#1023 Let me bore you to sleep

Hello and welcome to, to, Let Me Bore You To Sleep, with the sound of Vinnie being annoying in the background. Why are you whining? You weren't whining before, now you're whining. What are you whining for? Why? Why? You've just been out and now you're whining.

There's something about me sitting at this desk. If I sat at the other desk, he wouldn't bother me. Seriously, he wouldn't be bothered at all.

But sitting at this desk, he doesn't like it. Oh man, sounds like I've got a big office. I don't, I've just got two desks.

Nothing on it, just a desk. No furniture, no television, no walls or ceiling, just two desks. No floor, just two desks.

That's just, that was just silly, wasn't it? I don't know why I said that. So hello, this is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. My name is Jason Newland.

Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. Now Vinnie, stop it. I haven't got a bone to give him.

And there's not a lot I can do about that, because I can't give him what I don't have. It's kind of obvious, but he doesn't seem to agree with me. Sometimes if I give him a bone, he's happy for the day, or for the day, for the hour rather.

For the day, blimey. Well, I just took a quick, quick break there. Looked around to see if there's any spare little bones.

They're not proper bones there. I don't know what they are, but they're shaped in the shape of a bone. Shaped in the shape of a bone like shaped object.

But there ain't nothing around. So I got a yogurt. He likes it.

He actually really likes yogurts. So I've given him a yogurt pot, just a little yogurt. So he's eating that.

Yeah, so today I've been quite productive. Quite productive. So, this is the third recording I've made today.

I know. I, I, I know. I know.

Wow. I know you're thinking, wow. So I did a deep sleep whisper recording.

Let's have a look. It's so long ago, I'm forgetting what it was. Forgetting.

Forgetted. Deep sleep, whisper, hot air balloon. So that's number 505.

I did a chronic pain hypnosis session for back pain. There's two's been released. There's still two more to be released.

So they're one at 10 o'clock and one at midnight. It's now 22 minutes past eight. So yeah, so I've done a few.

I would say it's a fairly productive day. Kind of. Yeah, I'd say so.

Yeah. Yeah. Kind of.

Yeah. Yeah, I'd say. I'd say it's productive.

And part of the reason that I'm making the chronic pain hypnosis sessions, I've started looking in, well, I've made two this week, I think. There's a couple of reasons. The main reason is, that's kind of where my passion still is.

That's where I started all those years ago. In fact, I started the free pain relief service in my local area in 2004. But nobody was interested and I didn't get any interest until 2006.

So I was promoting it for two years before I even got anyone shown an interest. And it's the, I guess the two things. I suppose because I wasn't interested in relaxation.

I was, but I wasn't. I was, but never that bothered about sleep hypnosis. Or making sleep recordings, like when I started out.

Because other than a few occasions in my life, I've never really had much of an issue sleeping. If anything, I'm the opposite. I'm a bit too sleepy.

If you know what I mean. There has been times when I couldn't sleep. There has been those times.

But not anything like long term. So I guess I didn't really relate to it. I didn't see the value.

I didn't really understand the value that making recordings that may help people to sleep. To relax and to sleep. I didn't really, I didn't understand that that would be, that that was even.

I did understand it was a thing. But it just wasn't something that I was particularly interested in. And back then, you know, 2004.

2004, basically, you'd buy CDs, you know, sleep hypnosis CDs. And it'd be like a famous hypnotist that would do it. And, you know, you could buy stuff online.

But there wasn't anything to stream as far as I know. Although I didn't really search. It was only really when I started posting videos on MySpace.

I did a pain relief recording video. And I did a relaxation session, a video. And I think maybe I did a sleep as well.

But I was really focused on the pain relief. But the pain relief recording was very similar, really, to the relaxation session. Because something I discovered quite early on, when I was actually seeing people face to face who had chronic pain issues, is relaxation, always, in my experience, in those recordings, in those sessions, in my experience, relaxing the person always reduced the pain sensation.

