David Meade: Crowd Control

Do you like being part of the crowd? I really like crowds.

This is the shockwave. Ooh!

'Some people love it.'

Do you need a hug, is that what this is?

'Some people hate it.'

All right, all right.

'But one thing is for sure,

'our lives are defined by the crowds we belong to.

Oh, my God. 'I'm going to take on the crowd.'

I don't want to have to lift any of yous, now!

'I want to learn to be the ultimate crowd controller.'

That's the funny thing about crowds, you can never really control the way they behave.

Or can you?

This audience of 8,000 people has gathered to watch a national

institution, the Proms.

But I'm going on first, about to entertain this crowd

by convincing them that something dreadful's about to happen.

No, I haven't taken up the cello.

But what I'm about to do will probably cause just as much

shock and amazement.

I'm going to perform with one of my favourite instruments.

This is what I do, I make audiences believe

they are watching the impossible, by twisting their tiny minds.

Tonight, my instrument of mentalism

is this six-inch surgical steel spike.

CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYS

MUSIC CUTS OUT ABRUPTLY

All right. Wish me luck!

David Meade, everybody! Good evening, everyone! Good evening.

Everyone excited about this evening's Proms?

Well, you'll be delighted to hear I'm only going to

be on stage for about four or five hours...

'I'm David Meade and I'm a mentalist.

'No, that doesn't mean I'm a crazy fool, I'm a performer who

'entertains people with tricks that mess with their minds.'

..And one solid steel spike, Noel. Whoa!

I want you to check that and make sure that is absolutely solid.

Looks pretty spiky to me!

It isn't telescopic, it doesn't unscrew

and it won't fall out of the bottom.

OK. Happy, Noel? I wouldn't say I was happy, but...

'The steel spike ensures that I have the undivided

'attention from this evening's host, Noel Thompson,

'who thinks he might get his hand skewered!'

All right, Noel.

Noel, if I had to ask you, based even on odds alone,

do you think this is more likely to be safe, or dangerous?

Bearing in mind, it's only one in four. But what are you going to do?

Well, if... LAUGHTER

Now, Noel, if you had to guess...

On the basis of one in four, I'd say it's going to be safe.

So, statistically, it feels like it should be safe.

All right, Noel, lean forward for me.

So, folks, I need you to count from five to one, and then very slowly,

we will press down, all right? Start with me. Five...

AUDIENCE: Five, four, three, two, one!

Oh, jeez!

Good decision,

Noel, good decision.

'But I can't forget that while I'm on stage,

'I have to keep the crowd completely engaged in what is going on.'

Now, one in three, if you had to guess,

more likely to be safe or dangerous?

Well, it's still more likely to be safe.

All right, Noel, face away for me.

Now, Noel... When can I say, "No, thanks"?

Folks, five... Again for me...

AUDIENCE: Five, four, three...

That was just for theatre, Noel, sorry about that one!

Let's hear it for Noel, everyone. Good decision. CHEERING

Now, folks, we're down to two cups.

When we're down to two cups, the adrenaline really starts to flow!

Folks, can you sense the adrenaline on stage?

It's called fear, not adrenaline!

'I have to manipulate what the crowd see...'

Now, Noel, in a moment, I'm going to have you raise one hand,

any hand you like, high into the air.

Don't think about it, don't say a word,

raise one hand high up into the air.

That one? Are you certain?

'..what they think they see...'

Oh, you poor wee chicken!

'..and most importantly, when they think back,

'what they thought they saw.'

There all the time, ladies and gentlemen!

'Ouch!'

Let's hear it for Noel, thank you very much!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE David Meade, thank you very much indeed.

Standing in front of the Proms audience has started me thinking.

I've worked with audiences large and small all through my career,

but I've never really thought enough about what makes a crowd tick.

I think I need to look outside the world of mentalism to see

if crowds can be manipulated in the everyday world.

I want to see if there are scientific techniques to

controlling large groups.

I want to find out if anyone out there is using these techniques.

More importantly, would they be any use to me as a mentalist?

Can you really control crowds, or is it just a trick of the mind?

'Where better to start my journey than in a place

'I know crowds gather regularly, and most of us join in at least

'once a week for a bit of what we think is innocent retail therapy?'

I don't think that when I enter a retail space like this,

I don't feel like I'm being manipulated,

but is the word "manipulate" unfair, is it too strong a word?

Or is that really happening?

Well, some of the literature around the whole retail store

patronage actually talks about manipulation, in two ways.

Manipulation by projecting a certain image,

but the other way, probably the more contentious way,

is actually manipulating how consumers move around a store.

NEWSREEL: 'A new era of prosperity and better living...'

Like most things in our culture related to shopping

and retail, the concept of the shopping centre came from America.

But the man credited with inventing the shopping centre was

born in Austria, architect Victor Gruen.

During the '50s and '60s, Victor Gruen's work transformed

city centres all over America, creating the shopping mall.

But experts and academics have always suspected there is

more going on here than meets the eye.

If you look at the store environment,

the store environment is essentially a tool,

so they have a number of different strategies. For example,

within this store layout, if we look at different floor plans,

looking at the way the aisles are constructed,

the flow of traffic, there are ways of manipulating consumers.

'What was an ordinary main street is now an extraordinary place,

'designed for the enjoyment of people.'

Victor Gruen was accused of a bit of mind manipulation himself.

It has been claimed that his shopping mall layouts were

deliberately confusing and distracting,

so customers would lose track of the original reason they came

into the shopping mall and end up buying everything in sight.

