
“Mentalist/illusionist/etc Derren Brown does a coin trick with the audience…and charmingly asks a women to stroke his goatee!“

this might not be how he did it, but its how I would have. Having now seen derren’s bullshit explanation I can conclude that since he had no intention of revealing the truth he would have no qualms about using the simplest method available, which is the one I illustrated. The ‘misdirection’ in this case was to con everyone into sitting through an hour of his drivel in the hope of getting a remotely believable answer. More media-manipulation than mind-manipulation