Now, of course, you can't. I mean, everybody I saw told me that it helped them. Everybody.

And, but it doesn't mean that some people say, yeah, but they might be lying. True, true, it's possible. I like to think that, well, of course, I like to think that they weren't.

But I did get quite a few testimonials from people. But along the way, not only did I discover that relaxation helped to reduce the pain, even without any kind of pain reduction technique. I also, I had quite a crash course in relaxing people, dealing with quite extreme anxiety.

And it was, what was it? I had one, three people that didn't come to me for chronic pain. They were referred to me from a friend, a couple of friends, who, no, four people. That I've probably told, I have told these stories before, but I'll tell them again, because I didn't make them boring enough last time.

I mean, this is kind of like my origin story. Although to have my real origin story, we need to go back to 1970, or nine months before my birthday, maybe. So, I was telling my friends, a couple of friends and people that I knew, I'm going to help people with chronic pain.

I'm going to help people using hypnosis, even though my experience with hypnosis was just training courses and reading books and watching videos. I had quite an extensive library. But really, very little experience.

And I didn't expect anyone to really take me seriously. But suddenly, suddenly, life has good reason to. The beauty up above, and then right above, wake up suddenly, you're in love.

Each day, I pray. Okay, I'll stop. I don't remember.

Oh, yeah, the first one I had was the first one, the first person, is my friend's friend, and she wanted to, she had a driving test, but it was to be a driving instructor. And she'd already failed twice, something like that. And she only had one more chance to take the test.

I don't know if she had to wait two years before she could start again. I don't know. But she was having the test on a Tuesday.

She came around my house on a Friday. I was her last option. Her last, you know, I'd never met her.

Had I met her before? I don't think I had met her before. And she, she came around with my friend. So my friend sat in the room with me as with us as well.

And I had no idea what I was going to do. Now, her whole career, in her mind, her whole career was on the line. And she, she didn't feel confident that she was going to pass due to having already failed twice.

Maybe three times, I don't know, however many times it was. And she had plans. She wanted to have her own business and everything, you know.

Well, I would say I blagged it. I did what I could. I just had to be creative.

I don't want to say make it up as I went along. Because that sounds probably a bit disrespectful towards her. And it wasn't like that.

I was using my knowledge, but not my experience. And well, we did the session. It was an hour and a half, two hours, she had her eyes closed for.

And she passed. So her issue was anxiety about the test, lack of confidence, all that stuff. She passed like really easily, she said.

And she felt confident, so it's not like she didn't feel confident before going in. She, she felt before going in, she felt that our session had helped, that, you know, prepared her. And she, she passed and she went on to work for one of the major driving instructor schools pretty much straight away.

And then she, she did start her own business within about a year, I think, a year or two. And at one point, she started sending some of her patients, not patients, her students to me to prepare them for their driving test. So, but I did that, and I, I got a little bit all myself, so I had to stop doing that.

That's when I stopped doing the pain relief with people. But I did continue to do the, the group sessions I did at the alcohol and drug rehab places. I continued that until October 2007.

2007. Anyway, so that's why she was my very first real kind of challenge from a hypnosis perspective. And I thought, it's got to get easier from here, because it was hard.

I didn't really know what I was doing. I did, but I didn't, but I did, but I didn't, if you know what I mean. I just, how much can you learn from books? Well, quite a lot, apparently, quite a lot.

But experience does, it goes a fair way also. And I didn't, I didn't have that. So I felt good, I was quite up and buzzing, especially after hearing that she passed.

And I thought, okay, well, perhaps I'll retire now. You know, I was like, okay, I think that's enough. I don't know if I wanted, you know, it was, there was, it wasn't easy.

And then my friend, a different friend, called me up and said, oh, I've got a, I've given your number. Or can I give, can I give you a number to call? There's a lady who needs, she needs to go into hospital on Monday. This is another, like, short, like, very quick turnaround, in a sense.

