Be Excellent To Each Other

His knowing that I'm not (and never have been) called Matthew is quite the trick - there are only thirty or so 'proper' Matt's in the UK, and so would have been the 'wrong' conclusion for him to come to in 99.9% of circumstances.

Unless he knew you personally. Perhaps your butler has been leading another life and is, in fact, Derren Brown.

You'd never know, because he fucks with your head, man.

Hmm, but if he "knew" (as in, actually knew because some assistant had found out in some way, i.e. credit card receipts and so on, or by scanning your oyster card in your wallet), then it wouldn't actually be the mind-reading / psychological manipulation trick that was impressive.
In fact it would be suspiciously too good as a guess/mindread, given the Matt/Matt(hew) distribution you've mentioned.

Yeah, but again, my wife got the tickets (and I'm M on my cards) so unless he was going through my bins (you never know!) he won't have got it that way.

Also; a lot of people might still have "Matt" down on some things, even though they have been called Matthew on their birth certificate, etc.

So obviously, HE'S A FUCKING WITCH.

Interesting. Do you remember the eye contact? Were you trying to 'watch him', or were you naturally talking to him? Sorry if you've said already...

Can't remember, tbh. I was probably looking between him and the program, and stuff.

This has already been pointed out but what he said, "you've never been a Matthew" would probably have sounded right for 99.9% of Matthews. I expect he would have been surprised to learn that your actual name is Matt.

Eh?

Because they would have always called themselves Matt, regardless of what their name was legally.

Derren Brown's book arrived today, so I look forward to giving that a read through. I was watching some of his older TV series last night and it always strikes me how likeable he is (well, to me, anyway). He's not annoying like many of the people that are famous in the field of (loosely speaking) 'magic'. Paul Daniels - irritating, Man who made people float and was married to a supermodel* - Pain in the arse, David Blaine - gggnnnhhhhhhh...

*Took me about ten minutes to try and think of this guy's name but can't. it's like some Dickens character, David Copperfield or something like that. Ah, just came to me, googled to confirm.

I think Daniels has had a bum deal. A bit like Beadle, he was wildly popular and then just become unpopular because what he did was uncool in the eyes of an influential few rather than anything about him as a person. When you see him interviewed you can see the interviewer trying to take the piss a bit and he just doesn't fall for it*. Man at the top of his profession has a bit of an ego off stage. Well, like, duh.

His magic shows were brilliant and he is still a superb entertainer. I can't get to Youtube but the ball under the glass routine is so incredibly fast it takes the breath away.

*Best example is the infamous Mrs Merton bit "and why did you marry the millionaire Paul Daniels"? Fuck you Aherne, you smug cow. A bit rich for her to slag someone off for riding on the coattails of more talented performers.

Was the book signed and dedicated to you?

I spoke to Paul Daniels on the phone once, when he had an issue with his website. He started the conversation with "Hi, my name's Paul Daniels and I'm a magician." How humble is that? As if I didn't know who he was.

It would have been cooler if he just suddenly appeared next to you. That would have been magic.

Oh, whether Paul Daniels was 'uncool' is one thing, but I find his patter so irritating, and his Chihuahua-faced wife Thelovely Debbimgee even more irksome. The story about him phoning about his website is cute, though.

See also the Louis Theroux episode where he stayed with Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee for a week. The format set them up to look odd/stupid/unpleasant/whatever, but in fact they came out of it seeming like a really pleasant and thoroughly likable couple.

If he said to me, "You've never been an Andrew", I would nod, as everyone knows me as Andy. My legal name is Andrew. He would (I assume) be reading the reaction very quickly to the full name and telling that you're known more as Matt than Matthew. As I very probably have some obvious reaction being called Andrew instead of Andy.

Make sense?

I never saw that episode. I do remember Theroux's episode with Jimmy Saville though - now, he WAS weird... I don't care about editing, suggestion and whatnot - Jimmy Saville is nuts-out-batty, however charitable and nice he may or may not be, there's something odd going on there.

Dear Lord, that episode was genuinely disturbing.

Louis is one of my heroes.

Fun fact, name fans - you can change your name at any time by just deciding to change it. There is actually no legal procedure to follow in order to change a name - you just start using the new name.

However, you may of course need evidence that you've changed your name. The evidence required varies depending on the purpose for which it's needed and can include:-

(1) a letter from a responsible person (GP, lawyer, teacher etc)
(b) a public announcement in a newspaper or similar
(iii) a statutory declaration
(D) a deed poll.

There's not much difference, practically speaking, between a statutory declaration and a deed poll.

However, you cannot change details on your birth certificate, except in very limited circumstances. These generally revolve around your parents being idiots. For instance, it turns out that my niece ended up with her dad's surname as her forename, as my sister wrote the wrong bits in the wrong place. We discovered this when she was 14, and, of course, immediately started calling her "Blount" rather than "Kerry". Tee hee. So we explained everything to the Registry Office and they issued an amended birth certificate. But that's about the only way you can get your birth certificate changed.

