An edgy and outrageous hypnotism show is set to shock an audience at Weymouth Pavilion. Comedy hypnotist ROBERT TEMPLE tells JOANNA DAVIS what people can expect from this adults only experience.

HE has a shock of red hair and a 'blue mouth', so a night out seeing comedy hypnotist Robert Temple is not billed as being for the faint-hearted.

Geordie Robert, 31, is bringing his tour to Weymouth Pavilion on Wednesday, April 25.

And for those who think of hypnotism and remember the days of Paul McKenna who popularised hypnotism in the 1990s with a number of TV shows, Robert declares that times have moved on.

"I think hypnotism has suffered from the image of being at the tacky end of the entertainment industry. I'm trying to bring it up to date.

"My show is an adults only show and it's not for the easily offended."

Robert, who has performed more than 1,000 hypnotism shows to holidaymakers in Kos and Corfu, said he is encouraged to see a surge in popularity in variety and entertainment acts.

"Variety and entertainment in general is coming back. If you look at Britain's Got Talent over the last 15 years it's really brought that kind of entertainment to people. We're regularly seeing ventriloquists, magicians and hypnotists on America's Got Talent and Britain's Got Talent. Before that it had been a long time since Paul Daniels was regularly on television. And then Paul McKenna was carrying the hypnotist's flag in a large way with what he did."

Robert performed his first magic show as a nine-year-old - something that helped him to overcome his shyness, he said.

"I was a very quiet kid. I got a Paul Daniels magic set for my birthday and I remember performing a magic show for my dad and realising that this was what I wanted to do as a career.

"Doing magic really changed who I was as a person, it really built up my confidence. When I was 14 I saw a hypnotist and an escapologist perform and that's when I decided to go off in a different direction from magic. I loved the fact that no-one knew whether the hypnotism was real or not."

Doing more than 1,000 shows for holidaymakers really helped hone his hypnotism skills Robert said.

"It was a really good experience doing so many shows," Robert said.

"It was a great apprenticeship because everything that could go wrong did go wrong and I learnt so much from it. Something I remember about those days is a couple from Birmingham who came to see the show about five times while they were on holiday.

"They bought me a drink and said: 'We think this is made up. I said 'if you come back and see it again you'll discover it's not made up. They came back five times and could see that there were different people volunteering to be hypnotised each time and they weren't stooges.

"Then the last time the woman got up and volunteered to be hypnotised and she went straight into hypnosis and became the star of my show. We used to do videos of the show and she bought the video. I got an email from her a bit later saying she didn't believe it was her and she was convinced it was someone else dressed up as her! I think that was my favourite experience of doing the shows out there."

I am surprised when Robert tells me that as we go about daily life, we are actually in 'hypnosis mode' twice - once when we wake up and again when we're drifting off to sleep.

"It's not about my ability as a hypnotist," he says.

"Every morning when we wake up we are in an hypnotic state. It's autopilot mode and I have a technique to get people into that state. I have no rays in my eyes or anything like the demon headmaster, I am just putting people into a psychological state."

It will be a long tour for Robert, beginning on April 16 and ending on November 22, taking him across the length and breadth of the country.

He said: "I'm really looking forward to being on the road.

"It will give me a chance to see places I've never seen before like Dorset. The show is full of the sort of humour I like – a bit Chubby Brown and end of the pier show – but with hypnotism, which means the audience and the volunteers on stage don’t quite know where they’re heading.

"I get a call from Britain's Got Talent every year and I keep getting asked if I want to go on the show. But I prefer performing live to doing TV. The idea of being on television doesn't come close to the appeal of being on stage as far as I'm concerned."

And Robert wants to assure anyone who wishes to come and see his show that taking part is entirely voluntary.

"A lot of people have contacted my Facebook page who want to come and see the show but they're frightened of being hypnotised.

"I just want people to know that it's all voluntary and they don't have to volunteer to be hypnotised, even if they are sat in the front row, it's only people who volunteer who are hypnotised, so if you don't want to be hypnotised you don't have to volunteer."

Although the show pushes the boundaries, it falls in line with the strict regulations governing stage hypnotism. And for those who are hypnotised, Robert says they have nothing to worry about.

"Nobody has ever gone into a hypnotic state and ever come out of it. And a hypnotic state is something that every person in the world goes into at least twice a day."

*Robert Temple, Weymouth Pavilion, April 25. Call the box office for tickets or see roberttemplehypnotist.com for tickets and more information.