She needs to go to hospital. She didn't tell me really hardly anything about it. But she, she's anxious and she needs, she wants help.

So I said, okay. So I went round her house, phoned her up, went round her house. If I'd have gone round her house before phoning, that might have been weird.

So walk in, I just turned the light on. I understand you need help. And anyway, she, we, it turned out that she needed, so yeah, she needed a double lung transplant.

And basically, she hadn't been able to set foot in hospital to have the test. To see whether or not she was able to have the operation, so that she could be put on the donor list, the transplant list. And she, again, she was told, it's very, it's not similar, but it was like a last option.

She was told by the surgeon or specialist that if she didn't turn up this time, she'd just be disregarded. Because they'd given her multiple appointments to go to hospital and it was like a two-day thing. So it wasn't just like a pop in for 10 minutes.

It was quite a rigorous, rigorous or whatever, testing. And she, she couldn't set foot into the hospital on multiple occasions. And they said, this is your last chance.

If you don't set foot in the hospital, if you don't come in and do the tests, then you'll just be taken off. You'll be put into a bottomless list and we're not going to put any more effort into it. I'm not sure if that was quite the wording, but she was concerned and worried, obviously.

So again, I turned up, I didn't know what I was walking into. Not that it was a trap. She didn't have a big piece of cheese and I walk in and suddenly my leg's trapped.

And so it wasn't anything like that. But she just was sitting in this darkened room. It had a light on, but it was just very, she didn't seem like she liked me very much right from the start.

And she was on oxygen and everything. She's just, not that it was relevant to it, but I, she just didn't seem to take to me. And my first few things that I tried with her were falling flat, completely flat.

I'm talking, she got to the point after about 20 minutes of just looking at me. This isn't working. You might as well go.

Now, what you may not know about me is I don't give up. I do not ever, ever quit a situation like that. I would still be there now.

If it was, you know, I just don't, I won't, I won't quit. I don't know why. I just can't seem to, I got in trouble when I was doing sales and I was, my sales manager said, even though I was good at sales and I was one of the top people, and especially in the first sales, the first two sales jobs, they said, the manager said like, you're like a dog with a bone.

You just won't give it up. Once you, you know, with a customer, sometimes you just have to let them go, you know. But you'd like, once you get your chops around a bone, you will not give it up.

Like a dog with a bone. And I just, yeah, tenacity. People used to call me tenacious.

I didn't realize that it also kind of means a bit annoying. Because a dog that doesn't give up is annoying, isn't it as well? It's like, okay, you want to do that. It's really, you know, very tenacious.

You want to keep doing it and you want to get your own way. But it's a little bit annoying. So that's what I'm like.

Well, that's what I used to be like. I don't know if I'm like that anymore. I, yeah, I'm not sure.

But I was not leaving her house. I mean, if she'd asked me to leave, of course I left. I'm not saying like, I'll just stay there.

But I was determined. That would have been a weird court case, wouldn't it? I wanted to help her. I wanted to help save her life, your honor.

And no, I just, I wouldn't give up. And I tried, well, everything I knew, including new things I didn't know. And at the end of it, she said that she was feeling positive, optimistic.

Almost didn't care that she had to go to the hospital. Not worried or anything. It took me, I think, nearly three hours to get to that point.

Like solid three hours in a chair. Her in a chair, me in a chair, not the same chair. Because that would have been weird.

It's a long time. And we had a bit of a cuddle, and then we left. I left.

And she, again, she sent me a text. So she was in hospital for two days, or one and a half days, something like that. Went in the morning on Monday, and I think she got out like late afternoon, Tuesday.

It was something like that. And I didn't know. I didn't hear anything.

So it's like, I didn't really know what was going on. And I spoke to her. I think she phoned me, or I phoned her.

And she said, yeah, it's fine. I've had a really good laugh. I said, what? She said, yeah, I had a really good laugh.

I had a lot of fun. Walking through the door was easy. Just went in, did what I needed to do.

