their way home like in The Wizard of Oz, but it's with zombies. That's actually quite a good idea. And then you try and stick with that.

I don't know if you find that as well. Like creatively, often it's, you're just like going around in circles and then you're just like, blah, what about this? And then that actually becomes the really interesting things. Well, they always feel like an impossible thing, Like you always, when you have a great idea, usually it's followed by you saying, we can't do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you're like, well, maybe we could. Because the fact that everyone else probably thought we can't do that, maybe we should be the ones that actually did do it. And it's when you're sat around with other people that are going to, you feel like you have to apologize and backtrack before you even said, when you're on your own, it's easy. You sort of can drift off into a thing.

Obviously, you set up the apocalypse. That was a crazy moment. So, yeah. So we, it was about eight months of filming. We've got a guy who sort of taking his life for granted, really. He was 21, I think, at the time, living at home and just not pulling his weight, hadn't got a proper job. I see this guy regularly. I saw him quite recently.

Still? Yeah, yeah. In touch with most of the people. Stephen, yeah. He's brilliant. And his life has turned around, actually, drastically. He's a wonderful guy. So we set up, so all the family were in on it. We got hidden cameras around the house.

And for months, we are dripping. feeding the idea that the world's going to end through a meteor strike. And we did things like we filmed, because they used to watch in their house Sunday brunch. So we filmed like our own episode of Sunday brunch that we could put into his TV where they're talking about this meteor strike. And we could get news articles onto his phone, which was quite a feat like 15 years ago. And then we did it. Then we staged this meteor strike. And then he wakes up.

This is all on, I guess he's on the channel full archives, apocalypse. And then he wakes up in this post-apocalyptic world. So it's a bit like 28 days later, right? He's sort of, it's just him. And then he soon meets some other people, and he realizes his family are around, but he has to make this journey, and it's all becomes, and then there's zombies, there's the, you know, the infected.

And yeah, it's a Wizard of Oz, having to find his way back. I really loved it. It then got a bit of flack because he looked like an actor who was in a noodle advert at the time, and somebody was online saying, oh, this guy's an actor, look, here he is a noodle advert, which, you know, wasn't him.

Eventually, I found the guy. Those are the noodle advert. Put them together. And I had to film them both standing next to each other going, you know, we're not, I'm not this guy next to me. And I'm most proud of the things that have actually had an effect on someone's life rather than just, you know. And it's amazing also that you take the time to have an impact on a singular person's life. Sometimes I think we think in terms as human beings of like, how can I make the most impact on the most amount of people? But actually just going, actually just one person, sometimes it's.

enough and now he's as you said like Stephen's life is different he lives it differently. He lives it different not I'm sure that's not all to do with the show I'm not taking credit for that was a long time ago but it did I think it was a you know a helpful moment in that in that journey but yeah you can I that if you focus on one person the drama that comes out of that is so much greater and then you've people can watch that relate to it and as they emotionally invest in one person's journey they're then relating to it for themselves so hopefully it's then having this vicarious impact on people that are watching it

and in some way relating to its situation. Have you ever had that yourself though? Like one thing's happened to you that's changed you reversibly, like change your philosophy, your perception of life in a way that you've done that for other people? I've been a very clear moment of when I saw a hypnotist perform in my first year at university. So I studied in Bristol.

I studied law and German and I saw a hypnotist, Martin Taylor perform at the union and he was brilliant and it wasn't one of those embarrassing shows that people have made to look stupid it was really fascinating

and sort of hilarious without laughing at people looking silly and I just left going right that's it I'm going to learn how to do that I'd never come across hypnosis before

that was a very clear thing that gave my life a direction at a professional level but also it was something I then kind of really inhabited I just loved the idea of it later on I kind of discovered stoicism, which I think has a bad rap and for, you know, some perfectly valid reasons.

But it did at the time, it articulated, you know, I had no ambition. I had no, I didn't relate to any of these production people that were talking about viewing figures and all of those things being important. I felt like a bit of a kid in that world and actually realizing, oh, okay, there is some value in just being interested in the quality of your life in the most. moment and not all these things that are, you know, far off in the future and all these other things around you. That, that I've found helpful. Yeah, just. It's like unnecessary.