My birth certificate was changed when I was about a year old and it has fucked my life up, fact fans.

Blount is a real name? The only Blount I know of is the main guy in Goblins 3.

I now wish to be known as "Titler"

It's a real surname, yes. I've no idea if it's used as a forename by anyone (intentionally, that is), however.

How so, Meems? What happened?

Interestingly, if I want to get a deed poll to change my title to Dr, I need to produce proof (i.e. my degree certificate). Similarly, when I got my name changed on my bank cards, the Halifax did it at once but Natwest wanted to see evidence.

Hence a lot of offical forms have a "name at birth if different from current". This can result in fun for people who have had multiple name changes (e.g. imagine if you were born, named, adopted, married divorced!)

You have a strange definition of fun Doctor Ricardo Delightedcopse

Well I was born and given one name which was my father's surname. Only my mother had met another guy whilst she was pregnant with me and my father never knew I existed as he went back overseas to some Scandinavian land to do military service. Mum fell out with 'new dad' before I was born and so gave me the surname of my real biological father' but decided this was a bad idea some months down the line and actually went to court and had it changed for reasons of special circumstances.

Mother then met another man when I was one and had all of my medical records, etc, put under HIS surname (which was Hoy). I was raised by my grandparents, and, living with my grandparents, uncle and cousin went to school under their surname, and then my mother's thirds husband's name (Hoy) which I took to be my real name until it got to GCSE time and they couldn't get the results to correlate. So, then I had to revert back to 'Hill' was told my father was a man I had never met and that this was my real name.

Then, late last year I found out that my original birth certificate had the name of my 'real' 'real father' on it.

Basically - I have been trying to get a passport for over a year now. I have a meeting next Tuesday in London, but my whole life and records in it are a complete shambles, nothing correlates and I don't techinically exist. it makes getting even the most simple parts of life which are rightfully yours to have very difficult, in my case at least.

Christ. With all the horrific stories you've told us, it's a miracle you turned out ace.

Horrifiness can result in ace. Through adversity and that. Look at Richard JoyousErection for another example.

Actually, I had a mostly perfectly idyllic childhood, but that was done to the wonderfulness of my grandparents who supported me and loved me throughout my life. As long as you have at least one person who truly loves you then you will probably turn out OK in the end.

My mother and I are estranged. She got married again last weekend. To a twat. A twat who (fittingly for this talk) changed his name to 'Axel Rose' by deed poll, and yes, he spelled it wrong. Snigger.

Meems, if you were an American soap, even they would denounce it as too preposterous.

When you first picked it off the shelf in Waterstones....

My twin brothers have another name again, different from any of the names I have held and different from any of my other brothers and sisters, and from their mother (who has now re-married again, anyway).

The thing is, my mother is the same kind of woman that someone once spoke of when talking about that missing Shannon girl that was eventually found. It upset me a bit at the time because whoever said it said something about the kid bound to have been messed up anyway because her mother had so many partners, but, actually, all of us have turned out OK, and the twins, despite everything, are doing well. But that's because everyone took care of themselves and, more importantly, we all look after each other. I sometimes spoil my brothers, but that's why. I have to be there for them from afar, which is why i usually check their homework for them by email and have contact with their teachers so they let ME know what is going on as they know their mother has no interest.

My nephew and I are going on our first joint trip to the Zoo tomorrow! he's coming up t three and loves all animals, so it should be a special kind of aceness.

I'd like to meet Derren Brown, actually. I dreamt (or maybe daydreamed, I am not sure which it was) that I met him last night (but that is probably because I watched the last two episodes of Trick or Treat, the entire first series of 'Trick of the Mind' (which featured both Neasden and Stephen Fry!), 'The Messiah" and also 'The Heist', all before I went to bed at 3am, so that's probably why.

Mimi and Derren up a tree
Aitch why pea en oh tea eye ess eye en gee

Go on, someone say 'he's gay, you know'.


Actually, I think he's very attractive. But I think that's just because he WANTS me to think that.

I like that since 'outing' himself, he occasionally makes sly jokes about it in the shows.

Seems Dr A. has met him!

I didn't know he was gay.

Now I'm not gay, but if I had too......

"Now keep an eye on your coffee bean, make sure I don't flick the bean off. Not that I've ever done it before."

Well I never.

My gaydar is crap. I was surprised to learn that Simon Amstell was gay.

Is he actually good looking, though, or attractive in some other way - because he is enigmatic and interesting, perhaps? But those eyes do sparkle so much.

The last time I went to the zoo, a Tapir urinated on my girlfriend. Watch out for that, Mimi.

Ooh, good tip!

Avoid tapir urination.

Right, anything else I need to know? So far I have an annotated map of all booths the sell ice-cream and the precise location of where the man with hundreds of balloons is to be found, and, of course, the note about the tapir

I like tapirs, they look like first-draft elephants.

Why don't they just come and collect him?

/coat

I almost choked on my apple reading that.

And I almost ended up with delicious mango and passion fruit sorbet up my nose. Nice work, Mimi.

Also: Derren Brown is gay? Crumbs.