Derren Brown: 'Most magicians are kleptomaniacs His return to the Palace is a coming of age for Brown, who first performed there nine years ago in his debut West End gig. "It does feel more grown-up now," he muses. It's very personal and a bit less showy. Despite his huge interim success - his latest Channel Four show pulled in four million viewers - Brown still sits in the back row of the gods before every opening night, "to remind myself what people can see from up there." The illusionist, 42, has been doing magic for most of his adult life. Born in Purley, south London, to a swimming teacher and a model-turned-receptionist, he was an only child until the age of nine, when his brother Dominic came along. He attended Whitgift School in Croydon, alma mater of rugby player Danny Cipriani and Doctor Who writer Neil Gaiman, where Brown says he was "generally uncool" and "hugely nerdy." I was quite precocious and developed a nose for duplicity, which came from being a bit of a loner. This duplicity turned Brown into a kleptomaniac. In the Eighties, he went through a phase of shoplifting, mostly from music shops in Croydon. Once, he was stopped by security guards for trying to nick a Luther Vandross cassette from Harrods. "It's quite common for magicians to be tempted by that sort of thing," he shrugs. You have a mind and an eye for how you can sneak things into your pocket. It was the age of gadgets and there were so many glittery things on the shelves, but they were expensive. I remember looking around my bedroom when I was about 17 and thinking: 'God, I've nicked everything in here." " A shy, self-conscious teenager, Brown sniffed, twitched and knocked his knees together compulsively. A nervous tic, a subtle nod, endures to this day. On stage it could be part of the act, but offstage it is a remnant of Brown the nervous adolescent - and a reminder of the reason he got into magic. "A lot of unconfident kids do tricks because it's the quickest route to impressing people," he explains. You can stand behind something amazing and people think you're amazing. At university (Brown studied Law and German at Bristol), he became fascinated by hypnosis after seeing a hypnotist on stage, and taught himself the basics. Fellow students used to come to Brown's college halls to be "hypnotised" by him. "I'd never seen anything like it before and it ticked the attention-seeking, control-mongering box of an insecure student," he says. He styled himself in a cape, acquired a parrot and started performing on the streets as Bristol's resident eccentric magician. After a few years doing card tricks in bars, a TV producer asked him to try out for a new show. Derren Brown: Mind Control aired on Channel Four in 2000. The following years saw Brown capture public attention with increasingly outlandish stunts: holding a loaded gun to his head; convincing a man with vertigo to emergency-land a plane; getting law-abiding citizens to commit armed robbery. He made a name for himself as the man who can quote whole pages of a dictionary, win every game of rock-paper-scissors and draw what's in your mind before you've even thought it. But behind the fame, Brown was grappling with a wavering faith - he'd grown up Christian but was beginning to doubt his beliefs. On top of that, he had come to hate hiding his homosexuality, for which he once attended a religious camp that promised to "cure him." Brown came out in 2007, having declared himself an atheist ("I wanted a belief that would be credible"), and settled down with his current partner, Marc, a designer whom he has been with for seven years. Today, he believes in gay marriage - "I have disappointingly weak political views, but we have to have a level playing field" - but isn't sure it's something he wants to do, at least not yet. At home in London, Brown leads a quiet life, listening to classical music, reading and painting. His impressive and hauntingly beautiful portraits are exhibited in galleries in London and New York; recent subjects include Michael Sheen, Dame Judi Dench and his parents. He also has a bizarre collection of curios and taxidermy ("probably a couple of hundred pieces"), including two stuffed giraffes, a cobra, a Jack Russell and several six-legged sheep. "Name an animal," he says, teasingly. "Umm..." "You were going to say penguin, weren't you?" he fires back. I do have a penguin; two, actually. In a parallel universe, Brown says, he would be a teacher. Last week, he led an art class at a secondary school in Loughborough in memory of a former pupil. "The kids were great and asked lots of questions," he says. Teaching would be so rewarding. He's also enjoying doing "worthwhile" shows, like his two most recent stunts - Apocalypse and Hero at 30,000 Feet - in which the subjects learnt valuable life lessons. "I don't want to be some extreme therapist," he insists. Although seeing someone's life change for the better is a really moving thing. But it's not quite the end of the road for Brown the magic man. He has a couple of TV shows in the pipeline, 75 nights left of his national tour and hopes of performing outside the UK for the first time in his career. "I'd love to work in Australia and on Broadway," he says, "but I just haven't had time. In the future, who knows? It's clear from the twinkling eyes that if anyone does, it's Derren Brown. Derren Brown: Infamous" is at the Palace Theatre, London, from June 24 to August 17. For tickets, call 0844 874 0789 or visit nimaxtheatres.com