You've got to just, just knowing where you're, what your priorities are and not getting too seduced by everybody else that's naturally caring about those other aspects of it. It's important, isn't it? There is this thing, isn't there, about, like, we have sort of like the go-to cliches of what, how madness might manifest. But then there's lots of people who believe that, civilization itself is mad because it kind of goes against all of our human intuition.

Yeah, yeah. By default, like all of our kind of animal origins are stripped from us. Yeah. And then we're like actually pretending to be quite inauthentic versions of what we're meant to be. Imagine like a graph and you've got on one axis, whether that's X or Y, I can't remember, but one axis is the stuff you want to achieve in life, your aims. and then the other axis is everything that life throws back at you, you know, just stuff that you have no control over.

What we're told, largely American, optimistic model that if you set your goals properly and if you do everything correctly, you can kind of crank this line up. So the line you live is in line with your aims, right, if you just set your smart goals and so on. The reality is we live in X equals Y line, and we kind of meander around it up and down. So sometimes we are on top of things

and things are going the way we want, and then other times suddenly, you know, someone gets ill, whatever, or something horrible happens and just, you know, we have no control over that. So that we meander like this along this X equals Y line. And I think a big part of life is just making peace with that rather than pretending that isn't the case. And we're caught in this thing, caught between these poles of anxiety and boredom

or society in our instincts or whatever it is. And how do you... I met somebody once who I asked what they thought happiness was and they said the absence of anxiety, What happens is, yeah, well, that is a stoic definition of it. It's a stoic definition of it. Because happiness, I like the idea of... It's not like in any extreme.

It's just a kind of okayness. It's one way of looking at it. But anxiety's important, you know. I mean, rainbow's a good symbol for happiness because the closer you get to a rainbow, the further away it goes, right? And happiness does the same. You chase after these things on the horizon, they just keep receding or maybe you get them

and they're just not as exciting as you thought. The absence of anxiety is interesting because they're like, oh, okay, so happiness can be a byproduct. of something else, of reducing anxiety. The problem is, is that can lead to a bit of sort of deadness, because anxiety is important. Like, when we feel anxious, it's like a signal, it's a beacon that something needs to change. And then that's how you grow, right?

So you don't cross the road and learn how to cross the road without letting go of your mum's hand or whatever, right? So you've got to feel that anxiety in order to then be able to grow. So it's such a part of life. Anxiety isn't, it's not to be demonized. Because the dangerous people, surely the most dangerous ones, are the ones that just convinced they're doing good all the time. A complete lack of self-awareness. Complete lack of self-awareness and that sort of, that blinkered sense that they're doing the right thing in God's name or their name or the name of whatever cause.

And they're not accommodating the fact that they will have a bad or cruel or difficult side to them. Which we all do. Which we all do. Have you ever done therapy? No, I haven't. I'd sort of quite like to. I find it fascinating. It's interesting that you are somebody who's kind of obsessed with the mind, psychology,

but haven't done therapy to me. I would. I think I'd be a bad person for it because I think it through too much. Does your partner keep saying you should do therapy? No, no, not at all. No, no. No, and I do genuinely find it interesting. And he sees a therapist, you know, he gets a lot out of that.

And I kind of, I sort of think, I'd like a bit jealous like to do it too. But I do think it can go wrong because there are so many bad therapists. So many bad therapists. But there are some brilliant. I've met one particularly that just changed my mind on everything. Every time you go and deflect, they go, no, no, no. Back to now. Back to what I asked you.

You're not answering that question. And you're like, oh, it's quite fun. But it's naughty and a bit scary. Because you spend your whole life just going, oh, so no one. that really adds you anything. Yeah. I just think life is so fascinating.

