How To Become A Pub Quiz Master - Derren Brown

Tonight's applicant is Glenn, who we're secretly filming here. Glenn's a 40-year-old father of two from Essex. He's an aviation insurance specialist. He reads Stephen King. He loves Star Trek, regularly goes to watch West Ham, plays poker and hates heights. He considers himself of average intelligence, but says he doesn't have a good memory. And after monitoring Glenn and his life for several days, the idea for his ambush began to take shape. Glenn has come here today for a medical checkup. However, we knew where he was going, and so got here a few hours before him. He has no idea what's about to happen. We've placed hidden cameras throughout the building and have also taken control of the lift. I think that's very stable. Shit. Nothing's going to happen. Not yet. That scared me. Darren, how are you? I'm very well indeed. Have you applied to be part of the show? Yeah, I did. We'd love to use you. Thank you. You know how it works? I do. You're going to pick one of two cards. One says trick, one says treat. If you pick the one that says treat, it'll be something nice. If you pick the one that says trick, it won't be. Do you want to play? I do. Excellent. First of all, you have to sign your contract. That allows us to do anything we like with you. It's difficult to read the red writing in the red light, isn't it? Touch the one you'd like. My daughter would like me to go with me. You're going to turn face the other way. I'm going to show the camera the one that you picked. Thank you, Glenn. You can turn back now. We'll be in touch. Having ambushed Glenn the previous week, I've invited him to join me at King's College Library in central London to discover what's going to happen to him. Surrounded by almost a million books containing the general knowledge of the world, this is the ideal place to get started. However, what he doesn't know is that the game has already begun. Well, look, sorry for the scare the other day. So your scares are over now. You picked a treat. Fantastic. Your treat is going to be this. Today's Wednesday. Yeah. Right. Next Wednesday, there's something called the Night of the Champions. Right. And it is the pub quiz of pub quizzes. You're going to enter that competition. Right. On your own. On my own. And hopefully do very well. You're going to compete for the prize. And we have between now and then for me to show you how to learn everything. So you're covered. What? Everything ever. Everything ever, pretty much. Now, take a seat for a second because I know... I know in saying this, it can sound very daunting. Yeah. And just to demonstrate to you how much better your memory is than you probably think it is at the moment, you leave work in the morning about eight o'clock, is that right? Yeah. And you make the trip from your house to Gidia Station. Gidia Park Station. There's a cash machine that's just on the outside of that station that you walk past to get to the entrance, yes? Yeah. Now, do you remember walking past it yesterday? No. No? But you just remember you did it in the sense that you know that you did it, but you wouldn't necessarily be able to recreate the scene. There was a woman. What was she wearing? Do you remember? She was wearing a red coat. So that's one of us. I was part of the group that were watching you. The reason why we chose her and why she was dressed like that is so that she would form a marker in your mind. There'd be something because I was hoping that you'd have a vague recollection of her. However, if I said to you that up above the cash machine there was something different that isn't normally there, there was a sign that we put there with a word on. If I asked you... No. You couldn't even remember the sign, let alone the word that was on it. Not at all. If I said just try and remember what that said. But I can't say that I actually remember seeing something like that. So, close your eyes. You're coming out of your house. You're crossing over the road. You are a little bit flustered. So just run that forward in your mind until you start to approach the train station. And just in your mind, just pan up. There's a word on the sign. And as you look at it, just let that come into focus. You're not trying to remember what it is. You're just letting the word come into focus. Strangely, I keep seeing the word shoe. Shoe? Yeah. Okay. What makes you say the word shoe? I don't know. What makes me say the word shoe? All right, fantastic. I want you to remember what that's like. We filmed it. Please don't be shoe. We filmed the whole thing. Take a look at this. This is going to really freak me out. You are. Do you remember this? No. Well, I don't remember that, yeah. And you had no idea we were filming you? No. These are on very long lenses, so they're quite far away. Shall we slow this down? No, why? No, how'd you do that? There she is. There that is. You didn't even look. What made you say it? I had not... How did you do it? That's the point. When you try to remember it, you couldn't. You put that effort into it, it just gets in the way. It stops it from happening. And what we're going to do with these books is the same thing. And the reason why I've shown you this is I want you to know that you can do this as effortlessly. And all it takes is that not trying and trusting kind of what I'm going to ask you to do. I'm feeling like that's the most bizarre episode of my entire life. Fantastic, okay. I'm going to have