Of course, Victor Gruen himself denied such manipulative

techniques, but there is no doubt that modern-day shopping

centres are designed to sell.

This massive piece of architecture in the middle,

it looks beautiful, but it also stops us

bypassing all these shops, it forces us to go out and around them.

It's called the racecourse effect. And that is forcing us as consumers,

you can't just go straight down the middle,

you have to go right round, to even move out of the shopping centre.

And some of the environmental psychology theory

refers to the PAD paradigm, essentially, it is

about pleasure, arousal and dominance and how those

emotional responses persuade consumers to buy in a certain way.

'It is pretty obvious how shopping centres stimulate our pleasure

'and arouse us with pretty lights, the latest tunes

'and even nice smells, like fresh bread. But dominance?

'That sounds like the kind of tactic I might use in mentalism.

'I never realised that shops could be using it on me!'

I mean, there is one particular big furniture shop, that I spend

a fair bit of time in, and also trying to get out of, at times.

Because there is one path that is moderated

and mediated by even big arrows on the floor.

And that is manipulation by dominance.

Dominating the flow of traffic by the consumer,

where they actually have to go a certain way,

and in many ways can't get out of the store

unless they have actually bypassed every single display on the way.

One well-known large furniture store uses dominance in a very clever way.

It forces people to follow the path around the store.

On the one hand, some shoppers

accept this dominance and follow the path.

But on the other hand, some clever clogs reject the dominance

and start looking for shortcuts.

Academics believe the store uses this dominance to deliberately

frustrate both character types.

At the end of the pathway is a marketplace where dominance

no longer applies. Released from control,

both types unleash their natural instinct to make free choices,

and they shop like wild things, filling their baskets,

just as the store planned.

It must work with me,

because I never manage to leave that shop without

something in my trolley, even if I'm just in for a wander around.

That's because it would be soul destroying, after several hours!

'It turns out I use a bit of dominance in my own act.

'And in this environment, frankly, I just can't help myself,

'and I've found the perfect participants in Katie and Ciara.'

Katie and Ciara, thanks for helping me.

I like crowds, they make me feel excited.

I hate crowds, sorry, it's not for me.

'I'm going to ask Ciara to take an imaginary walk around the city, in her head.

'The question is, can I know in advance where she might end up?'

I'm fascinated by the way that people behave, especially when they are in groups and crowds.

When I look around this place, it's amazing, I see pockets

of people, sort of conforming together, like groups, like crowds.

And every time that an architect designs a place like this,

they design it with certain things in mind.

For instance the blue tiles on the floor,

they are not there just to look good,

but to guide people through all of the stores.

And if you notice, it takes them past all of the special offers.

So, what's going to happen is, I'm going to show you this map...

'Now, look closely, folks, I've already made my prediction!'

..Genuinely think of anywhere.

So, stare at it, think about where we are now, firstly.

We are clearly in Victoria Square, you can see it,

kind of down there, Victoria Square. I want you to have a look,

you could go genuinely anywhere in this city, anywhere you like.

Can I have your hand? Yeah. All you need to do...

Actually, Katie, if you could hold down that edge for me.

I'll hold down this edge. Now, tell me, do you like crowds? Yeah.

OK, so, you like busy places. So, you will have chosen...

You've gone from Victoria Square, I would say you've probably

gone up Victoria Street, that's a really busy street,

lots of shops, bars and restaurants, so I would guess, don't give me

any clues, but I'd guess you've probably gone a busy route.

You probably like partying, so, you want to spend a bit of time,

in your head, in the Cathedral Quarter,

you've probably spent quite a lot of money there,

had quite a lot of sore heads in that part of the town!

And I would say, if I had to guess...

There.

I think you will have stopped, in your head, at St Anne's Square.

Yeah! Where did you go? St Anne's Square. Really?

Genuinely, in your head, that's where you wanted to go?

I swear to God. You're joking!

Now, why did you do that? I actually don't know. No idea?

Like, you actually know me better than myself. I'm not joking,

I don't know why I picked that. Oh, my goodness! Is it freaky?

A wee bit, yeah.

What's weird is that it's not actually that weird,

it's actually fairly simple.

Because when these spaces are designed,

they are designed to try and make people behave in certain ways.

So, a designer, someone who designs these sort of spaces,

who wants to manage the crowd and manage individuals,

could have designed this city to make one person go in any

direction they like. Looking at this map, there is

only one place that you could have ever ended up.

That is why, from the very beginning,

on the back of this, I had, "I'm going to St Anne's Square."

Oh, my God!

You could have gone anywhere!

But how did... Thank you very much indeed, you were brilliant,

thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much. No worries.

You know, it's weird, I didn't think he was going to get it,

because I changed my mind three times, so how did he know...

Especially the way he wrote it on the back of the map.

Oh, my gosh, it was mad! Wow. Oh, my gosh! I'm a wee bit freaked out.

So am I! How the hell did he do that?

Now, the worst nightmare for any performer is

when you lose control and the crowd turns into a mob.

I want to learn how to deal with a mob, so I've come to London.

London is the most densely populated city in Europe

and the fourth most densely populated in the world.

It has 4,700 people per square kilometre,

that's almost 5 people in every single square metre.

Not only is London home to the mother of all parliaments,

the modern history of crowd control began right here.

So, I'm meeting crowd expert Chris Cocking for an insight

into the politics of the crowd.

So, what is a crowd?

A crowd in its simplest term is two or more people who have come

together without any formal decision-making processes.

