DAVE RAWSON

International Comedy Hypnotist & Magician

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A Day in the Life of Dave Rawson (24 hours)

�The South China Morning Post January 2007�

�I get up about 10am. I have breakfast then head to the beach for a few hours. I have lived in Ibiza for 10 years and the beach is about 500 metres from my apartment. After the beach, I�ll go home and spend the afternoon watching television to relax. I skip lunch and have dinner around 7pm.

I work the hotels in Ibiza for six months of the year. I perform at a different hotel every night for two weeks so the holidaymakers don�t see the same show twice. I�ll leave home about 8.30pm; the whole island is about 30km across so it only takes about half an hour to get to any hotel. I�ll arrive about 9.15pm, sit and relax, then I go on stage at 10pm and perform through to 11.30pm without a break.

I relax the volunteers then put them into a trance and get them to do things they don�t mind doing. You can not make anyone do anything against their own will � it�s impossible. If I hypnotise someone and tell them, �Go to the Bank, withdraw �5000 and give it to me, but forget you have done it, they won�t. But if I ask them to play an imaginary musical instrument then they don�t mind, because it�s something we�ve all done in the past.

There are lot�s of people who can�t be hypnotised. The ones who can be, want to be. They volunteer. Those who don�t want to, I ask them not to come on stage as they�ll fight against it and they will be impossible to hypnotise. So when any hypnotist is doing a stage show, they�ll ask for a number of volunteers, maybe 20 people and out of those they need to pick the ones they can use for the night. I�ll get them to laugh at an imaginary funny film or cry at a sad one; ride a horse as if they were at Happy Valley; paddle a dragon boat in Repulse bay as if they were being chased by a shark� and I�ll do the funniest kiss in the world. I ask a girl whom she would most like to meet, and it�s usually someone like Robbie Williams or David Beckham. I put them back to sleep and say �When you wake up, I�m going to be David Beckham� I tell the audience to cheer and clap and when I wake her up she sees me as David Beckham. I�ll have my photograph taken with her and she�ll be all over me like a rash. I then ask if she would like a kiss and as soon as the kiss is over she�ll realise she has kissed some bald-headed middle-aged old git and not David Beckham. The look on her face is incredible, and that�s when the audience really know she�s been hypnotised.

I video the show and at the end ask if anyone wants to buy a souvenir copy of the DVD. I also sell hypnotherapy CD�s for stopping smoking, losing weight, relaxing and boosting self confidence. I get lots of women asking me how to lose weight. I normally tell them to eat as much food as they like; just don�t swallow it! I tell them of course that�s a joke and advice them accordingly. I also invite anyone who wants to ask me questions about hypnotherapy to come and see me after the show.

I normally leave the hotel about 1230am and get home about 1.15am. If anybody has bought the DVD, I�ll stay up editing it and either that night or early the next morning I�ll deliver it back to the hotel so when they wake up it is there ready for them. Sometimes I won�t get to bed until 5am. I do that for six months, from may 1, when the season starts, until October 31. The rest of the year I take the show on the road.

I went to Egypt and had a week�s holiday with my girlfriend in December, then I went to England and did three shows in a week, I�m in Hong Kong for two shows at the Hard Rock Caf�, then back to Spain and in two weeks I�m off to Goa for three months to do a couple of shows a week at a club there. Then it�s back to Spain at the end of April to begin the new season in May. Before becoming a professional hypnotist I was a Chief Medical Officer on submarines in the British Royal Navy for 22 years. I left the navy and decided to become a full time professional entertainer, but I was a semi-professional for eight years while still in the navy � doing hypnotism and some magic; I�m a magician as well.

I joined the navy in 1975 and transferred to submarines in 1979. When I was in the navy my hobby was magic because I�d seen magicians on television in the early 1980�s and I was so impressed I started buying a few tricks. The hypnotism started after I saw a show in a bar in the United States. I was spellbound. When I returned to Britain I bought some books on hypnosis and began to read about it. In 1993, I went to sea for three months and taught myself how to hypnotise people, but the Captain wouldn�t let me practise on anyone.

So I had to wait until I returned to port before I could go out and start practising on people. The first time I hypnotised someone was in a bar in Cumbria, in England where I lived while I was on leave. I�d been doing some magic there the week before and told them I was a hypnotist, so they asked me back to do a show. At the time (British hypnotist) Paul McKenna was on television so people flocked to the bar to watch the show. I was very nervous beforehand. I�d never done it on anyone before. I just asked people up and it worked and I was like WoW.

I�ve gone through a few airports and immigration officers have asked me what I do and I tell them I�m a hypnotist and magician and I�ve had to do a trick for them.

That�s happened quite a few times. The craziest thing I had to do was appear on a children�s TV programme and hypnotise a chicken. You place its beak on the ground, draw a line of chalk away from the beak and it won�t move until you clap your hands. It�s bizarre.

Everyone wakes up at the end. When you hypnotise people, most people know exactly what they are doing but they can�t stop themselves from doing it. It�s a bit like when you get drunk and lose your inhibitions. It�s not a feeling of being drunk; it�s a relaxed feeling so you don�t mind doing it. You do get different levels. Some people go really deep and don�t know what they�ve done. For some people it works and others it doesn�t. It has to come from the person. I�m no miracle worker. They have to want to give their time. I helped a lady of 55 who had been smoking 60 cigarettes a day to stop in half an hour. She�s been off them for one year, which is amazing. Quite a few have done that but I�ve had quite a few that fail. If I was that good, I�d be a multimillionaire.

Contact numbers in Ibiza Spain

Phone: 00 34 971 331762