to expand Glenn's memory capability so that I can teach him to absorb huge amounts of information. This is where you have to just trust me and do this technique because it will feel like you're not really doing anything. You take your right hand and you make this. So that's right, forefinger and middle finger. Is that comfortable for you? And now you're going to start off probably fairly slowly, moving your fingers down at about that speed. Just do that for me. Now the internet is bursting with speed learning courses, very few of which ever offer anything of value. I have my own techniques which will allow Glenn to learn thousands of pages of information unconsciously with no conscious awareness of what he's remembering. And sometimes that information may be stored as words and sometimes as pictures. So everything goes in peripherally. As you get into it, you will not be consciously... The system sounds great, but it's a very limited use as the information fades away after a few days if it isn't reviewed. I know it's a mad, mad mission, but any questions before you start? No, I'm just going to go for it. Fantastic. I thought to myself, nah, this is not going to work and I'm going to be making a complete idiot of myself next week coming last in a pub quiz of Great Britain or wherever it is. Now, let's have a crack at it. Over the next seven days and nights, Glenn will have to view a phenomenal amount of facts and figures to have any chance of competing well against 150 of the top pub quizzers in London. Of course, there's no guarantee that the answers he'll need will be covered by the information in these books. So all we can do is cram in as much as possible. If we can do this, then it'll be some achievement. Glenn now only has three days left before he has to compete in the pub quiz night of the champions. He's following my techniques rigorously and we continue to monitor his progress. Glenn will have no conscious memory of anything that he's learning. That's the only way I can make room for the huge amount of information that has to go in. However, after a week of intensive studying, I felt he needed a little boost in his confidence. We met up and Glenn brought with him a selection of the books he'd been absorbing so that he can test for the first time whether the system is working or not. So talk me through what you've been doing over the last few days. I've been looking at an awful lot of books. Just to let you see that you do know more than you think you know. Is it one of the books that you've read? Yeah. Yeah, it's a book on art and artists. It's an encyclopaedic volume. Looks like it's part of a set. I'm going to ask you a question from this. If you tried to work out the answer, you probably wouldn't be able to get it. You'd find that very difficult. I don't want you to do that. What I want you to do is to imagine that the answer is coming somewhere from the back of your mind, where you've had no conscious awareness of any facts at all. From somewhere in the darkness, something will come forward, some images, some ideas, which you're going to piece together to form an answer. Worst thing that happens is you're wrong. It does not matter at all. Okay. All right? So if I asked you, for example, the Camden Town Group, which is a group of British painters, they formed in 1911. They held an exhibition somewhere in London in 1911 to 1912. Asked you where that was. Carfax House. Hey! Carfax Gallery, London, 1911 to 1912. So what made you say that? Just... I could see a car. All I could see was a car. And it was... It looked strange. Yeah. There was something about it. Yeah. And I could see something coming out of it. And it looked like a fax machine. So... So you went Carfax. Carfax. How would I know that? Don't tell me I know everything in these British books. I mean, I can't really know everything in these books, can I? No, surely not. I don't want to do this too much. Let's just do... Let's just do one more. Amazon Rainforest. How many different sorts of hummingbird have been recorded in the Amazon Rainforest? 319. No. Right there. Christ almighty. No, I certainly can't know that. How do I know that, Darren? Birdlife is even richer. More than half the world's total of 86,000 species thriving in the great green sanctuary. 319 different sorts of hummingbird alone have been recorded. How does that feel? Scary. I can't... I've taken everything in. Don't even try and work it out, all right? Just take it on board. Great, I've got it. Take whatever encouragement you can from that feeling of astonishment that you have at the moment and then just let it... let it take you forward. And so, after only one week of looking at hundreds of books, thousands of pages and millions of words, Glenn's arrived at the Night of the Champions, where 150 of the brightest brains have gathered to compete for the coveted prize of pub quiz champion. Who are the missing links? The Toucans. Five dogs and one fox. We've won six out of the last seven that we've done. Good questions. They're always good questions. I'm definitely going to go for winning. You don't quiz if you don't think you're going to win. Although everyone knows we're filming for a TV show, they don't know that it's mine, so I have to hide in the pub garden in the cold to talk to Glenn in secret. Glenn's turned up with his wife Jane for moral support. I gave you some techniques as to how to kind of access the information. It feels like there's a huge room in