Now, clearly, the vast majority

of crowds will be much more than two people.

But the point is, the way the crowds decide how they behave is

very spontaneous, they don't have committees or elections.

Crowd control in history first appeared with this book,

The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon.

No, not Simon Le Bon, that's Duran Duran!

Gustave Le Bon. He saw the crowd as a mob that needed controlling.

He was writing about the crowd in the French Revolution, which,

let's face it, is when the powers that be

lost control of the crowd and the King lost his head.

CHEERING

The political history of mobs in London is less revolutionary.

But one incident in particular

changed the history of crowd control for ever.

It happened here in Cable Street in the East End of London in 1936.

In 1936, this was a predominantly Jewish area,

and Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts, a fascist organisation that

emulated Hitler and Mussolini, wanted to march 5,000

fascists down this street into a predominantly Jewish area.

And the working-class population of the East End said, "No way."

On Cable Street, the Government

saw two faces of the mob that scared them.

On one side, the Blackshirts were organised and violent,

just like the Nazis in Germany.

On the other side was a crowd, equally uncontrollable,

basically taking the law into their own hands.

Just like Gustave Le Bon, the Government believed the crowd

needed to be controlled, and imposed the Public Order Act.

It informed the way crowds are controlled in the UK

for nearly 50 years.

But experts like Chris think the Public Order Act got

the crowd all wrong.

You've said that you

and your colleagues want to reclaim the notion of what a crowd is.

Why does it need to be reclaimed, and what's great about crowds?

I suppose the good thing about crowds,

and we find this in our research, is that people who actually

experience the crowds often describe them as very positive experiences.

They use words like "empowering", "exhilarating",

sometimes people use the words "festival atmosphere" to

describe their experiences of crowds.

So, what we are trying to say is there is often a real

mismatch between how people experience crowds and how

they are perceived afterwards by the press and authorities.

Chris's view is that in history,

dictators used techniques to APPEAR to control the crowd.

The classic footage of Hitler at the Nuremberg Rallies,

the kind of people that would go to them would be

already ideologically committed Nazis,

who would listen to Hitler favourably,

and some of Hitler's speeches, it's just pure repetition,

where the crowd and him repeat the same slogan.

So there is no kind of detailed content of what he is saying,

it just becomes a ritual.

HE SPEAKS IN GERMAN

Hitler was using a classic technique of call and response.

It was a case of, "I say Germany, you say heil!"

CROWD SHOUTING

We're all going to go to heaven!

Call and response is popular in African-American churches,

where it is used to bring the congregation together.

THEY SING JOYFULLY

And other people use it, too.

Nice to see you, to see you... AUDIENCE: Nice!

The more that I learn about crowds and audiences,

the more I realise that it's not actually guesswork, there is

a huge amount of science behind the way that groups,

large and small, but groups, of people behave.

'And I want to find out

'if some of that science can help to manipulate a crowd.'

How are you? Thanks for coming. I really appreciate you coming...

'And I think I've found the perfect accomplice.'

I've done a huge amount of research over the last few months

and your name keeps coming up, again and again.

You have literally written the book on crowd management, is that right?

Yeah, in fact, a book is about to be written, we've got

both the Introduction to Crowd Science

and Applied Crowd Science with publication contracts, so, yeah.

He is being a little bit modest.

Keith Still really is the go-to guy for crowds.

Most recently, he was consulted on the Royal Wedding and the

Olympics, as well as internationally -

in the Hajj and festivals in Europe.

What are you going to show me today?

Quite a lot of the techniques, particularly about risk in crowds...

Should I be worried, should I be nervous? Not at all.

We don't do anything that doesn't fulfil the necessary

requirements of a risk assessment. Excellent.

Keith's science is a relatively new one.

The Hillsborough tragedy of 1989 was the watershed moment.

After Hillsborough, there was a massive rethink.

Crowds didn't just need to be controlled,

they needed to be managed.

Out of that emerged the science of crowd management.

Crowd density and crowd control...

'Keith is going to show me a hugely important experiment in that

'science, with a little bit of string.

'This class is a true representative sample of the subject.

'80% of all students of crowd management are female.'

You put the string around you. Around me?

Yeah, it constrains density, you see.

So, just pull that, this is one square metre.

And all you need to do is walk up and down, like that,

as if you are chatting to each other.

One of the things to observe is just how people stand,

what positions they take up. Guys, for instance,

are quite comfortable shoulder to shoulder, but when you get into

that kind of zone, all of a sudden, personal space becomes invaded.

So let's just put three in, and again, same sort of thing,

walking up and down.

You often find that when the density starts to become constrained,

you see how they are walking shoulder to shoulder.

If we can get seven in there, they all look about the right size...

Keith, I'd love to see a few more people in. Do you want to join in?

Don't be shy. They won't bite.

Not until they get to know you better.

I think the big thing for me is that when we look at this crowd,

and it is only a small crowd, although it could also just be one part of 10,000,

one of these individuals doesn't really have control

over their own movement, because the crowd is all behaving in one way,

and they must as an individual too. Absolutely.

They haven't lost their individuality. They've just lost the degree of freedom.

If you don't mind me asking, for the fellas,

what's the impact of being two lads amongst all the girls?

Does it make you feel uncomfortable?

A little bit, yeah. Why? You need to know where your hands are.

LAUGHTER All right, OK.

We're like twins, anyway.

Just for the fun of it now, if I was just to say, "Stop there,"

what does that do to everybody?

