We feel like we've got a pretty good handle on Derren Brown's obsessions. His interest in the connection between traditional stage magic and hypnotism with actual psychological phenomena and manipulation is well-documented, as is his enthusiasm for the practices of spiritualists, cold readers and supposed psychics form the past right up until the modern day. Thanks to this list, we also know that he's pretty well travelled when it comes to movies and comic books, along with all the psychology textbooks he's clearly got on the shelves at home. We know he paints. He acts. But there's one last obsession Derren Brown has which, to our memory, hasn't come up before. It's not been at the centre of one of his TV specials, or one his live shows, or been the subject of tabloid speculation, and yet you can't get him to shut up about it - Derren Brown bloody loves parrots. And we're not being hyperbolic when we say he loves them. Try typing derren brown parrot into Google and be amazed by the number of photographs. Navigate your browser over to the official website of the man himself and you'll see a big section of the "About" page is dedicated to parrots. He's fascinated by them. He keeps plenty of them. He's a patron of a parrot zoo. "I'm a big fan of parrots - I think they're fascinating creatures. Many of them live for longer than us humans and it's interesting to me the way they learn to mimic human voices even though they don't really comprehend what they're saying," he once explained in an interview. Perhaps he sees something of himself in this intelligent, majestic and colourful birds; the way they manipulate and play with human language and understanding, managing to convince naive people of capabilities which are actually far beyond their reach. Or maybe he just likes the plumage, we dunno.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