And there's a show that I'm doing at the moment, the show that only human, there's a bit in it, which I won't go into what happens, I don't want to spoil anything, but where somebody goes through something that makes them very vulnerable, and then when they come out of it, I have them answer some questions

where they have to be very honest about themselves. And it's sort of amazing the power of being honest when you're feeling vulnerable. Yeah. It's this source of real connection because we're all sharing this human experience. And we all want a bit of a clue. We all want a bit of a roadmap.

And somehow someone else going, oh, yes, I've been through this, is like, oh, thank you. There's a relief in that. Which is, you know, why stories, movies like, you know, the Odyssey, why those stories stick around. Because we're just, there's no magical power to a myth in and of itself. But we can relate to it. Oh, that guy went on that journey. And that's how that turned out for him. So maybe I can see my journey in a similar way.

You know, these, to be able to relate. Would you feel comfortable answering some of those questions that you asked those people in the public? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and we did. When we rehearsed the show, we were all sort of, you know, taking it in part just to kind of explore what it was about. So yeah, yeah, I find it. Yeah, I don't feel uncomfortable talking about myself at all,

which is why I probably, if anything, my danger of therapies, I just wouldn't stop. But yeah, I think you need to get to, you need to be emotionally present. isn't in therapy. So if you're kind of a little bit like me in my head, you've got to get through all that and put that to one side so you can actually probably benefit from it, haven't you? Interesting that you've focused on the apocalypse for now because there's a lot of people stockpiling and there's a lot of people being told to have three weeks worth of food in their

homes. I don't know if you've picked up on that in your algorithm. And I was just wondering whether you're prepared for the apocalypse. Oh, God. Well, not for zombies. That would be a surprise. Not the zombie apocalypse, but any other kind, like a climate one or a war one? My algorithm attracts dog trainers. Okay.

And guys with their shirts off. So have you got a lot of dog treats and topless men? A lot of that. I live in a happy world. I've got cans of peas. Yeah, I'm not getting so much end of world stuff. No, I'd be hopeless.

I'd, a lot of vinyl and a lot of books. I wanted to see how actually ready you are for the zombie apocalypse. And there are some zombies in my house, which we're going to catch and film on this camcorder. Are you ready to go zombie hunting with me? The decor is unsettling. Hang on, that rail was not there before. Is there someone behind the rail?

Oh, I'm pushing to you! No! Oh, there's another one! Right, I'm locking you down there, Darren. Eat him! No! No! I'm 55. Your breath!

What happens with zombies? Fill me in. I don't know much about... I've definitely been breathed on. Is that how you catch... I don't know. You're the expert. You're the expert. One of them was definitely infected. With the herpes, simplex virus.

I've got sapphirex, I've got sapphire. Oh, I'm sure at her. Asiclavir. That's very good for the simplex herpes. She's also not that hungry. She's not coming over. She's not hungry. I'm not hungry.

Leave you with the zombies. Very naughty. Very naughty. Don't break the door. I'm laughing. I'm laughing out of fear. I'm laughing out of fear. She's a strange.

She's got me. We're moving on to sad. Sad. Would you be able to tell me about your sad thing? My sad thing. Well, again, sadness, something we think is bad. But I think a big part of it. life is accommodating it. Like a life without sadness is going to be a life without any sort of

value or meaning or like if you're just, you know, everything's fine and happy all the time. Like that doesn't seem like a life well lived. My, yeah, I haven't had a lot of grief in my life, but my dad died during COVID and my last stage showman was sort of about him. It felt like a very like multi-layered type of sadness because so he had lots of stuff wrong with him. and one of the things he had he had a bit of Alzheimer's and a bit of cancer amongst lots of other things and they'd sort of been floating around

a bit of a low level and then he was in hospital when COVID then happened and they did some more tests and realized that actually he's riddled with a cancer like this, it had just exploded and that didn't really take it in because he had a bit of Alzheimer's, right?