Everyone stops.

Yeah, but how does that affect you all the way at the back?

Yeah, it's not nice. All right, OK.

I didn't mean it like that. All right, OK.

It's really interesting to do it with you students here,

because you're studying events.

What do you think about the science of crowd management?

To be honest, until this experiment,

it was just something that I talked about in class

and I worried about after I got a job, planning an event or something.

You know, when you go to concerts, it's really just an annoyance,

it's not something that you really think about, but it is definitely now.

The 2010 Love Parade in Germany -

the original expectation was around 800,000.

But closer to 1.4 million turned up.

The big mistake occurred when two crowds were directed into one area.

No-one noticed just how quickly this area was filling up with people,

until it was too late.

21 people lost their lives, and more than 500 were injured.

We have a database now going back about 100 years

of all the major accidents and incidents.

The analysis of that has given us the DNA of a crowd accident.

What are the fundamental elements that give rise to risk

and, subsequently, injury, fatalities and incidents?

And the courts don't really understand this as yet.

You know, the impression is the crowd stampede or panic,

therefore the crowd was at fault.

But there are underlying causes to most of these things.

How big of a role does panic play in these crowd emergencies?

It's actually very rare.

Panic is generally one of the last things a crowd does

when all options are expired. We tend to use the phrase...the crowd...

didn't die because they panicked -

people are panicking because they're dying.

So it's one of the final sets of actions,

but it really depends on how you would define panic.

For instance, running away from a fire is a perfectly natural reaction.

If you are suddenly transfixed by the situation, like a rabbit

caught in the headlights, that's more of a panic response,

where your central nervous system shuts down.

Irrationally locked. You become irrationally locked.

In this section, we have one square metre...

'Back again with his trusty bit a string,

'Keith marks out just 1m square.

'He's going to show me the most important technique he teaches -

'recognising crowd density.

'Keith trains all students in this critical skill.'

If we could have a third, please?

Again, take the position as if you're at a concert,

you want to watch the event...

'The secret is to spot in an instant if the crowd

'are reaching critical density.

'Crowd managers must be able to spot this in amongst a crowd

'or, more likely, when using CCTV cameras.'

Just by how easily an individual can walk through a group,

they can work out what the density is.

In fact, you can do this from even very crowded environments,

just being able to watch how crowds move.

Well, I think they look fairly comfortable in there, Keith, so let's ramp this up a bit.

So this is about your upper limit now for a spectators' area.

Now, I'm just going to illustrate this, I'm going to give a slight push on the corner,

so if you don't mind, I'm just going to give you a slight push.

OK, plenty of space to adjust your position.

'Well, five seems a controllable number, but what difference

'will one or two or even three more bodies make to this tiny space?'

How does it feel, guys? Comfortable?

Again, I'm not going to push you any harder or softer than I did before.

There's the shockwave, OK?

Now, this is the point where we have significant risk to the crowd.

For those of you who have been on the London Underground, I mean,

is this much far off what some of you have experienced? No. No.

You know, it's pretty close, you've been like this before.

Is this a common occurrence on the underground? Absolutely. Crush loading on the underground

is about eight people per square metre, but what is interesting is you're not actually legally allowed

to transport cattle to this level of density.

You would be prosecuted for it.

But we can move people through the London Underground at this level.

If you don't mind, I'm going to try and walk through,

so if you need to step out of the square, that's all right.

But know that you've let me down, you let yourselves down...

And I'm going to try and do it in a bit of a hurry.

I've had audiences of eight people and 8,000 people.

And truthfully, from my point of view, the crowd, I always thought, were in control.

If they wanted to stampede or run or invade the stage, that is

their want, but this experiment - more than any other - has shown me

that one person can create a serious disaster.

'What's great about Keith's approach is that his experiments

'are so simple to perform and easy to understand.

'But there's something else about Keith that has blown me away.

'It's not just an interest in crowd science we have in common.

'Like me, Keith's a mentalist!'

You've got to understand that, 100 years ago,

when a magician could focus your attention

on a tiny point in space and time,

while he pulled a rabbit out of the hat,

how they did that was to be able to understand the crowd's perception.

So where we use it is to understand where signage is most appropriate,

what type of signage works.

How do we inform the crowd, how do we understand

if the crowd are responding to that information? Those are exactly

the same techniques a mentalist would use but in a slightly different way.

We're using it very much focused on crowd safety.

Take, for instance, if I just...

If I can take it off...

The wedding ring, I mean, this was made from Orkney gold.

My wife had it made for me.

Now we've been married 17 years.

And it's a phenomenal design,

but of course, the band represents,

you know, the sanctity of marriage etc,

but of course it's not the same

unless you have...

just a piece of magic. Wow!

So... So...

Just to be clear... You had it... So how...?

Now, I'm sitting right here, but you had it right there,

and in an instant, it was...

I've just got to... You can try and take it off!

How did you do that?

I suppose my job is knowing and understanding audiences

and making sure that... I suppose I try to control their attention

and control what they think and what they feel.

It's incredible to me to think that the authority in the country,

the man who's quite literally written the book on this,

uses mentalism to control and manage crowds, to keep them safe,

and the way that they think and do things.

And, I don't know, I suppose I feel like a bit of an amateur,

you know, I'm just using it to guess PIN numbers.

'Back home, and I want to put what I learned about crowd management to the test.

'Let's face it, Northern Ireland has a bit of a reputation

'for crowds not behaving themselves.

