Lie to me...and win a grand

ARE you a good liar?

Do you think someone can read your mind or predict what colour or number you would choose or what word you would pick from a book?

Last week the mind reader, David Meade dropped into The Coleraine Times to talk about his forthcoming show at the Riverside Theatre.

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The Banbridge-based showman gave us an hilarious and mind-blowing glimpse into his act.

For example he correctly guessed seven consecutive numbers on a dice chosen at random by editor David Rankin and reporter Nichola Forgrave - the odds of doing so a staggering 279,936/1

He idenitfied, in almost exact detail, a picture drawn on a piece of paper with his back turned. He also correctly pinpointed a word picked, again at random, from a book of hundreds of pages.

This Saturday he will challenge any member of the audience at the Riverside Theatre to lie to him successfully. If you can lie through your teeth you’ll walk away with 1,000.

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Fans of the Sky One series Lie to Me - of which Meade is a fan - will love his live show which mixes body language interpretation, psychology, verbal suggestion, probability and guesswork.

Fox News in America said his stage performance is "guaranteed to leave you stunned and staggered".

“Anyone can do what I do,” he insisted.

“I can tell you I’m not a psychic, i wish I was. One good part of my show is where I show a member of the audience is taught how it’s done and they can predict what someone has chosen.”

So does he consider himself a human lie detector, Cal Lightman (Tim Roth) of Lie to Me fame?

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“I do watch the show and 30 percent of it is psychology and the rest of it drama. We give a lot away through body language and your face - it always comes out somewhere in the end - and once you are trained to see it it’s easy to do.”

David seemed to be able to interpret our micro expressions despite our very best efforts to hide something for him. Try keeping your face straight when’s he homing in on a playing card you’ve chosen from a deck or something you’ve sketched..

Reporter Nichola Forgrave was astonished when he identified a celebrity she had chosen with no clues whatsoever (It was Peter Andre).

“You were going to pick something generationally relevant to you,” he explained to Nichola, not altogether convincingly.

So just how does he do it?

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“My job is to plant ideas in a person’s head without them possibly knowing. What I’m doing is removing choices. Everybody thinks I’m pushing a person towards choosing a certain country, a certain celebrity or a certain drawing whereas in actual fact the best way for a persuader or a psychological mind reader is to remove choices so that you can only choose one thing.”

It doesn’t always work, though.

“Three years ago I lost 1,600 at a corporate event in the Slieve Donard in Newcastle when I got it wrong. I haven’t been wrong since though.

“But getting little things wrong means that I have to work harder at what I do.”

Having performed successfully in Las Vegas, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, and Boston the BBC has now offered him his own series - The David Meade Project - which will be broadcast on Saturday evenings in the New Year.

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He will apparently baffle international stars of stage and screen but it’s the impromptu street work a-la David Blane, which he loves best.

“We are literally picking people off the street and telling them things like their mother’s maiden name or their bank pin numbers and passwords. We have some fantastic stuff.”

David reveals that he is both an admirer and good friend of Derren Brown but also is influenced by film and TV

“I love the films of Dario Argento - in particular one film Deep Red, the ending is so unexpected. He takes his audience on a journey of twists and turns and usually his endings are a big surprise.”

David Meade, Riverside Theatre, Coleraine, Saturday, October 2, 8pm. Tickets 12 from the Riverside box office.