Derren Brown: How he did it

Since then everyone has been speculating about how he might have done it and we were all waiting for 9 o'clock yesterday evening when Derren was going to reveal to us how he managed to correctly predict all six numbers.

At 9pm last night Derren was back on our screens in an hour long showed entitled 'How To Win The Lottery', but did he tell us? ...ummm, may be. Derren basically gave us his three ways he considered to correctly predict the lottery numbers.

How To Win The Lottery
1. Fake a lottery ticket
2. Genuinely predict the numbers
3. Fix the machine

Before I go in to those three options, I want to address the fourth option, the most common theory among internet speculators, a camera trick.

4. Use a camera trick
There is no denying that the easiest way to perform and explain this trick is that during Wednesday night's live show. The left hand-side of the screen was covered with a static image which allowed a helper to come in replace the blank balls with numbered balls as they were drawn. Derren didn't show his prediction before claiming that he wasn't legally allowed to show the numbers before the BBC broadcast the live draw.
This does seem like a simple solution to the trick but it's not how Derren does magic, in all of his past shows he has never used camera tricks or accomplices. So for me, even though this is the most obvious way to perform the trick, I would like to think that Derren wouldn't have resorted to this cheap trick, I'll explain why in a bit more details later.

1. Fake a lottery ticket
Derren quickly discredited this option for obvious reasons, it wouldn't make much of a TV show and it is of course illegal. So we can easily scratch that option off of our list.

2. Genuinely predict the numbers
Derren spent most of the show exploring this option, starting off by proving to us that he can easily predict the choices that humans make. We all know however that Derren isn't a mind reader, so was he predicting his volunteers choices or was he influencing them so that they came to the same conclusion as he wanted them to? Again, keep this question in mind, I will come back to it later.
Derren then went on to tell us how he predicted the numbers, using a principle called "The Wisdom of Crowds". We were told that the principle is based around the tale of Francis Galton's surprise when a crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged.
So Derren used a crowd to pick the numbers, a group of 24 volunteers who were each asked to pick six numbers, their numbers were added together and the averages for the six numbers worked out, Derren then picked the six corresponding numbered balls and ran off to the studio from which Wednesday night's show was broadcast.
My problem with this is that wisdom can't help you predicting a random event, the wisdom of the crowd could successfully give you the six most commonly drawn numbers based on past information.
If Derren was armed with the six most commonly selected number, they would be the most likely to be selected again but as a stand-alone draw those number are no more likely than any other combination.

3. Fix the machine
When I first heard Derren seriously talking about this option at the end of the show I thought it was ridiculous, but the more I think about it, the more I realise it is the kind of thing Derren could pull off and I think there are a few clues which point to this.
Firstly, here's how Derren explained that the lottery machine could be tampered with, he started his explanation with the disclaimer "to fix the lottery I would have to of done the following, which of course if I had done, I could never admit to. So I certainly did not do any of these which would clearly be illegal. But if I did, which I didn't, I would have to of done the following..."
a) Firstly, get someone working on the lottery show to act as an inside informant
b) Find a window of opportunity when the balls weren't going to be checked
c) Manufacture the necessary eight sets of replica, weighted lottery balls
d) Find out from the informant where the balls were secretly stored and gain access by hypnotising the security guards and switch the six balls
e) During the draw the six weighted balls would be spat out by the lottery machine first
f) The next day the balls were switched back

In Derren's special, 'The Heist' over the course of a week he convinced four normal business men and women to rob a security van at gun point. As this project took him years, isn't it likely that he could have spent those months using similar techniques to convince a BBC/Camelot employee to leak the required information. Then, like Ashani, the girl who Derren made forget that she could play piano in an epsiode of 'Trick or Treat', Derren could have made the informant forget that they ever had any contact with him.

I'm no expert on lottery machines but I'd imagine that the six weight balls still aren't defiantly going to roll out first but being weighted they would have a much higher chance of selection.

The clues which point to option 3 as being a viable option for me is that the show was really about influencing rather than predicting, so Derren's 24 volunteers didn't predict any numbers, he may have just used suggestion to get them to pick numbers which averaged out at his pre-chosen winning lottery numbers.

Derren said that Channel 4 wouldn't let him buy a lottery ticket, if they had predicted the lottery numbers only minutes before as Derren stated in option 2, then it would be too late to buy a lottery ticket anyway and it would be of no concern to Channel 4. If, however Derren told Channel 4 he was rigging the lottery then you can understand why they would ban him from buying a ticket.

Why didn't Derren show the numbers before the draw then? By not showing the numbers before, there is no real proof that Derren tampered with the machine. He has perfectly covered his track, if Camelot investigate he can still claim that the numbers were selected by his volunteers and there is no other physical evidence that points to any tampering.

Derren ended the showing by saying that if he is ever asked how he predicted the lottery numbers, he will say "it was just a trick".