So he didn't really take it in but mum and everybody else got it. So they're like, well, I mean it's really palliative care now so we're going to take him off his meds there's no reason for any of those. and then we thought we were going to have like a year of like the cancer becoming this really ugly thing but actually he caught COVID and died within like you know a week but because it was COVID no one we couldn't he was at home just in a room like mum couldn't be with him it was right at the start so paranoia was

super high and she was well I can't be in the room with him he didn't know there was this case he didn't know why he was being left alone in a room plus the Alzheimer's because he just didn't he just didn't He just hadn't heard of the COVID thing at all. He'd sort of missed it because he'd been in a hospital and just wasn't quite. His mind wasn't quite, wouldn't have been quite sharp enough, I think, to really understand. So in my mind, he was just sort of like just left alone to die is what it feels like. So I didn't get, I mean, I had a nice last time with him. It wasn't quite the last time.

I was like the last time in the hospital. Saw him once after that, back at the house. But then his last sort of stint of just sort of being in bed. I didn't speak to him. My brother sort of had a FaceTime conversation with him. And then Mum said, do you want to have a FaceTime with Dad? And then I'm doing this overthinking thing of like,

does he know he's dying? Is it weird to have your kids saying goodbye to you? If you don't know you're dying, do I want that to be via FaceTime when I'm just mainly looking at the little picture myself in the corner? You know, so I thought, oh, maybe I'll wait and then he just died. And then there was no funeral because it was COVID. So then just time just carried on.

We're not hugging. We're not getting together and doing any of those things that you do and it's sort of a bit like it hadn't happened. The whole thing felt like you're on holiday and you've read an article going, oh look, dad died. That's a shame. It's what it felt like. And do you think that there was a sadness or a sense of regret because of your relationship with your father and his frustrations as a person with his own life? Like regret on his behalf, maybe or? Yeah. Well, like, yeah, because he'd said something in conversation once about, because I used to smoke cigars sometimes

and my mum never liked it and there's a little snippet of conversation I caught when you said oh I'll have one occasionally and she said oh when do you smoke I never see you smoke so well I might have a cigarette in the car when I'm driving around

or when I feel depressed and she thought it'd be silly I just remember thinking oh god all right so that stayed with me you know and we didn't have we wouldn't have a bad relationship it was just like it was you know

like a lot of fathers and sons didn't quite meet each other we're very different people But I kind of figured he probably came from a large and poor family. And mum didn't. Their family were quite well off. And he was kind of dyslexic. And didn't he sort of schooling was a bit difficult, didn't do much of it.

And so he probably felt, I don't know, out of his depth a lot. So that didn't help either, this feeling that a life of maybe feeling a little isolated then ended in that way. All I could do with it was make the show. So that was like a memorial. Yeah, that's what it became. Because even the idea, well, we'll do a thing when COVID's over, but how are you going to get a bunch of people in their 80s together

just because lockdown's been lifted? Like everyone's still being super-guel. We never did anything at all. And it just always sits badly with me. So the best I could do was make a show that it had already been written. And it was sort of about dad, but it was about dad just sort of being ill. And in his last phase and the advice that he gave me, it then became, oh, actually, he's died.

This guy I've been talking about all the way through the day. the show has died quite recently. And so it became it just, the meaning of it shifted, and of course, the weight of it shifted. The night the queen died, we had to do a sort of, you know, a minute's silence and all of that, which was a totally weird way of ending the show, but we were obliged to do it. So the curtain had come down, I'm on stage on my own. There's a big picture of my dad here. And I'm thinking, oh, God, you never knew the queen died. Like, what a big, big thing that is for everyone at the moment. Like, you know, you never knew that. That was never part of your, uh, ever part of your story.

That was, yeah, that's... Do you think anybody ever truly knows anybody else? There is like a quite solitary nature of human existence. And then there are times in your life, brief moments, I think, where you might be in a situation and you go, oh, I feel truly connected to these people. And it sparks something and you feel so relieved. Even in our closest relationships, I remember feeling quite disappointed.