And the doctors had never seen me like this before, because she's had a lot of contact with those particular specialists over the last few years. And everything's fine, and I'm on the donor list. It's like, wow.

Just shows you what you can do when you make stuff up, doesn't it? Blimey. So we were going to meet up again, and maybe once a week, leading up to, well, she didn't know when it was going to be, leading up to preparation for her having the op. But it happened very, very quickly.

And it was in Cambridge. I forget the hospital. It's a really famous, world-famous hospital, Papworth.

That's it, Papworth. And I visited her. It was on a Sunday, because I was working Monday to Saturday that week.

So I went and visited her on a Sunday. So I went up to Cambridge. And I think I had a meal in a pub.

Never been to Cambridge before. And it was a big park, and it was in the summer as well. There were a lot of people around, and it looks like quite a nice place.

And then I got a taxi, I think, to the hospital, to Papworth. And I visited her. She was in bed, and I think her daughter was there.

But I said, while we're here, why don't I... Because she was in a bit of pain. She had drugs and everything to help her with that. But I said, well, we'll just do some pain relief, if you want.

Do a bit of relaxation and stuff. She said, OK, cool. And she had this big room all to herself.

So I went in there, and she was there. And I sat by the bed, and I started talking to her. And after about a minute, a nurse walked in, speaking really loudly.

Like, three times louder than the average normal voice level. I'm not sure if that's scientifically accurate, but, you know, very loud. And I said, we're just trying to do some relaxation.

Oh, OK. She walks out. Four minutes later, another person walks in.

And then two people walk in. Are you all right there? We need to do a blood test. We need to do this.

There was too much going on, so we had to stop. She was under quite strict monitoring. You know, such a big op.

So they were keeping an eye on her pretty much the whole time, checking her blood pressure and whatever, just making sure she's OK. Which is good, because that's why she was there. But we didn't have any space to help her.

And yeah, so that was... I won't go into too many more details about that, but that was a big thing in my life, actually. And from a hypnosis perspective, from a human perspective as well. And just as I thought, OK, that's not... This is it.

Everything should be easy sailing now, because I thought I don't want to deal with really serious things. OK, chronic pain, it's very serious for the person dealing with it. But it's different from acute pain.

Acute pain is a different beast. Chronic pain is something that we don't need. We don't need.

It's just to warn us to be careful, really. We don't need it. I don't need chronic pain in my lower back to let me know that I've got arthritis or whatever.

But so I kind of don't really hold on to it that much. And you can play around with chronic pain. You can play around with it and change the feelings.

And with acute pain, it's a different thing. Still change it, but you need to be careful because it's there for a reason. And you need to make sure that the person's OK first.

Because if someone's got appendicitis, then if that pain in their stomach, even after they've had the operation, if it stops them from standing up too quickly and bursting their stitches, then that's a good thing, isn't it? You know, it's a good thing that they've got that pain for that period of time. But after three, four weeks, they don't need it anymore. Once the stitches are out, they don't need any of that.

I've had my appendix out when I was younger. I've got a lovely story about that. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

It was, I think, I always thought it was time away from home. And I was in the children's ward. I've been in hospital twice that I know of.

One was to have my adenoids removed. That was part of my hearing issues I had when I was eight. And then when I was 12, I had my appendix removed.

They were basically working their way through the different body parts to remove. They were going to remove my brain, but they couldn't find it. So, it was one of my happiest times.

I think it might be because I was on morphine. And I was, I didn't realise I was on morphine, but they were giving me painkillers, painkiller drip or whatever. And I just couldn't stop laughing.

And it was brilliant. Loved it. Absolutely loved being in hospital.

After the operation, not before. But afterwards, once I was kind of on the way back. Yeah.

So, the good old days. That's the last time I was in hospital, like, to have anything done. Blimey.

So, I, what else did I, what am I talking, I talk about myself, keep talking about myself. There was a reason I mentioned that, and I don't know what it was. What was the reason? I'll talk about chronic pain.