'I'm about to face probably the biggest crowd of the year

'that Belfast has to offer.'

I am not a big boy, you know,

so I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to tell anyone what to do, you know.

I mean, if someone bumps into me, I'd be like, "I'm so sorry.

"Would you Like some tea?"

'Tonight, I'm out on the streets in Belfast.

'Ladies and gentlemen, it's Culture Night!'

Tonight is Culture Night in Belfast -

it's one of the biggest event nights in the calendar.

There's nearly 50,000 people coming into Belfast tonight.

And I'm going to be part of the security for this,

just to see how the crowd behave.

'This is the night that Belfast really comes alive.

'42,000 people will descend on the city towards street performers,

'dancers and a massive parade and a carnival atmosphere.

'Events like this have made Belfast one of the top ten tourist

'destinations in the world.

'And one million miles from Belfast's troubled past.

'But before that, I'm getting the 5:15 briefing where every detail

'of tonight's activity is discussed, and nothing is left to chance.'

Is this your first time? No, the second one... OK.

You don't have one of our T-shirts on yet? No.

You need to have one of our T-shirts on, so put that on for me.

Right, will do. Roll your hood up and put it away for us as well, please. Will do, yeah.

What's his problem?

Culture Night has been running since 2009.

It started off with around 15,000 and then has got bigger every year.

Andrew McQuillan is the main man running crowd management tonight.

His team will use any tools at their disposal,

including monitoring social media.

We're watching the Twitter feeds and everyone's going mad about this,

so there's going to be a big crowd tonight.

'They do this to get a handle on where the crowd is

'moving before it even gets there.'

Less and less space between the people...

'And look at this. Brushing up on their crowd density.

'Keith Still would be proud.'

When you get to four and five, you can really only see their heads

and three per square metres, people are touching you around you.

Four, you're being touched on all sides,

and five, you can't move through the crowd easily at all.

That's it, OK, we're going to give you out your sheets now.

So, everyone understand that OK?

These are the most important things here, you know, this crowd density.

And my job is to spot when it's getting to a really dangerous,

unmanageable level, you know?

'No more chat and rehearsal. This is it. My first time out on the street.

'There's still only a few people out and about at the moment, but

'believe me, there's already millions of butterflies in my stomach.'

Do you get scared? Does it scare you? I wouldn't say it scares me.

The thing is, I know from experience, the more you plan, the easier it is.

Yeah. If we didn't, we've done two and a half months planning.

The crowd management planning for this event was over 100 hours' work

and we measured every street round here. Every street, we measured.

Length and breadth, and all the pinch points.

So, my job is to keep people away from the wheel?

Your job, as all our stewards do,

you're putting yourself on the line, if you like.

And where would I get a taxi? Where's the nearest taxi?

ANDREW LAUGHS

'But, as the crowd builds,

'I have to remember they're all here to have fun.

'But, from my perspective, even the smallest thing could end in tears.'

Excuse me, do you want to come down there?

We don't want you falling there. Come on ahead. Do you want a hand?

I like falling! I'll give you a wee hand.

Good man. High-five, Angry Birds!

Or not. Whatever. One or two.

Big hit with the kids!

CARNIVAL-STYLE DRUMBEAT

'The centrepiece of Culture Night, the carnival parade, has just

'begun, and this is where crowd management comes into sharp focus.'

So, Andy, we have a street here. How wide is this?

Approximately 18m.

Now, that entire parade needs to squeeze into this street. Yeah.

And what width would that be?

9.8, I think we measured it at. Half the size. About that, yes.

What's the impact of that?

Well, as the Professor says at University,

it's like putting an egg back in the chicken.

This crowd has tens of thousands of people in it.

Where do we need to be right now? Over there. Right, right let's go.

Basically, we have a straight there that is roughly 20m wide.

20m wide. In the space of about 4m,

that has to compress down to less than 10m.

What that means is, the amount of people that are this width

need to compress down to roughly half the size.

More importantly, they need to do that safely.

And it's my job to do it.

'One thing I've got to remember - despite hundreds of people

'blocking the road, this parade cannot stop.

'This is the only part of Culture Night that must run to time.

'The procession has to be over by precisely 9:15pm,

'or risk ruining the grand finale.'

Coming to my bit.

So, if you just want to ask them to move round the cars.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, folks, you want to keep in there?

Thousands and thousands of people.

I just don't want you to get trampled down, that's all.

Excellent. Up onto the pavement there, if you can, folks? Sorry.

I just don't want you to get trampled. Thanks very much.

Just have you onto the pavement there, folks, thank you.

I think the weirdest thing for me is that, I thought

the crowd was there when, in actual fact, that crowd is about to meet

a brand-new, impromptu unplanned for crowd that they

need to merge into, and I think that's the funny thing about crowds.

You can never really control the way that they behave.

Well, or can you?

'The parade culminates outside the cathedral.

'Not only is this is where the crowd density is at its highest,

'but there are all manner of participants.'

Through there, sorry. There's flames coming through there, folks,

if I could just get you a bit wider for the flames.

'There are carnival dinosaurs and this chap,

'who's taking the saying, "keep her lit" maybe a wee bit too literally.'

The parade has almost completed its course now and at every single

twist and turn, the crowd has behaved in a different way.

What's most amazing is,

when we try to control or change their behaviour,

they come right back at you with a new way of changing it themselves.

The only difference is, here, crowd control is so important

in this scenario because, if it doesn't work,

everyone could get their fingers burned, or worse.

OK, girls, stay out of trouble, girls, now.