I was younger and my mum said, oh, your children never truly know you. But then as I've grown older, I always think, oh, well, you never really truly know your children either. People can be married for 50 years and then just be like, I didn't know you liked that. You never told, you never shared that with me. It's quite a common thing to go,

I feel really misunderstood because I thought you knew me better than that. I guess I've got two questions. does that matter? And do we ever truly know anyone? And is life a bit lonely? Oh, God, what great things. I think it's not only inevitable that we don't ever truly know our partners,

but it's a rich... But it's also like the richest and most important thing, and I think it's worth hanging on to because that's like the whole of life, right? The whole of life and growing up is tolerating ambiguity, teetotering the fact that there's this person that is supposed to be a soulmate, at some levels isn't.

At some level will be wrong for each other, and there are always going to be things about this person that I don't know. And what that, if your partner, if you know and understand your partner completely, and they're exactly as you want them to be, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then what is that? That just sounds like a weird form of control. That sounds like I need my partner to be what I, to be a projection of weird narcissism.

Weird narcissism. It also, I think, keeps like, you know, desire going. Because what happens? You sort of, we desire the things we don't have. When you love somebody, you kind of have them in a sense. Okay, they're yours now. How do you then keep desire going? Yeah.

And it's interesting, like, how sexy your partner can seem when they're on stage performing. And you're sort of seeing a side of them that isn't familiar. any sense of like, this is a real human being. I can't fully understand. I can't control. I can't make them like me. And all that means is just fit in with my own madness. And I shouldn't be doing those things anyway.

That's, I think, helpful in a relationship. Because the more you can honor that, that's what's going to keep a relationship alive and respectful and not needy and not been prone to fear and jealousy when things aren't. perfect and so on. Yeah. So I think it's really important. I do. And also it's important as well to have things for yourself. Like your dad might not have enjoyed those cigars as much if everyone knew he was having them. But if you're like quietly having a cigar in your car and nobody really knows, you might really be like, that's amazing. Yeah. What a lovely... Like a nice moment to happen

for yourself. Totally. Really important. We're going to move on to bad. What makes you afraid? What are you scared of? I think I have quite an avoidant personality, by which I mean, I think it comes to people who have learned not to be too vulnerable when they were young. You learn the hard way not to be too vulnerable. So you then can grow up. You know, you tend to not want help when things are stressful, really value your own space and your time a lot. Like you need time away. It could be secretive. You, I'm talking about my but just that personality.

You shut down when faced with your partner's stress because it's triggering stress in yourself and you don't know what to do with that. So you sort of find you can face yourself shutting down. It's the opposite of a kind of more anxious personality that probably needs feedback. Validation feedback. Yeah, exactly.

And very often they find each other in partnerships and it can be tricky. My partner's not particularly a people please. It really is far more outspoken. And that often gets me in a situation where I have to be on his side and have a difficult, conversation that I'd rather not have and, you know, do all those things. So I find I avoid discomfort.

I sit very comfortably in the middle of my comfort zone. So I don't do very, I mean, I do a lot. I'm busy work-wise, but I'm never on panel shows and doing, I'm never out there doing stuff at all. I'm just like focusing on the thing that I'm going to. We're privileged, have you? Oh, yeah, it is. Well, thank you very much. I'm going to dig deeper. But yeah, I kind of, I'm aware that there's a sort of a bit of a fear behind that I kind of, if anything feels like,

I don't have that thing, I'm all rising to a challenge. I'm always amazed that people want to go out their comfort zones to do extraordinary things, whether it's, oh, I'm terrified of singing, so I'll go and sing on stage, or I'll do a bungee jump, because I just, nothing in me rises to that.

You want the safety of your already established boundaries. Comfortable thing, yeah, exactly. So I suppose that's my fear. So when you were about six, you had a teacher, that you really liked, who was a Christian and invited you to Bible study.

But you were born from, am I right, atheist parents? Or they were non-religious? Yeah, they were just not religious. Ambiguous. Yeah, ambiguous parents. Yeah, and you got quite involved in Christianity. Then obviously, when you hit sort of adulthood,

teenagehood or whatever, you were, that kind of belief system was at odds with your sexuality. and then you were taken to some kind of conversion therapy group. Gay conversion? It worked there. I went in straight, yeah. You went in straight and became gay.

Yeah. And how old were you when that happened? So I had a friend who was involved in it. And... How were you? Pardon? Oh, this is a university now, so I was 12. I was a genius.