Okay. Anyway. I thought, from now on, I'm just going to, you know, just go back to doing what I originally wanted to do.

And I was starting to, you know, get a little bit of interest with chronic pain patients. And that was what I was wanting to do. Nothing else, apart from the relaxation groups I started to do.

But that was separate. Those are the only two things. And making podcast, making like recordings and stuff, videos.

It kind of all kind of started roughly at the same time. And then my friend called me. She said, Oh, it's a wedding to go to.

We've got a wedding, do you want to? It's basically, it was another lady that was on a massage course that I used to be on back in 2003. And she was getting married to her boyfriend. But unfortunately, her boyfriend was really, really ill.

So they were getting married, like quite quickly. So I went along to the wedding. I couldn't be bothered to buy a present.

So what I did is I, this sounds awful, but I gave vouchers for some free hypnosis sessions to them. Okay. And it was like, I don't know, six free hypnosis sessions.

And that was my present. Now it's really, in some ways, meaningless present from my perspective. I can't pretend that I was being a wonderful human being because I wasn't.

I just didn't have anything to give to them. And I might not have had any money at the time. So I just gave them that.

So this was in 2006. By this time. And because I'd met her in 2003, and they got married 2006.

So I went to the wedding. Now I went to the afterbirth, not the afterbirth, the after party of the wedding. And I've never met him before.

I've met her and he was a nice bloke, but didn't really say anything to each other. Didn't really speak. But I gave those vouchers, you know, I thought they'd just be lost.

And that would be it. You know, I've made the gesture. And, you know, we could all move on with our lives and forget it ever happened.

I get a phone call from my friend, not the friend who got married, but my friend. I don't know why or maybe, maybe it wasn't. I know, I think probably the other one didn't have my number.

I don't know. But anyway, I don't even, I forget his name now. Ian, I think it was.

Ian, Ian wants to cash one of those vouchers. I said, what? So this is my friend, my friend's, one of my friend's husband, the one who's got married. He wants to cash, he wants to use one of those free vouchers.

I said, they weren't real, you know, they weren't real vouchers. They were just made up, pretend vouchers. Did you not see it was newspaper? It was a newspaper with just ink written on it.

You know, it was toilet paper. Did you not see it was written on toilet paper? Anyway, she said, the next thing she said sort of changed my mind. I said, no, just make an excuse for me.

She said, well, he's in hospital. He had a very, very, I won't go into it, but it was a very serious condition and he had to have some treatment for it. As serious as you can, as serious as it gets, basically.

So I go, oh, blimey, yeah, okay. So I go along to the hospital and he's in the certain ward where other people also having a similar thing. And he was really anxious about having this procedure because he had it done before and he didn't really want to go through it again.

So I did, I did hypnosis. Now this time I did it with a lot of noise in the background, like huge amounts of noise. I didn't even know it's possible to do hypnosis for someone when the place is, is literally like doing it in the middle of a street with traffic and people.

And it still worked because he wanted it to work. He was focusing on me and he didn't even know who I was really. He knew I was friends with his fiance, his new wife, but he didn't know me.

He'd never, he'd met me once at his wedding and I wasn't the focus of his attention, to be honest, I'm sure. I should have been, but I don't think I was. I think it was giving too much attention to her.

I mean, I was there. Why was he focusing on his wife when I was there? But I, and we did, we did about half an hour together and I couldn't stay for what he had to go be done because it was personal, private, whatever. But he said it really helped.

Like it, it made the difference. I was like, wow. And I visited him in his house.

So I did another voucher and I visited him in his house and did some pain relief and stuff. And so that was like, oh, okay. Another serious thing.

And I thought, this is it now. I can just go back to focusing on what I want to focus on. But by this time I was getting people online, MySpace, telling me, we, you know, we want relaxation.

We want sleep sessions. We want more of them. That's what we want.