Girls, stay out of trouble!

I don't want to have to lift any of yous now! If I need to, I will!

Excuse me!

'Of course, being Belfast, the craic is going on in pubs and bars well

'into the night, and this is where a new phase of crowd safety kicks in.

'But Andrew is still always watching the crowd density.'

See how rammed this street is? Ah, my gosh.

And that, that's four per square metre. It's going to be a disaster.

And if one person trips over, everyone trips over.

A trampling episode. And then, somebody might die. Yeah.

That's why you have to be very careful with crowds.

We have staff just over here, and here,

and if that gets too dangerous, we will stop people going in.

We don't want to stop people going in, but we will if we have to.

Yeah, yeah, if you need to.

I think this evening is brilliant for Belfast.

Culture Night happens once a year,

and we can see that when Belfast shines at its best,

the crowd come together to show what they do best,

and that's get together, have a good party, have a good time

and do it safely, without any hassle or nonsense.

I think that's the image Belfast needs across the world.

And it's here, it's not contrived, you know?

And, you know, the crowd did that themselves, really.

'I suppose what I got from Culture Night was that

'I was in the midst of the crowd that thought for themselves.

'This was a free-thinking crowd. So, what about the mental manipulation?

'I am a mentalist, after all.

'I've always read about cults,

'where large groups of people adopt the thoughts of just one person.

'Like this crowd, the Moonies,

'or followers of Reverend Sun Myung Moon in South Korea.

'He started his own religion

'and held mass wedding ceremonies for those who followed his doctrines.

'What makes a crowd of individuals

'subject themselves to the will of just one leader?

'Back in London, I'm meeting a leading authority on cults.

'For everyone's protection, his work is shrouded in secrecy,

'so, we're meeting in an undisclosed location.

'He has good reason to be careful,

'because of his first-hand experience of being controlled by a cult.'

When I was recruited into a cult,

I was living in Toronto, Canada, at the time.

That's where the group was based.

And my involvement in the group was, fortunately, very brief.

Even though still it took me 11 months to fully recover.

Cults use various techniques to recruit people.

Techniques of mind control.

And we've listed 26 of them.

One of them is hypnosis. Usually it would be disguised as something else.

It might be disguised as some new form of meditation or relaxation,

anything you want to hear, other than the real thing.

There's often a change of diet.

They deprive the nervous system of necessary nutrients,

to help the person to function abnormally and help break them down.

Sleep deprivation is very similar,

because it helps to break people down physically as well.

There's tremendous peer group pressure,

to conform to the wishes of the group at all times.

So, peer group pressure is a technique.

'I'm going to do my own experiment into peer group pressure.

'These four people are in on it.

'Unknown to the victim, they're members of the David Meade cult,

'otherwise known as my production team.'

I'm going to pick a random person off the street who will

believe that you're all random people off the street as well,

and I'm going to have you all answer a really simple question.

Which one of these lines, one, two or three, matches X?

And you will all answer honestly.

And in this case, you would say three.

Three. Three. Three.

And that would be a correct answer, gold star for all four of you.

But at one point, the point at which when I take my glasses off,

you will deliberately lie, and then you will agree with that lie,

you will agree with that lie, you will agree with that lie, and the hope is that our mark will

also agree, even though they know that what they're saying is untrue.

Hiya, hello, I'm David, how are you? Fine, thank you.

Lovely, grab a wee seat.

Hiya, I'm David. Hi. Grab a wee seat there...

'I want to see if the victim will ignore the evidence

'in front of their own eyes and go with the group,

'who are deliberately telling a lie.'

Thank you for helping me out. I really appreciate it. What are you out doing, shopping or? Shopping.

OK, brilliant. Buy anything nice? Not yet, anyway.

OK, good. Well, all that is going to happen is, I'm going to show you a series of cards.

And what you're all going to have to do is decide which one,

one, two or three, do you think matches X?

And in this case you would say... Two.

Two. Two. Two.

Er, two.

Hard for me to see from up here.

Three. Three.

Three.

One. One.

One. One. One.

We'll just go through these one last time.

Three.

Three. Three.

Three. Three.

Two. Two.

Two.

Lovely.

What you might not have realised is, they were all my friends

and you were the only one that was in the experiment.

But you did absolutely brilliantly.

I don't know if you know it or not, but four times in a row,

you said the answer that you knew wasn't the right answer.

Because, I think we can probably quite clearly see,

in this one here, X is equal to two, in that one.

But, two times in a row, you said it was equal to three.

And in this one, um, X is equal to two,

and that one, two times in a row, you said was equal to one,

and you did that with quite a few of them, actually,

but we did do it four times. So, was it... Did it feel awkward?

A wee bit, but just because I was the one on the end, and everyone

else was saying it, and I thought, I don't know, it made me doubt myself.

Yeah. Because everyone else was so certain. Yeah.

But I just sort of followed the crowd.

'Of course, following the crowd can get serious.

'The infamous Charles Manson used peer group pressure to turn

'these cult followers into murderers.

'In a cult, it's harder to stick up for

'your own views against the group.'

Theoretically, all the cult leader needs to do is to sit down

and talk to this person and manipulate them

and then send them out to recruit two more people.

And they come in, and he manipulates them, and then the three of them

go out, and they bring in more people and so on.

And it grows exponentially.

So, they could control a room of maybe 100, 200 people.

Controlling them in concert, I suppose,

much like a conductor, but instead of instruments, they have people.