Yeah. So he was Christian and was struggling with all of that himself. So he had got involved in it. And he was my Christian friend. At the time, I was still Christian. So he took me along. So I went to like a couple of, I think went to like a day event. It was a bit of a convention.

And I read some of the literature. So I was very, I was kind of aware of it. And what they say is that there's a sort of psychological basis to it, which is largely that you've become alienated from the male raw model, normally your dad. So you've had a trick your relationship with you. dad, that, that, you're, so what should be, you know, most, most boys are closer to their mums when they're young and then they, they kind of normally, this is, this is the logic, it's not me saying this, it's the logic of the scene, that you, you switch, you tend to switch

that, your dad becomes a primary role model. If for some reason he's not giving you that, you start to lack it, you miss it, you're going to go through puberty, so that becomes sort of eroticise, that, that's sort of the idea. And it's one of those things that, I mean, I think sexuality is a very complex. interesting thing, right? So maybe somewhere within that rich tapestry, there are aspects of that that are going to slightly ring true, and it's enough to kind of go, oh, at last, here within my Christian world is somebody not just saying read your Bible more and stop being gay, it's, oh, no, there's a kind of psychological basis to this. Do you have a tricky relationship with your dad?

Yes, many gay men probably would say yes, plus who doesn't. But whether that's a cause or an effect, or totally unrelated, or just a vague correlation, not a causation, or nothing. Who knows? But anyway, it's easier to sort of join those things up if you want to. But what was fascinating is it clearly wasn't working on anybody. There was one poor guy that would get... It was a great place to hook up. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.

Well, it was a lot of people who were struggling that were being given a bad answer as opposed to... I mean, it was a while ago, and it has since closed down. It kind of went underground for a little bit because it became very unpopular. understandably. There was one poor guy that used to get dragged on stage who would talk about, you know, how he used to be gay, but now he's not, and he has a wonderful relationship with this fabulous wife. I mean, it was not very convincing. And that was it. So I just, it just, I sort of had a moment of kind of flirting with it. And then it was like, no, this is just, this isn't right, is it? So, yeah, that was that. But I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't,

I didn't get through the program. I just found this interesting because one of my good friends who's here, if you don't mind I'm going to invite them on, was raised in a religious cult. Right. And is one of the gayest people you'll ever meet in your life. Oh, I've met him outside. Yes.

If you get on the gradient of gay, he's very up there in the gay scene. My lovely friend Airy is here dressed up for Halloween as a parking meter. but also it was raised in a religious cult, weren't you? Where they really, really, really didn't want you to be gay? Sure didn't. How did they know? They didn't, weirdly. Because they were all gay themselves, I think.

I think that's why they joined those things in the first place. What happened? What happened? Can you say what the cold is? I'm born into it. So my parents joined it in 1977 and then I was born in 82. I was raised in, that was my reality. So your show, that miracle show, that was a bit much.

because it was a faith healing kind of like spin-off. Were they dealing with gay things as like a particularly targeted? Yeah, like all of women, gay people. It came out of Christian nationalism in the 1940s. So the guy who ran it, he was like trained up by the Ku Klux Klan. Right. Mad. Do you have any siblings?

Yeah, too. So I saw the road out because they were older than me. So they gave me like a root out. Oh, so they came out before I did. Yeah, came out of the cult thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Christian fundamentalist doomsday cult.

Come on. Brilliant. Oh, right. I think the red flag is on the label there, isn't it? It's on the box. Doomsday. It was initially in 1977, but they just moved the dates. Oh, right.

I see. God. I think children know when something's up. I think kids just know. Teenage years was my sort of like, Homer Simpson, walking backwards into the hedge giff moment. And I was sort of be like, I've got lots of coursework guys. I've got to stay at home.

Study was a safe space. And I was like, this doesn't feel right. This sort of like, relentless. sort of like thrumming dread isn't probably, isn't quite for me, you know. No, the lack of joy. Right? It was a bit like dour because it wasn't a sort of happy, clapy situation at all. It was lots of like really dull off-key hymns.