my head with lots of drawers, lots of places to hide things. I've got a fair idea of how to go and get the stuff. Yes. Hopefully it's just going to come. Jane has been told not to talk to Glenn or react or do anything that might help him. The questions have been set by Andy Burns, one of London's most experienced quiz masters. I've had no contact with him, and as with all the teams, he doesn't know that I'm involved. There's lots of smart people downstairs who've been quizzing a very long time and who I guess are expecting something tough. They're expecting the best, and I think I'll put something together that will really test them. The teams are made up of between four and six of the brightest people from their area. Glenn is the only person tonight entering this quiz alone. The quiz comprises 40 questions, and Andy, the quiz master, is the only one in the room who knows what those questions are and what subjects they'll be covering. Glenn is clearly nervous and still has no idea if the speed learning I've taught him will be enough to answer whatever questions are asked. Let's get this quiz underway, ladies and gentlemen. This is it. Question one. What is the middle name of the current US president? What is another common name for the scarab beetle? I'm not positive for scarab beetle. I had a picture of a scarab beetle, but I can't decipher what the picture means. When Big Ben strikes five o'clock, how many seconds delay is there between the strikes? In fencing, what do you call the resultant fight-off? When there is a time. What is the currency in literature? Is the equivalent of Venus in many weeks for the moon to complete a revolution? I just can't work out how I knew that. They're all coming to me like pictures, OK? All I can see is a quick picture in my head. It's like, bang, picture, it's gone. Who's got all three of those? Which club that is currently not in the premiership has won the most number of league titles? In the year 1992, which English town became a city? How many of Henry VIII's offspring ruled in England? Before 1972, what was Sri Lanka known as? What animal, when they gather together in a group, is known as a flange? In which US state did man first knowingly drill the world? Which Russian word literally means, what is the more common name for the Volstead Act? In biblical etiology, which animal became extinct because it was thrown off the ark and drowned? Now what happens is, you finish off the answers on your answer sheet and you swap your sheet with an opposing team. And then we're going to find out who has won the 2008 Knight of Champions. Here come the answers. What is the middle name of George Bush? It is Walker. What's another common name for the scarab beetle? The dung beetle. How many seconds delay is there between a dung on Big Ben? The answer's five, ladies and gentlemen. In fencing, what do you call the resultant fight-off when there is a tie? It is known as a barrage. What is the currency in Liechtenstein? The answer is the Swiss franc. Question number nine, the answer is Afrodose. Question number 11, the answer is four weeks. Which current non-premiership team has won the most number of league titles? Sheffield Wednesday. Which English town became a city in 1992? The answer is Sunderland. Until a week ago, Glenn's life revolved around his work, his wife and children, and his football. Since then, he's taken a leap of faith and has given up all his spare time to throw himself into a seemingly impossible mission, all for this one night. Please put the final score in the box provided. The final scores are being counted up now, and if Glenn has been able to hold his own against a huge room of seasoned quizzers, it'll be an amazing personal achievement for him. The results are in, ladies and gentlemen. From bottom to top, we've got a team called One Night in Paris. Moving up, we've got a team called More Luck Than Judgements. When Darren first told me what I was going to be going through, that was just something a million miles away from where I thought I could be. I know it's a mad, mad mission, but any questions before you start? No, I'm just going to go for it. Lee Sharp. Six thick thistle sticks. Dynamo Devilfish. Micah Dave and the Disciples. Don't tell me I know everything in these really books. I mean, I can't really know everything in these books, can I? 30 points is The Missing Links. 32 points is Fawny Bay. The whole process has been an absolute remarkable experience and something I wouldn't swap for any other experiences I've ever had. 33 points is Just Glenn. It's a dead heat for first place, ladies and gentlemen. And so after just one week competing on his own against the best teams in London, Glenn has achieved the second highest score of the night. It's difficult to describe exactly how I feel right now because I'm just an ordinary guy with an ordinary background being taken out of that, putting into something that I'd most probably never do and I've done well, you know, and if I can do it, most probably everybody can do it. Some of the techniques I've been taught, they were remarkable and obviously they've worked because I wouldn't be standing here with a bottle of champagne in my hand. After a long and bizarre journey, which for him has simply never happened, Richard is about to receive his wake-up call. All cameras are very well hidden. Anne's gambles seem to have paid off. She was in a great position to win first prize. Only a nine would stop her.