He alarmed and amazed the country in equal measure when he put an apparently loaded gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

The millions of viewers who tuned into showman Derren Brown's Russian Roulette show last October wouldn't have known his taste for the macabre was developed during childhood holidays to Sussex.

He said: "When I was young there was a museum in Arundel called Potter's Museum of Curiosities. It was full of posed tableaux - kittens having a tea party or baby rabbits at school, very odd and kind of creepy.

"The other main thing was genetically defective, misshapen farm animals that had died soon after birth but had been stuffed and preserved.

"When I was little I just thought it was amazing."

Mr Potter's Museum of Curiosities was one of the most elaborate surviving examples of a 19th Century craze for posed stuffed animals.

The collection was originally opened in 1861 by Walter Potter in Bramber.

In 1972 it was rehoused next to Brighton's Palace Pier for two years before moving to Arundel, where Brown visited.

Soon afterwards it was bought by John Watts, owner of the Jamaica Inn in Cornwall. The collection was sold last year.

Brown said: "I couldn't get to the auction because I was filming. But now they're starting to turn up again so I'm hoping to collect pieces from that collection, and similar things."

Brown himself has developed into something of an oddity since hitting the headlines last year.

Bizarre magazine said: "One hundred years ago he would have been burned at the stake."

Taking him to weird museums was one of many ways Brown's parents set him on the path to becoming a TV star.

He said: "They always took the attitude that whatever I wanted to do, they would back me. They never pressured me to take one particular line.

"So I left the family home in Croydon and went off to Bristol University to study law and German. Then I discovered that I didn't really fancy becoming a lawyer - or a German.

"And around that time, I saw a hypnotist and started getting into all of that. I also developed an interest in close-up magic and the psychology and suggestion it involves.

"So I ended up just marrying the two together and came up with a form of magic that was using a lot of psychological techniques."

The illusionist's "live" television Russian roulette stunt last October sparked widespread criticism. It involved a volunteer loading a bullet into one of six chambers of what Brown claimed was a real gun.

Brown used his "mind control" techniques to work out which chamber contained the bullet and fired the gun at his head until reaching the loaded chamber.

Eight viewers protested the stunt was "distasteful, trivialised suicide, promoted guns and would encourage copycat incidents" but the complaints were rejected by the Broadcasting Standards Commission.

Brown's stunt, which took place in Jersey, was dogged by controversy, with Jersey police saying he had brought only blanks on to the island.

The magician repeatedly refused to comment on claims that he had used blank ammunition and denied he had set out to glamorize gun violence.

Brown said: "I think that far from desensitising people about guns, if anything it might have re-sensitised a few people.

"When you compare it with the huge level of violence in soap operas, dramas and films, one gun, one bullet, and as much seriousness as possible didn't really feel like it was glamorising or trivialising the issue."

Brown's all-new Channel 4 series Tricks Of The Mind has more surprises in store.

He said: "I make a London cab driver forget where the London Eye is. I quite enjoyed that."