They weren't really interested in the chronic pain recordings so much. Some people were, but the ones that were really doing well, you know, well, well-ish with the relaxation and the sleep sessions. So, you know, I had to, I couldn't ignore that.

So I kind of catered to what was asked for me, from me. And then I get a phone call from a person that I did know, his friend, my friend's boss, but I'd met him a few times and his wife was about to go into hospital the following week. It wasn't quite as, I mean, she was going in on Thursday and I think I saw her on the Monday or something.

And she had to have, again, a very serious operation, a removal of a thing, of a part. And anyway, she, she wrote me, I've still got her letter, Shobna her name was. I've still got a letter.

I've still got all those letters from those days because they were in written form. Because I sent people, I said, would you like to let me know how you got on? And they did. Some people didn't, I didn't have to ask them.

They just did anyway. And I've still got a little bunch of letters from 2006. Blimey, I don't know where they are.

And she said this sort of the same as what the other said. Everything went swimmingly, really well. And, yeah, and her husband, he started to come see me a few months later and he'd come once a week and he relaxed so deeply.

Sometimes I'd do it in the shop that he worked, sometimes I'd do it in his house. He'd come in my house or, you know, just wherever was suitable, really. And he just sunk into the chair.

He was, he, he loved it. He, you know, he was for the most hypnotizable person I think I've ever met. Although I was, I was really just doing relaxation, but he absolutely loved it.

And I saw him actually at my friend's wedding. This is the friend, I keep saying friend, I'm not, I can't really say their names, but, but a different friend's wedding. And he was there.

And it's really weird. It just hasn't changed at all. Looks exactly the same.

It wasn't that long after I'd seen him. I mean, I was living there, so it was 2014, 2013. And I hadn't seen him since 2007.

It's only six years, isn't it? So it's not a lot. Nice bloke, gave me a lift back to where I was living from the, yeah, because I was, I was very drunk, very, very drunk. At that wedding.

And he gave me a lift. So that's kind of part of the origin story. Those few people.

And my first real chronic pain client, my free service when I visited people in their houses was there. It was an elderly gentleman. He was about 78.

This is in 2006. I started seeing him in about April time. And how old would he be now? Blimey.

2006, 2016, 20, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, blimey, it'd be late 90s. He had like really, really bad arthritis in his legs and everything. So I saw him every week for a few months, actually.

And his condition improved dramatically, dramatically. And the local newspaper did an article about me and they came around his house and took a picture of him, took a picture of me. And they basically, she talked about, they listened and watched, I say her and the photographer watched me do a hypnosis session with him.

The relaxation session. And it was really, really nice bit of publicity. And terrible picture of me really was.

I was bald, wearing all white, my big red face, which it wasn't, and my tummy. It wasn't a good picture. It really wasn't.

And but, you know, there you go. Yeah, I had a radio, a radio channel asked, did I have a radio channel? I'm losing track of reality. But I'm pretty sure I did.

I think I've had three radio interviews in my life. One was when I did comedy. I was in the independent newspaper in about 2004, what was it? 2003, 2004, 2005.

I don't know. I think it was 2003. I had a, you know, there's this lady turned up at one of this, it was an open spot night downstairs at the King's Head.

There was the venue, it was quite a famous venue. And she came up to me and she said, I really like what you do. And do you want to be, I want to come and.

And I don't know, she, I think they'd already taken pictures. Or she might have said, oh, where are you going to be next? And I'll see you there. I don't know, something like that.

And she turned up and took pictures of us and listened to us, you know, and she wrote this article about me and another comedian. Both new, you know, not particularly. Doing so well, comedians, you know, quite new.

Now she. There was, I don't know, I used to have the paper and there's a black and white picture of me. It was center pages as well.

But I was one side and I think Mike Tyson's was on the other side for some reason. And that's this big picture of me just standing there. I think smoking a cigarette with my long hair.

