Derren Brown is back with more feats in The Events Channel 4

DERREN Brown is a genius. Or a con artist. Or just the best illusionist ever to come from Croydon. Whichever, he’s pretty good. Anyone who threatens to blow their own head off in the name of ­entertainment is a man who ­deserves our respect, if not our live ammunition.

Tonight, he kicks off his new series with an attempt to predict the numbers of the National Lottery draw. ­Simple, huh? Considering the draw is taking place live on BBC One at 10.35pm, and Derren’s show is on at the same time, it could well be. But we’d imagine the latter is pre-­recorded, to make it a bit more of a challenge.

Of course, it’s not the first of his TV specials that could have gone wrong. And it’s not the first that clearly isn’t all it seems. In anticipation, we look at the fall-out from some of Brown’s other stunts:

Russian Roulette (2003)

The set-up: ­Performed in Jersey due to ­relaxed gun laws, Brown whittled down 12,000 applicants to just one who’d load a single shot into a ­revolver, which – by the power of his mind – he would then decide how many times to safely fire into his head.

The result: Brown chose the right barrel to fire into a ­sandbag, but it turned out Jersey gun laws were exactly the same as British ones. And ­regardless, Channel 4 was never going to allow even the chance of someone evacuating their brains on live TV. The “live” round was a blank, though Brown claims this would have killed him anyway. Hmm...

Séance (2004)

The set-up: Willing students were brought together for a “live séance” at Elton Hall, east London, which saw Brown fool the group into believing they had contacted a long-dead woman called Jane (who turned out to be alive) by running the gauntlet of manipulations used by spiritualists.

The result: Not much controversy about this one, you’d think, as Brown explained it all at the end. Yet Channel 4 received more than 700 ­complaints (many, it must be said, before the episode had even aired). He later admitted in his book, Tricks Of The Mind, that the show had not been ­broadcast live as claimed.

The Heist (2006)

The set-up: Brown managed to convince a small group of participants (who had also just answered an ad for a ­motivational seminar) to rob a security van in broad daylight by suggestion alone.

The result: Surprisingly, ­considering a bunch of ­average schmos committed what they thought was an armed robbery, not much of a fall-out from this one. ­Naturally, they didn’t use real guns (though they thought they were real), and despite several blogs claiming The Heist to be fake, the participants confirmed it as genuine.

The System (2008)

The set-up: A special where Brown was to share his “100 per cent guaranteed” method of winning on the horses as a camera followed an ordinary member of the public.

The result: Another where Brown revealed all at the end. It was actually a simple case of maths. Brown had started sending race predictions to 7,776 subjects, whittled away the ones who lost and was left with extremely suggestible winners. The only fall-out here was an entire audience left saying: “Meh, whatever”.