“I’ve got a friend who says it was only after he’d met me a few times that he realised I wasn’t constantly orchestrating some thing. I’m sure some people do think that. But I’m so not like that, and I hope I don’t project that.”

In a sense, Brown’s entire career could be seen as a balancing act between fraudulence and demystification.

“The very first TV show I did, back in 2000, when nobody thought there’d be another one, I was very much saying 'I am a mind reader’. But once it became clear there might actually be a career going on here I thought I don’t want to get trapped in that and it would be much more interesting to bring people in to the grey areas in between – to be honest about your dishonesty. And I’m fine with that. I’m not a medium, claiming to put people in touch with the dead.

“There’s a bell curve of how people respond, and you can only really take responsibility for the middle and hope you get that right. There are people that think it’s all camera tricks and stooges, and other people who think I’m psychic and I just won’t admit to it, so those edges aside, I think my relationship with the audience is in that right area; they get that it’s a mixture of suggestion and hypnosis, psychological techniques and conjuring.”