DERREN BROWN, it seems, can read the minds of pedestrians. He can beat half a dozen world-class chess players in simultaneous games, determine how many fingers people are holding up behind their backs and talk a London cabdriver out of being able to find the London Eye, the huge Ferris wheel that looms over the Thames.

Naturally, none of his clever tricks will work on this psychologically astute interviewer, who plans to use mysterious journalistic techniques to unearth his darkest secrets. But the coolly charming Brown decides to try anyway. He produces a sheet of blank paper and issues an instruction: Draw a picture.

"Try to catch me out; make it a bit obscure," he orders. "Don't draw a house; don't draw a stick man." Walking to another room and out of sight, he decrees that the picture should be concealed until the end of the interview whereupon, he claims, he will reveal what it is.

Right.

Mr. Brown, 34, describes himself as a psychological illusionist, meaning that he uses a mix of techniques, including sleight of hand, misdirection, hypnotism and subliminal suggestion, to perform feats that seem impossible, even supernatural. He has become a British media star, unnerving audiences with his "Trick of the Mind" television programs and sold-out stage performances. But he is no David Blaine, shrouding himself in smoke and mystique, no show- bizzy David Copperfield.

He admits to possessing no magical powers. He is not psychic. He cannot read your thoughts by staring into your eyes. Everything he does, he says, can be logically parsed.

"I could sit someone down and take them through an episode of my show and explain everything," he said recently. (He could, but he will not.) It was a rainy evening and Brown, slender, with thinning hair and a goatee that can look menacing on television but not in person, was speaking over white wine at a London hotel.

Dressed in an expensive-looking suit, he seemed strikingly free from Blaine-style otherworldliness as he described how he became interested in magic when, as a student at Bristol University, he was riveted by a stage magician who came through town. Brown taught himself hypnotism, branched out into standard forms of magic and began performing in pubs and at parties.