But I just left home when I was like 17, 18. So do you still, are you still connect close with your family or is that how to? Yeah. It's taken a second. Yeah, yeah. It's very polite. They're lovely. They're lovely.

They're victims of it themselves. Yeah. Obviously, I was fuming in my 20s. Yeah. And it's just in a slow, calming down. of like forgiveness and you know. And I think you found forgiveness after the Christian not bringing.

I know, imagine. But you know anyone who's had conversion therapy? I don't actually. Awful. I can't believe that only just, it's only just become illegal, isn't it? Like only does. Yeah, yeah, exactly. How do they?

What do they do? It's just a lot of talk and then it becomes just a lot of praying and a lot of sort of therapy that's just all based on this sort of fundamental wrong starting point. Right. Which is that it's a broken thing that needs fixing. But you're so sort of in it and you're probably there because you're Christian. So it is, it may be, it may feel like, and I don't know what this is like now,

but certainly when I was, this is going back a bit of it. But it feels like, oh, this is a bit of a problem. It's catching you at that moment when you're like, uh, and it's someone going, it's a problem, but we can fix it. So you don't know yourself at age. You don't know. At all. You're just don't.

And you're not being given the space to just sit with it and look it out. It's so dangerous. And how much do you think that going to those sort of rooms has informed your actual work? Because the power of persuasion seems like it's one of your fascinations. Do you think that's the trigger? I think not from that because it was a very small part of my life there. I don't feel that's something I went through and it would be a disservice to the people that have gone through that. But my friend did.

So I felt peripheral to it. But what I think, and again, this maybe is about my generation, That awful kind of cliche of the gay man, as we're talking about men being hairdressers and designers and fashionistas and all that, is because you can get very good at dazzling surfaces, right? Very good at deflecting dazzling surfaces because the stuff that's going on inside might feel quite complicated and difficult. So to deflect from that, you're kind of controlling the scenario with this sort of, whoa, thing. And that's, and magic's very, it's exhausting. And magic's very good at that because I'm great.

grateful for it because I got very good at doing it. And it's hard to unpick one thread from a big ball of threads and go back and go. I should have done something different. I think that's the key. It's about deflection, distraction. Misty direct. Yeah. So what have you taken from it that feels like a positive thing that's helpful?

Like that you've, that you've... From that experience. Yeah, from that experience. Well, I've got a book out of it. So I've monetised the trauma. Okay, thank God. That's the main thing. Because I've only just fully de, the appropriate.

I was programmed, honestly, about five years ago, I would say. So I think when I was researching for the book, loads of stuff revealed itself. And I was like, things that I'd taken for granted, the sort of reality that they'd created for me, crumbled around me, even at this age. I mean, like years and years later. The positive I might have taken from it is pride, honestly,

that I'm fucking here. Yeah. Like, and I'm fab. Thank you, Erie, for bringing your... Yeah. Go and issue some parking tickets. They're refilming dynasty next door, so they need you. Goodbye.

Thank you. Do you read or acknowledge or care about when people speak negatively about your work or try and unpick it? Are you on social media? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Luckily that never happens. He's always positive. It was always positive.

I'm blessed. I decided years ago that it was Twitter at the time, right? It's whatever it is. It's the worst one. It's the worst one, X, and it's just like... Everyone's mean. Everyone's mean. But I decided it was that reading people's comments was like reading their diaries, right?

Of course they're going to say horrible things, because why wouldn't you write horrible things about somebody in your diary? That's what it's for. They don't really think you're going to read it. And you shouldn't read it any more than you should read someone's diary. So I just went, okay, that's straightforward. I just sort of kind of stop reading that. And I'm on Instagram now. I'm still on Twitter because I've got so many fault

I don't know if they're real people I don't know who's still really on Twitter and I've got some like nearly 2 million people that I'm sure are mainly Russian bots Yeah exactly the computers And Instagram is you know slightly nicer But again I don't read the messages

I guess I don't know if you find this too But I find with different with like the stage show I'm doing now is different because the doing it is living it every night But when I paint or write or a lot of other things And with TV making the thing is the source, yeah. The moment it's done,

it's like, okay, I don't really want to know. Like, I paint my pictures and then they're gone. I might put them on the wall, but they're too big, so they go in storage and maybe somebody buys them,

but it's the couple of weeks of in that room painting or the writing of the book. Once it's done, I mean, again, lovely to know, okay, hopefully people read it and they enjoy it,

but that's not, you've got to just, just knowing what your priorities are and not getting too seduced by everybody else that's naturally caring, about those other aspects of it. It's important, isn't it?

