Brown has been intrigued by the growing reputation of Victor, a statue dedicated to the four-legged friend of former mayor Albert Palmer, in the town’s Centre Vale Park.

Residents claim that patting the dog is a good omen, amid speculation a familly secured a lottery win after carrying out the ritual.

Broadcaster and journalist Dawn Porter has already been down to the park, as part of a Channel 4 series revolving around luck.

And now Brown, who has his own show on the channel, is making a beeline for Victor’s home, near the ruins of the former Centre Vale Mansion.

His publicist Anna Symons said: “Derren has been following and been inspired by the growing rumours that touching the dog statue in Centre Vale Park can make you lucky.

”Luck is something that has fascinated Derren for a long time and he wants to test these rumours that Todmorden is a lucky place.

“In order to do this he will be looking to create a massive luck test later in the week, which will be filmed.”

The dog’s likeness, 18-inches tall, stands next to the former family home of renowned social reformer John Fielden MP.

The statue’s previous fate was not so lucky – he was only moved to his present home after vandals hurled him into the Rochdale Canal several years ago.

The Channel 4 programme, Hero at 30,000 Feet, followed a volunteer with an “unconfident character” as Brown built up his courage, enabling him to take on a series of personal challenges.

The scene in question saw him escaping from an oncoming train in the scene.

Ofcom received 11 complaints from viewers about the safety of the stunt.

The media regulator is investigating the show, broadcast on Wednesday, 8 September, to see if it breaches broadcasting regulations.

It will consider whether the scene “condones or glamorises violent, dangerous or seriously antisocial behaviour and is likely to encourage others to copy such behaviour” or breaches “generally accepted standards” in broadcasting.

The programme culminated in the subject, Matt Galley, facing “a life-changing decision of whether to take control of a Boeing 737 packed with passengers, which he believes is about to fall out of the sky”.

In reality, he was moved from a real-life aeroplane to a flight simulator after being put under hypnosis by the illusionist.

A spokesman for Channel 4 said: “The railway track challenge was one of many confidence-building experiences within the show which prepared Matt for the finale.

“For all the experiences, the programme-makers have procedures in place to ensure the contestant’s welfare was protected.

“We would never recommend that viewers recreate any of the events in the programme.”

We’re following Derren Brown’s Hero at 30,000 Feet live from 10pm tonight. Join us for 70-minutes of mindbending TV and the obligatory “Did that just happen?” moments

Pre-show preamble…

During his previous series of mindbending specials, Derren Brown was pretty clear about what he was going to do – beat a casino, guess the lottery numbers (although whether he did so is, of course, less clear), and generally keep us entertained with his bonkers but highly entertaining mix of misdirection and showmanship. This evening’s events are rather murkier around the edges, but I think we can be pretty hopeful of seeing something we won’t have seen before.

Brown is apparently going to take an ordinary person and set them a series of challenges – the biggest one will be to decide whether to take control of a Boeing 737 full of passengers set to crash at 500mph. As you do.

Here’s a video released to the Guardian this afternoon, which gives a little bit more of a feel for the show – but basically, we don’t know what to expect. I’ll be here from 10pm, so join me then as we find out more, and don’t forget to add your comments below.

9.57pm: Derren has appeared on Big Brother – he’s live from Leeds/Bradford airport standing next to a very large plane. I’m in Huddersfield right now, he should definitely stop by for a cup of tea afterwards.

10.01pm: Right, we’re off. I’m very much hoping for a show stuffed with what Derren does best tonight – hypnosis and mentalism. Fascinating as his illusion skills are, in my opinion his shows like Mind Control, Trick or Treat and one-off specials like The Heist are where he is truly brilliant. It’s often disturbing and surreal – I watched the episode of Tricks of the Mind where the guy ends up in the zombie video game again today, and it’s seriously messed up – but you can always be sure of seeing something remarkable.

According to Derren Brown’s blog, tonight’s show is about “engaging with life and understanding that it is the choices we make right now that define us, not what we’ve done in the past. One unwitting volunteer gets to have a deep understanding of this, and for him to experience real and lasting change, I have to push him to the extreme.”

