[Johnr]

A long magician act

Don’t worry if you missed it though as Stephen Mulhern (ironically) did the exact same trick on This Morning a year or so ago!

youtu.be 

[Ash101]

Oh I do remember Stephen doing that.

But how is it done? Is it some quick maths through earpieces?!

[JAS84]

Couldn't the Dark Hero, that knockoff Batman, have picked a different song? He did Let It Go from Frozen, which we've already heard earlier this week because they had the actress from the stage musical performing it during the voting.

[VMPhil]

Simon randomly walking behind Ant and Dec at the end there. Getting an early night!

[Ash101]

Simon randomly walking behind Ant and Dec at the end there. Getting an early night!

Not the first time he’s done that this week.

He doesn’t seem to have a good grasp on live telly these days? Like when they asked for his opinion on the Wildcard after lines closed and he just waffled on about Alesha until they had no time left

[bilky asko]

Oh I do remember Stephen doing that.

But how is it done? Is it some quick maths through earpieces?!

In (good) magic, every seemingly innocuous action will have a reason for it occurring. I've not seen the BGT act, but in this case...

Stephen generates the "random" number. The phone is turned upside-down, with the screen away from the camera, as this is done. You also don't see him launch the app.

I would suggest it's an app that is designed to look like the calculator app. It produces a number that, when added to the first three, produces a sum of the current date and time.

EDIT: There is a calculator app that does just this in the Google Play Store. It specifically has a "face down" mode that disables the keys, and produces the exact number you need to reach the number you wish to force to appear.

[Ash101]

Interesting… love that there’s an app for people wanting to do it

However this wouldn’t explain the BGT act as he got everyone in the audience and at home to do the maths alongside him on their regular calculator apps

[bilky asko]

Interesting… love that there’s an app for people wanting to do it

However this wouldn’t explain the BGT act as he got everyone in the audience and at home to do the maths alongside him on their regular calculator apps

I'm going to have to watch it now...

EDIT: It seems it is performed differently to the Mulhern trick, as Dec produces the six-digit number.

You could still do the maths yourself with Mulhern's trick, as he instructed Holly Willoughby and her cohost to do.

In this case, the simplest explanation was that Dec was told the correct number to read, which might explain the slightly odd way he spoke it. Not that it's definitely the way it was done!

[iloveTV1]

I really like the way that BGT has become a lot more fun in the last couple of years, with a real focus on entertaining the audience. There was a period from 2018ish-2020 where the show was quite bland and contained a lot of sob stories and not as much humour, but the year-long break seemed to freshen things up a bit.

[Johnr]

It was also amusing how Trixy ruined the magic of TV by complimenting Alesha on her (pre recorded) interval performance an hour before it went out on the show

(Also them trying to hide the fact it was pre recorded by not having her in the chair with the live judge catch up with Ant and Dec afterwards despite the fact they managed to somehow clean up the entire stage of Alesha's equipment within about 3 seconds as they switched back to the live broadcast!)