And the thing is, when you're told that you can't ask questions

because there's too much material to go through and not enough time,

so please keep your questions to yourself.

If you think about it, who are the questioners in life?

That person we all remember at school that always had his hand up, the one with the ego problems.

Do you want to be seen to be the person with the ego problems? I don't think so.

So, everybody that's new,

and isn't yet a member of the group is actually working against you,

because you don't want to stand up and make a fool of yourself.

Hiya. How are you? What's your name? Clare. Have a wee seat there.

Hiya, what's your name? Sinead. Sinead, I'm David. Grab a seat.

Neil. Neil, grab a seat.

'I'm on a roll. I want to carry on and recruit another new cult member.'

Quick as you can. Three.

Three. Three. Three. Three.

Just do a couple more again.

Er, two. Two.

Two. Two. One.

It's hard for me to see it from up here.

One. One.

Three.

'Luckily, some people have control of their own minds.

'So, thank goodness not everyone follows the crowd.'

Some of the lines, from where I was sitting, looked like, say,

it was number two, whereas they were all saying number three.

I was just thinking, "No, it's not, it's two." SHE LAUGHS

They were all saying things, and I was thinking,

"Is it cos I'm sitting over here, is it looking different?"

But I was doing it alone in my own head.

'But, if Gustave Le Bon was writing about the crowds these days,

'where would he find them?

'I'm going to the new home of peer group pressure,

'where your friends' likes and dislikes are used

'to pressurise your every decision.

'Here, the crowd numbers in their thousands, millions, billions even.

'I'm going online.'

So, Jill, I've found out an awful lot about how retailers

and even psychologists use the physical world

and the physical environment to control people's behaviour

and manipulate the way that they interact with the world around them.

Yeah. But, you're saying that quite a lot of those techniques cross over

to the online world as well.

They do cross over. So, let me give you some examples.

Quite often, we are conditioned

to have something like a walkway around the store.

And what we have along the top,

otherwise known as menu navigation, is a walkway.

But, unlike a walkway in the physical world,

every move online is tracked, and the store can adapt accordingly.

Our online manipulators know exactly where we are

and precisely how long it takes us to pass through the virtual space.

In-store, we have line of sight.

We have the same thing on websites.

So, typically, people will always look up towards this side

and then they will look across to the right-hand side

and then down to the left.

So, this is something that's called the "Golden Triangle".

It's more prevalent and more obvious when we look at Google.

Describe that triangle to me again.

They know, when I arrive on a page, where my eyes will go. Correct.

And again, we have something called eye-tracking software,

that help us see all of this. So we can see that, you know,

a lot of people will look up round this menu,

they will look down here, and then they will look across here.

But online stores can do something a real, physical store could never do.

They can effectively rebuild the store electronically,

according to the behaviour of the people shopping,

allowing the store to assert their ever-increasing dominance on the consumer.

Without us having to necessarily mind-read individuals,

we have systems to track all this that automatically rejig

all of our menu navigation, i.e., our eyes.

They merchandise automatically for us, based on the patterns...

Of behaviour? Correct.

So, we monitor patterns of searcher behaviour, so that we can make sure

that you're meeting with whatever is the most appropriate for you.

Slowly but surely, Jill, through time, me, as a consumer,

I've moved virtually all of my shopping online.

But are we losing something by moving all of our purchasing online?

Absolutely. I think that crowds are still a good thing.

We learn a lot from crowds. But, we're losing that community aspect.

We're losing the physical interaction.

There are some connotations whereby

we can see human nature is changing a little bit.

'So I've learned about dominance, complicity, peer group pressure,

'and how all these tactics inform the science of crowd control.

'But now I'm going to step out of my comfort zone

'to work with this crowd of basketball players.

'Or, as you might call them, a team.

'If I'm really going to control these guys without using any

'mentalist skills whatsoever, then I need to be on top of my game.'

As a mentalist, I'm actually really interested

in the real science of control and manipulation anyway,

because I sort of pretend to do it on TV.

So I suppose I'm fascinated to see if this works today.

Can I, using nothing but words, control

and manipulate ten players to change the way that they behave,

and not just in a tiny way, in a fundamental way?

Oh!

I have ten players to play basketball today,

and I'm going to divide them into two teams.

One team will be the ones that I think are naturals at it,

that are naturally brilliant.

The other ones are the ones that just aren't quite there,

aren't quite as good as, let's call them the A team.

The truth is, that's nonsense. I'm going to divide them randomly.

I'm going to tell one team that they're brilliant,

the other team that they're just not quite up to muster,

and I'm going to see if that comes out in the performance.

'And there's no shortage of confidence among these young men.'

I am the best on the team, so...

It's tough, sometimes, like, carrying them on my back and stuff,

but they realise, from the outset, I'm going to be the best.

A good ten out of ten, I reckon. I would say that.

I don't think I'm the best in the team but they all tell me

I'm the best in the team, so they must think I'm pretty good.

There is quite a lot of scientific research

done on some of the most natural basketball

players in the world. I don't want to tell you the exact details

but it is to do with the relationship between two

particular joints on the arm, and natural capacity for basketball.

It has been recognised fairly recently over the last two to three years.

My job is to spot it and divide you into teams.

Those who have that natural physiological thing that some human

beings have which makes them better, those of you who don't have it.

Just test and see which one performs best.

A couple of you heard of this? I see some of you nodding.

It had been on The One Show and Discovery.

I suppose the interesting thing is it has usually been done with

people from their 20s onwards. What age are you? 17.