Sounds pretty interesting, no?

10.03pm: Our hero for the evening is Matt. He is ordinary, has an unremarkable job in an insurance callcentre in Leeds, and hates flying. In a staged exercise at the audition, he doesn’t point out that there is smoke coming under the door, since he would apparently rather keep his head down than risk mild embarrassment by raising his hand and saying “ahem, excuse me, Mr Brown, it’s possible we’re all about to die in a blazing inferno”.

10.08pm: Derren has been trailing him for a month. He is robbed at gunpoint in a petrol station as a way for Derren to get him to think about his choices in life and give him the opportunity to reveal his true capabilities. In my day your mum just gave you a good talking to.

Derren leaves a jack-in-the-box on Matt’s doorstep. I hate clowns, and that’s just weird.

But new research shows that, far from being a mere superstition, lucky charms do actually work.

A research team told half the golfers on a putting green that they were playing with a lucky ball, and the rest they were playing with a normal one.

Those with the lucky ball sank 6.4 putts out of 10, nearly two more putts on average than the others – an increase of of 35 per cent.

The results have sparked huge interest among behavioural psychologists who say they put luck in a different light.

The research from the University of Cologne was on just 28 students but the results are being considered significant.

But the figures will also be an encouragement for the millions who cling to a lucky shirt or ring on special occasions to bring them fortune.

And even celebrities have often admitted relying on a lucky charm.

Cameron Diaz has a necklace given to her by a friend because she thinks it will ward off the effects of aging, while Julie Walters kept a lucky piece of coal in her bag during one Oscars ceremony.

Perhaps the most bizarre tradition among celebrities is that Atonement star James McAvoy says ‘white rabbit’ on the first of every month to the first person he sees – because his grandmother taught him that it brings good luck.

On Saturday 2.7 million viewers tuned in to Channel 4 to see Brown perform his latest trick in which he appeared to have correctly guessed the numbers.

He gathered a panel of 24 people who wrote down their predictions after studying the last year’s worth of numbers, and had them add up all the guesses for each ball and divide this total by 24 to get the average guess.

Brown claims that the predictions were correct because of the “wisdom of the crowd” theory which suggests that a large group of people making average guesses will come up with the correct figure as an average of all their attempts.

Broadcasting from a secret studio location, Brown told viewers he had written his predictions on a line of balls, which he then revealed after watching the draw live on BBC 1.

He said: “That’s a year of my life right there. I can’t believe it”, as he turned over the balls to reveal they were an exact match for the winning numbers: 2, 11, 23, 28, 35, 39.

He told viewers that he used: “A powerful beautiful secret that can only be achieved when we all put our heads together.”

He said his panel of 24 people only got one number right on their first attempt, but on the second they managed three and on the third they guessed four. By the time of last week’s draw they had honed their technique to get six correct guesses.

But Brown still left his audience guessing after stressing that he did not, and would never, fix the lottery machine before giving precise details of how – using weighted balls – he could have achieved that.

He said: “That concludes the tale of how we reached Wednesday night. All of my 24 people who were there know what happened and the success they had. But it’s quite possible that many of you simply won’t believe it. So you may choose not to believe any of what I’ve told you. Maybe you’ll still believe that it was some sort of ‘super technology’, What you choose to believe is up to you.”

He then watched the lottery draw on a TV screen and turned round his white balls to reveal they were exactly the same as his own numbers 2, 11, 23, 28, 35 and 39.
His incredible feat was broadcast from a small studio live on Channel 4 at the same time as the BBC1 screened its Midweek Lotto programme at 10.35pm dispelling any rumours that the show was prerecorded.
Brown, 38, had been banned from buying a lottery ticket for the £2.4 million jackpot.

He has so far remained tight-lipped on how he did the trick but has promised to reveal all in a separate program to be broadcast tomorrow night.
It is the latest seemingly implausible stunt the illusionist has performed in front of a live audience.

Previous TV shows have seen him apparently play Russian roulette with a gun and contact the dead, while he has also toured the country performing live shows claiming to reads members’ of the audience’s minds.