It’s wise not to trust Derren Brown. He’ll lure you in with talk of psychology – then gull you with good old-fashioned conjuring. He’ll debunk mind-readers and psychics – then use their best scams to humble and thrill us. He’s a terrific magician whose incursions into the real world are both a red herring and his raison d’être.

Mind you, there are moments in Mind Reader – his third, most consistent West End show – when Brown looks as if he needs some new tricks. Haven’t we already seen his séance, with spinning table and spooked participants, on his terrific Channel 4 show? Is there not some way of speeding up the admin side of his act – the procuring of random volunteers from the crowd – without risking us suspecting that anyone is a stooge?

But mostly this is breathtakingly ingenious entertainment. Some of his best ideas are his simplest – such as the box, containing either £500 or £5,000, whose contents he offers to give away if the audience member guesses the right sum. Our assumptions are brought to light, toyed with, then flung back in our faces. As they are in any good story.

Brown is a genial, jokey stage presence, mocking himself and his audience in a way that he may consider too bumptious or time-consuming for television. But he’ll use his vulnerability to his own ends too – making us wonder whether, just perhaps, he’s not entirely in control here. I’d love to reveal what he does, against all odds, with a £10 note, but I’d have to kill the trick to do so.

Wearing tails for his second half, Brown excels with an extended mind-reading session. It’s not real, of course – “I do not believe for a second that I have any genuine psychic ability,” he intones – but his insistence on a rational explanation only helps us to forgive ourselves for buying into an inexplicable illusion.

Anyone who’s seen the American mentalist Marc Salem will recognise the routine in which a blindfolded Brown reveals personal details about his audience: “You were born on a Monday, did you know that?”

But magic, mentalism, “psychological illusioning”, call it what you will, is rarely about creating something new under the sun. It’s about foxing us so thoroughly that we feel privileged to be worked over so well. A real con job leaves you feeling used and abused; Derren Brown’s leaves you enthused. Can you trust him? Of course you can’t. Why on earth would you want to?

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