Evening Standard (London): the master mind

The scene in Paul McKenna's office, formerly the garage of his Kensington mews house, is one of mild chaos. The walls are orderly enough, filled with posters from the many stage and TV hypnotism shows he did when he had more hair and with shelves full of CDs and tapes that help people lose weight or conquer phobias and that have also helped McKenna bank a reported 10m fortune. But the man himself, wiry in a tailored shirt and oblong glasses, is trying to restrain a Great Dane that's almost as big as he is while its owner, McKenna's ex-fiance and manager Clare Staples, shouts names at him.

'Greg and Mrs Rusedski?' asks strapping, blonde Clare. 'No, they're in America,' says slight, balding Paul. 'Jodie Kidd and her boyfriend?' she fires back. 'Oh yeah,' he grins, 'They'll come.' These names, it transpires, are on the guest list for the hypnotist's star-studded 40th birthday party.

'Yeah, 40, I know,' he says, leading me away from the monstrous dog.

'I should have made something of myself, got a proper job, shouldn't I?'

McKenna has, of course, made quite a lot of himself. He doesn't just know the Rusedskis and the Kidds, but just about everyone from Daryl Hannah to the Duchess Of York. He's helped them all with some phobia or addiction, but they are as much friends as clients he asks everyone he works with, famous or not, to donate a suitable sum to charity rather than pay him. He remains the world's most successful hypnotist, with sell-out shows at the Albert Hall and on Broadway, plus three self-help books and a company that trains hundreds of hypnotherapists every year. Not bad for a 'gawky, geeky bloke from Enfield'.

This month, McKenna returns to the West End, doing what he describes as the flip side of his therapy work, 'hypnotism as comedy' making people believe they are in love with electrical appliances, able to see through each other's clothes, or capable of dance moves that would shame John Travolta. 'The stage shows are my hobby now,' he says, 'but I enjoy them. It's fun because you're making audience members into stars.' He's also working with the comedian Steve Coogan on a TV format to take such techniques into the workplace the TV camera, he says, is a great tool with which to catch the surprised expression of an employee, coming out of trance to find he or she has been stroking the boss's knee.

The time is also ripe for McKenna to become a more visible entertainer again, given the interest in all things arcane generated by Derren Brown and David Blaine. McKenna explains to people until he's blue in the face that he's not a magician, but he acknowledges the association. 'Magic and stage hypnotism are music hall acts, but they're back in fashion,' he says.

'These things are cyclical. The acts don't change that much, but I think what Derren and David do is fantastic. And yes, I know how they did their recent tricks [Brown's Russian roulette, Blaine's starvation] but I'm not telling you.' Would he say that, as Blaine took magic out of its sparkly waistcoat and on to the streets, he stripped mesmerism of its swivelly eyes and dressed it in a bank manager's suit and bouffant haircut? 'I guess so,' he says. 'I'm ashamed about those haircuts, these days.' McKenna fell into hypnotism pretty much by accident, as an escape from an unhappy young adulthood that had roots in an unhappy childhood. Although he adores his parents Bill, a builder, and Joan, an education adviser, he hated the Jesuit school they sent him to, leaving with hardly any qualifications. Indeed he still hates the school, telling me with great glee that he sent a copy of his first book to his sneery English teacher, inscribed with the words 'F*** you'. He was also self-conscious about his looks when young. 'The nose,' he says.

Things came to a head while working as a DJ for Radio Chiltern, when he interviewed a hypnotist. 'I'd broken up with a girl, had a row with my boss, and was feeling really low,' he recalls. 'This guy showed me a couple of techniques that blew me away.' McKenna taught himself hypnotism from books and videos and played his first gig in a Cambridge pub to 50 people. The following year he was selling out the Duke Of York's Theatre in the West End every Sunday.

As his career burgeoned the TV series The Hypnotic World Of Paul McKenna played to 12m viewers last year in 42 countries he also worked on his own insecurities. I ask what he's proudest of and, alongside his recent work with five infertile couples (four of them got pregnant, three with twins), he cites his book on surviving a broken heart. Something he's experienced?

'Definitely. Everyone has.' This seems an ideal time to bring up his relationship with Clare, which ended on an amorous level in 1995 amid untrue tabloid rumours that she'd had an affair with their mutual friend, racing driver Gerhard Berger. Despite this, they continue to work together. Doesn't he think that's weird?

'It's not that weird,' he insists. 'We didn't see each other for about three years after we split up, until I moved to New York, where Clare was working.

And we don't socialise that much now.' Has he ever been suspicious of female admirers' intentions? 'Nah, I don't think I've ever met any real gold-diggers.' Still, he hasn't had a serious girlfriend since his eight-month relationship with newsreader Penny Smith ended in 2001.

'No, but I've been out with lots of lovely girls since then. You just haven't heard about them because they're not famous. I'm quite happy to be single, although it would be nice one day to be married and have kids.'

McKenna's eyes go a bit far away. 'In fact, I've been seeing a lovely girl for a while and Well, I don't want to jinx it.' He smiles, almost apologetically.

Despite a slightly overeager laugh and an air of nervous energy, Paul McKenna seems to be a pretty well-balanced individual, and remarkably frank.

You really can ask him anything, from the court case where he was falsely accused of triggering schizophrenia in a stage volunteer ('The truth is that stage hypnotism is completely open and safe, much less open to abuse than a therapeutic relationship') to that reported multimillion pound fortune ('Um, well, I do drive a Ferrari'). So I ask him to give me a bit of the same confidence. In five minutes, he teaches me an aikido technique that he says will make a normally stressful encounter go like a breeze. What's more, it really feels as if it might work. So that's my next meeting with the bank manager sorted, then.

Paul McKenna's Live Hypnotic Show, Sun 9 Sun 16 Nov, 7.45pm, Wyndham's Theatre, Charing Cross Road, WC2 (020 7369 1736).