And it was just, it was a pretty good picture, actually, quite, but the headline. Both at the inside of paper and on the outside, on the first, the first page, the front page, meet Britain's worst comedian or worst comic. That was like, you know, where they put a little, a little clip on the first page and then go to page 32 or go to the center pages or whatever.

And then meet, meet Britain's worst comedian. They weren't talking about me. They were talking about the other bloke.

So she actually said. Jason's is what he's saying is horrible because I used to be quite. Hard hitting, I don't know, quite.

Offensive, I guess that's what kind of comedy I used to do when I was 21, 22 years old, 23. 92 and. She said, what he's what Jason is saying is horrible.

But I'm laughing at least with the audience are laughing and smiling at me. So am I. Now, that's that's a good comment, isn't it? Maybe what he's saying is horrible, isn't a good comment. But the fact that she's saying the audience are laughing and so am I. That's not saying I'm the worst comedian in the world.

But then she sort of says quite negative things about the other bloke. It ruined my comedy. Career, even though I didn't have a comedy career.

It just as I was starting to get better at comedy. And I was getting better at it. I was getting some paid gigs, not many, but a few paid gigs.

And I became a laughingstock. Because of that newspaper article, because no one read it. All they saw was the headline.

And a picture of me. And that's that was enough. So it's not available, though, because it was I think it was.

It was definitely to 1993, 1993. But it was in the independent newspaper. But that stuff wasn't online.

There was no Internet back then. So it's not stored unless they do have some kind of archive. I remember going to the comedy club that I used to hang out.

And one of them, I was leaving and a couple of comedians were shouting, come in, come wait, wait, wait. I said, well, the BBC have been trying to contact you. I said, what? He said, yeah, because of your article in the independent, the BBC have been trying to contact you.

They've left a number for you to call. So this was like late at night, so I had to wait till next day. Here's me thinking, oh, I've got my own TV show.

I'm going to be famous. And it wasn't. It was just it was a radio, a radio channel, radio station wanted to interview me.

And they tried to I did the interview and it wasn't very good. They tried to goad me to be offensive. And off the stage, I wasn't offensive.

I was just the average person, you know, unless someone kind of poked the bear, I wasn't, I didn't growl, you know, I just I saved that for being on stage. Although. This is gig.

And it's one of my favorite gigs I ever did. And it was in the middle of nowhere. It was like Hertfordshire and it was like this little village and there was going to be more than 15, 20 people in the audience.

And I was getting paid to do it and everything was so like didn't care that it was a small audience. But they were a really good audience. And I went on.

And I just started being myself. One of the first times I ever was able to just be silly, because I like being silly. I like silliness.

I'm not into that. Harsh comedy was what I wanted to try and be, but it wasn't me. If you if that makes sense, I wanted to be Sam Kinison.

I wanted to be those, you know, Bill Hicks, Andrew Dice Clay, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, you know, hard hitting, not necessarily offensive, but hard hitting. And I wasn't really, I can still pull one out of the bag every now and then. But that gig, I remember because the silly side of me came out.

And people were laughing because it almost like it wasn't an act. It was just me being me, just making silly sounds and just playing around, just having fun for the hell of it. And I got one of the best reviews I've ever had.

You know, I've done, I did hundreds of gigs. And the promoter said, they loved you. They loved you.

Like, just even the bar owner, the pub owner, like, loved me. Like, everyone loved you. It's like, wow.

He said, yeah, and I've never been told that. I've never been the favourite comedian of the night, ever. And I did over 250 performances.

I use the word performance very, very loosely. You know, gigs. Gigs, let's say.

I wonder what gigs stands for. I don't know. Stands for gigabyte now, doesn't it? So, I wonder what the time is.

I think it might be time to say bye-bye. Bye-bye, farewell, au revoir. I didn't drink all my tea.

So, my comedy evolved from being, it became more sillier. There was a point where I think I was, I was doing, I'm trying to say about laughing, I was progressing. But there's, there was a lot of closed doors, because I closed a lot of clubs.

