Russian Roulette

Russian roulette

On 5 October 2003, Brown performed Russian roulette, live on Channel 4. The stunt was performed at an undisclosed location, supposedly in Jersey, due to laws in mainland Britain banning the possession of handguns. The majority of the episode focused upon the nomination of the final volunteer, James, who was chosen from 12,000 who applied for the task, and whittled down to five by the day of the stunt. As a prize, James was chosen to be the only person in the room when Derren performed the stunt. James was required to load a single shot into a revolver with six numbered chambers.

People, particularly sceptics and critics, have theorized that James was manipulated into picking chamber number one because Brown used the word "one" repeatedly. But Brown has said the word "Six" more frequently, and the word "Five" as frequently. At the beginning of the episode, Brown showed a similar, much safer trick. During the earlier demonstration, he explained that he needed the participant to say the numbers "one", "two", "three", "four", "five" and "six" slowly and clearly. Without realizing, both the subject in the earlier trick and James did say one number differently from the others. In the earlier stunt, the participant said "Five" differently, inadvertently revealing the location of a bracelet hidden under a numbered cup.

During the final stunt, Brown appeared to made a mistake which could have been fatal. When James dictated the numbers, he unwittingly pronounced "one" differently. Brown misheard and assumed the bullet was in chamber 5. Attempting to predict the location of the bullet, Brown pulled the trigger on chambers 3 and 4 with the gun aimed at his head. He then fired the gun at a wall, revealing chamber 5 to have been empty the whole time. Showing signs of fear, Brown took a very long pause before continuing the stunt. He eventually fired the gun against his head (revealing Chamber 6 to be empty) before immediately extending his arm and firing the gun (which was then out of camera shot) at the wall, revealing the bullet to have been in chamber 1.

The program was initially condemned by senior British police officers, apparently fearful of copycat acts. Brown himself defended the program, saying, "It probably sounds odd. But as a magic-related performer, to have that even being asked: Was it real? Was it not real? That lifts it to a level that I'm very comfortable with. What's left is the fact that it was a terrific piece of television."Some tabloid newspapers reported that Channel 4 had admitted that the stunt used blank ammunition without Brown's knowledge, but this was not an official statement made by Channel 4.

This video is very interesting!

Video Courtesy of Youtube.com
Story Courtesy of Wikipedia.com