OK, it may not be as easy to spot in your group,

but there should be at least three of you have it.

You're going to play for a couple of minutes,

I need to watch you and I will call you when we are done.

Sorry, guys. Last guy that had the ball - this guy in the blue T-shirt -

stand in the circle for me, please.

You, sir, as well. In the white circle. Cheers.

The chap in the black bib, circle. Excuse me, into the circle, please.

Green twin, is that all right? Lovely, into the circle.

These five are pretty amazing, actually.

I'm sure most of you have seen the one particular thing

I was looking for.

What's really interesting is I didn't expect to get an even

split, but you five are absolutely perfect for this experiment.

We will do something with you five,

but you guys are absolutely brilliant for it.

What I need you to do is take your left hand, hold it out,

put on one of these.

What is important is this little dot has got a small crystal

compound in it that needs to go on that line just past the tendon,

not on it but just past it.

Make sure that goes there.

That's a wee pink one for you, you're welcome.

Make sure it is just past the tendon,

make sure the dimple side is on it, not the flat side,

because the crystal compound is on the dimple side.

Go ahead and do that for me.

If you flex the tendon, it should not be on the tendon

but just past that. Good job.

You five are my dream team and you get my lovely white jerseys.

There you go, very good job.

There you go. Good job. Excellent. Well done. Stick those on.

Make sure the face is sticking out the front because I like myself.

You five, it almost certainly isn't going to work with you,

because you don't really have what I'm looking for,

but we will still do something with you for the craic,

just to give you a reason for being out of school, if nothing else.

Stick those on for me. I appreciate you turning up.

For the time being we are only going to work with the A team.

If you guys want to just go outside for a couple minutes

and catch a breath.

Well done.

Thanks for coming. So you're going to have an allocated amount of time.

I want you to see how many times you can score inside the net.

Can't wait to see it. Whenever you're ready, let's go.

Brilliant.

'The trick with positive affirmation for the A team is to subtly

'drop it in.'

Good shot!

'Then I just stand back and watch the positivity take effect.'

Yeah, you're hitting your flow now, keep going.

Dramatically outperforming the average. This is amazing.

Guys, you've already smashed the record,

see if you can get one more in.

See if you can get one more in. And...

Oh, that's time!

I want to get the other team in, but you did absolutely amazing,

well done, round of applause, well done.

So if we can get the B team in, please. That's all right.

Those guys did... We've done this a few times

and they've already smashed the record.

We are going to let you have a play as well

cos you were good enough to turn up.

You're never going to touch that but do your best anyway.

Best of luck, you'll need it. Time starts now. Go!

'The B team's determination to do well has got them

'off to a good start. But it only takes one miss.'

You've had more than half your time.

'The drip-drip feed of my negativity really starts to bite.'

Come on, lads. There's a lot of misses. You can do it.

Just going to check time.

We are five,

four,

three,

two,

one.

Time is up. Could have shot better. Could have shot better?

You had a few misses, what did that do to your confidence?

We started well but it ended quite badly,

so I think we started good cos we wanted to beat the record,

then we were just rushing towards the end.

Overall, lads,

you guys did amazingly well, you smashed the previous record

we had, and being polite, they wiped the floor with you.

You guys got a solid 20 versus 9 in the same allocated period.

Let's hear it for the winners.

Let me tell you a little bit about this study, and the science of it.

We talked you through the original study that was

done about the relationship between the two joints.

It is totally fictional and made-up, it doesn't exist.

I don't know anything about basketball

and I don't know anything about joints.

These are little kids' bands we bought out of a chemist this morning.

They are supposed to help kids with travel sickness.

But you guys, in the same allocated time,

dramatically outperformed you guys. Why?

Just because I told you you would be better.

Because I told you guys you were somehow the B team,

you needed to wait outside while we were testing the A team,

it came out in your performance.

You guys, because I made you feel like the most special

people in the world, like you guys are the dream team,

going to smash the record - there is no record.

This is the first time we have done this. You dramatically outperformed.

Doubly well in the same allocated time.

So I can assure you it is nothing to do with the wristbands,

nothing to do with your joints or your natural ability,

you just believed you would do better and you did do better.

Before a game, you're trying to psych yourself up,

and it just doesn't work.

If someone else is psyching you up, it seems to work a lot better.

He told us to put it beside our tendon, it would help the joint.

I'm wearing it every match now. That's me. It works.

I found something that works!

Feel like weak-minded,

that you can be convinced by something someone tells you.

That is one way of looking at it, weak-minded,

the other way of looking at it is you told yourself you're going

to perform extraordinarily well and you did.

So you're not actually weak-minded, you're strong-minded.

Just by thinking you're better.

It came out in your performance. Do you need a hug?

Is that what this is?

Everyone that can see and hear me, follow my instructions.

'I found out loads about crowd control, and I even managed to

'use some of it to create spectacular results, which is incredible for me.

'I'll never be a cult leader, but what I really love doing is keeping

'crowds happy, and here is something you can try it home right now.'

I'd like you to place your right hand,

it must be your right hand, on top of left, this is like the

weirdest cult you've ever seen, then interlock your fingers, please.

I'm fascinated by the way crowds behave,

and I'd like to try this experiment with all of you.

While following the rules,

don't unlock your fingers or bend your arms, I want everyone to

try and turn their hands so their thumbs are pointing up.

I'll give you a couple of minutes. Give yourself a round of applause.

'Be honest, did you follow the crowd?'

Thank you very much indeed.