A lot of clubs, like, there were just a pub, a comedy night down the pub, that was like, once a week. A few landlords and landladies, and they just said, no more comedy after I'd been on stage. We're not doing this anymore.

It's just, you know, so I had a bit of a reputation. In the early days. And sometimes when things weren't going so well, I'd revert back to that.

I mean, I remember 91, my opening line to 250 people, or 200 people is, you're all, c, u, n, you know, that was it. I was like, you're all. And I expected them to like me after saying that.

It's like, I know I was only 20, but blimey. It's, it's weird. So I guess, in a way, my life would be broken up into three parts.

Two parts. Yeah. Two sections, really.

Outside of childhood, I mean. As an adult, two, two parts. So far, there was the comedy years.

And then there's the hypnosis years. So the comedy years started in 1990. Yeah, 1990, because that's when I decided, it was April 1990, I decided I wanted to be a comedian.

And I started writing material, preparing for moving to London in 1991. I did start performing. No, it's not true.

I performed in 1990. I went to, I did a talent contest in the summer 1990 for a sky search for a star. And for some reason, I didn't get a call back.

Never been on stage before. I had no idea what I was doing. Or why I, well, I didn't know why I was doing it.

But I didn't know. I just didn't know anything. Anyway, so from 1990 to 2008, January, no, January 1998 was my last ever gig.

And now I'm making noise everywhere. Kicking boxes. But I was still involved with comedy till 2001.

And then I still stayed connected to the comedy club in one form or another for another 10 years. So, and then I also helped out for a little while on another comedy club that was part of that club in London in 2014, 2015. Yeah, 2015.

So, but then, then there's that. They really, my proper full on connection, like full time, not full time, but regular week in, week out connection to the comedy scene ended in 2001. And then it was like a very vague period when I was just working in a call center and doing various things, but doing hypnosis courses and doing massage courses.

I didn't even have internet for about two years. Bit like now, my internet's going to run out soon. But the, in 2004, I started the pain relief stuff, built a website, and I started to, I started to look to do that.

As I said, it took two years before anything happened, but I was putting, giving out leaflets and I said, I said, I was building a website. I was trying to promote stuff, but it just took a while to, to build into anything. And then 2006, so I did some other hypnosis courses in 2005.

But 2006 is when it really grew. You know, I was doing lots of different things hypnotically. 2007, I was working part time.

So I was doing more group sessions. I had more time to spend on making audios and videos and promoting online as well as pretty much for the last 17 years, I've spent my weekends doing this. And I never day off, although I'm not, it's not a job.

It's not a paid job. Even when I worked full time, I was still doing this when I got home. You know, the first thing I do in the morning, I turn the computer on to check the stats or to do something.

And then the last thing I do at night is a similar kind of thing. So even now I wake up in the night to go to the toilet and I check the stats. This is what I do.

I've been doing it for 17 years, 18 years, 18 years in January. Did you just do a big burp or was it a weird fart? Anyway, I better go because he's now wanting my attention. So this is just a random chat about nothing really, wasn't it? But yeah, I just thinking about the past and how the time's gone.

And I've been doing this a long, long time. And I think we're really, really cool. I mean, you think in four years time, wasn't that 2003, three years time, 20 years, 20 years.

But it's weird. Imagine when I've done 50 years. I'd be sitting here, I'd just be dust.

I remember 50 years ago. Still be doing relaxation sessions. Just relax yourself.

Oh, Finny, come back. Stop, stop hassling me, Finny. 50 years time blindly.

Wow. Anyway, I'm going to go because the little one wants my attention. And to be fair, he farted earlier under the table and it was a smelly, smelly fart.

Proper smelly one. And he just laid there on his stomach. He always faces his bum towards me for some reason.

I don't know why. He didn't, he didn't move. He almost like he didn't know it happened.

I didn't hear it. But I did smell it. Oh, he wants my attention now.

Okay, take care. Remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy. Lots of love.

Bye.