WAS Derren Brown ever a silly stage hypnotist, the kind of end-of-the-pier showman who was ridiculed in Little Britain, someone whose act would mainly appeal to women on a hen night who just want to screech in the stalls, have a laugh and spill Bacardi everywhere?

I always imagined Derren Brown was of that ilk, lumping him in with the Peter Powers and Paul McKennas of the world. He’s not for me, I thought. If I want to see a man who suddenly thinks he’s a chicken then I know where the Glasgow Pavilion is. But I also know to avoid the Pavilion as I have no interest in chickens or spilled Bacardi.

But Derren Brown is something different entirely. He may have started out doing little tricks with pocket watches and packs of cards, but he is now working in the fascinating realm of illusion and psychology.

In Derren Brown: Pushed To The Edge (C4, Tuesday) he put Chris, a member of the public, into a carefully choreographed situation and gradually inflicted tiny pressures on him to see if his free will could be broken.

He called these little tricks “foot in the door techniques”, all of which were designed to lower his self-esteem and make him feel socially awkward. So he was told to wear a casual shirt to an event where every other man was in black tie.

He was asked to carry these smart men’s bags and fetch drinks. This subtly made him feel weak, and then he became complicit in small deceptions when he was asked to help wrongly label meat sausage rolls as vegetarian. When a colleague collapsed Chris was pressed into helping hide the body so as not to cause alarm to the guests at the event. As this happened, Derren Brown commentated on these tactics. He was the deadpan opposite of a stage magician, explaining the tricks and showing us the strings he was pulling.

The story culminated on the roof, where a worn-down, panicking Chris was bullied into pushing someone off it.

In the end, he refused, but then we saw recap footage of three other participants all of whom, in various states of tears and horror, had stepped forward to push a man to his death.

Brown had engineered a situation where someone can be made to commit murder.

Compared to the stress of watching that incredible experiment all other TV seemed rather limp. Especially the new sketch show from our returning, all-conquering, comedy hero, Tracey Ullman. (BBC1, Monday.)

I’m too young to remember Ullman when she was a star of the British alternative comedy scene, and I only knew her name due to her role in launching The Simpsons, so I didn’t share in the hype and excitement about her return to British TV. But, I knew it was supposed to be some tremendous return of a comedy genius so I watched in high hopes – hopes that were soon trashed.

It was all timid stuff indeed, though with some good impersonations thrown in, and the late slot of 10.45pm suggests that the BBC snared her in great triumph and fanfare and then saw the sorry result and quietly shifted it out of the way. Yet word is out that a second series has been commissioned already, despite the lukewarm reaction from critics. It seems the BBC have captured a big fish and are determined to get what they can from it. Whether it’s good or not hardly matters.

Celebrity Big Brother (C5, Tuesday) continued to show why it should be left to wither and die, but the crazed reaction across social media on Tuesday night showed why it won’t. It’s still churning out horrors that get people talking and push up ratings, so they’ll keep showing it.

David Bowie’s ex-wife is one of the contestants and so, in a horrible coincidence, was in the house when news of his death broke. Taken into the relative privacy of the Diary Room to be told he had died we must wonder whether her distress was real or was she secretly thinking: “Yowza! This’ll get me in the papers.”

Whether you’re Les Dennis pondering suicide among the chickens, or the repulsive George Galloway slinking around in red lycra, it’s those who’re most desperate for attention who’ll sink the lowest, and so this person, married to a genius for five minutes and living off it ever since, pretended to bear the news in quiet dignity, but when she left the seclusion of the Diary Room, proceeded to tell someone called Tiffany that “David” had died.

This announcement propelled Tiffany into hysterics and soon the house was in uproar because “David” was dead.

Of course, they assumed Angie Bowie has been referring to their fellow housemate, David Gest, who was off snoozing.

Look at their self-indulgent hysteria and compare it with how David Bowie met his death. They have nothing and the knowledge of this nothingness drives their cacophony, whereas Bowie, having gathered all the talents in his hands and heart, could proceed, and then leave, in glorious dignity.