But if I put shows out and things, I do the old-fashioned thing of your mum and people that see the show that are your friends will tell you it's the best thing they've ever seen and then that's fine. Oh, you're lucky. Mine don't. Oh, they don't.

Oh, no. They're like, oh, that wasn't your best. Or they really keep me grounded. They were like, it was okay. I think it's parents and old teachers from school that have... My mum's an old teacher. There you go.

That's the double rabbit, yeah. They feel, yeah. My mum saw the show. She went with the neighbour and she said, oh, the scenery felt a bit drab. Yeah, yeah, that sort of thing. It's sort of like, yeah, moms and teachers. To prevent me from thinking she's being mean,

she'll say, well, my friend said, and I know it's her thing. My friend said it was actually quite cruel to me what you said about your mother not being able to cook on loose women. It's hard, isn't it? It's always hard, but it digs at something that you feel might be, might be true as well. otherwise it's sort of fine, isn't it?

There's a lot of bad therapists, as I said, but there's a lot of bad magicians. How do you feel about them? The thing with, I just find magic really, like, if you get fooled by a trick that's good and fooled you in a nice way and it all works, you're kind of being shown that your story of the world doesn't quite match up to the reality, right?

The story you're telling yourself of what's happened. There must be more that's happened in the world because your story has led to this impossible conclusion. I just think there's a lot, There's a lot more interesting stuff in magic than, look how clever I am. I made a thing disappear or I read your mind or whatever it is. The moment you get a whiff of that, it sort of kind of loses its, for me, it kind of loses its power of it. So I always just try and make it about the audience and about other stuff other than how clever I am,

because that's just not very interesting or true. We have such a bad relationship with mystery in the West. We're a bit uncomfortable with ourselves, we bury it somewhere. And one of the places, well, we bury it in the idea of the unconscious, right? That's a sort of safe place to put fathomless mystery, or the unconscious. It belongs in the world of therapy and we don't really understand it and that's fine. It's over there somewhere and the same with quantum physics as another one. And magic, you know, secular stage magic.

That's where we can just safely park the whole notion of mystery. So it's nice to bring it out and make something of it other than just... Well, you're exceptional at it. I love Penn and Teller. Yeah, they're brilliant. I remember them growing up, loved them. I saw their show in Vegas and just had some... absolute jaw-dropping moments.

Yeah, they're brilliant. They're good on the horror thing as well. Final thing. Yeah. What makes you glad? What makes me glad? I love doing the stage show. That's glorious.

Like coming after a show, you just feel like you're the best version of yourself, which is so nice. I love time to read and paint. So I love that feeling. I love, you know, and all the trickiness of being in a relationship just when it's going really well.

That's lovely, isn't it? Those are good things. I'm a real sucker for people being kind. Those days when you just look, maybe it's a sunny day, you're being cheated into it, but you're just kind of looking at everyone at the street and just loving them. Oh, you wore that because that makes you feel good

and you're taking your dog out. That's amazing. You've got a dog and how good that you know. Connection. Yeah, all that stuff. That's like a glorious feeling, isn't it? I think we need more of that. I do, especially now.

Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you. It's been enlightening, wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for coming on Mad Sad and Bad. Thank you so much. So nice to meet you. You too.

Bye-bye, everybody. Bye, Darren. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I'm very grateful. It was very nice to meet you all. Thank you so much. Thank you for the tea.

I'm out. I'm going out now. Goodbye. Pink zombies. The stage will be bad.