Paul McKenna: My school report said I'd 'never amount to anything'

When Paul McKenna was at school in north London, back in the 1970s, one of his school reports said he "would never amount to anything". Years later, by now a famous hypnotist, TV presenter and household name, he mailed a signed copy of his best-selling first book to the teacher in question, with a rather rude Anglo-Saxon expletive inscribed in the title page.

"Childish as it was, it was very gratifying," McKenna admits to the Daily Express. "Yes, that was my revenge."

Fast-forward half a century and no one would now dare accuse this 60-year-old therapist and life coach of amounting to nothing. Since he first graced our TV screens in the early 1990s, with The Hypnotic World of Paul McKenna, he has presented several very successful TV shows themed around hypnosis and has sold 15 million self-help books in 32 languages. He estimates he's helped around 100,000 patients over the years with weight problems, addiction, phobias, anxiety, lack of confidence and difficulty sleeping.

His latest venture, released in the next few days, is a new mobile phone app which aims to help subscribers with all of the above and more.

McKenna has also used his hypnotic powers to treat various celebrities over the years, from actor James Corden and golfer Sir Nick Faldo to TV personality Simon Cowell, plus pop stars including Roger Daltrey, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Courtney Love.

He has been instrumental in curing all sorts of psychological problems for the rich and famous. American actress Daryl Hannah used his techniques to overcome stage fright. Stephen Fry and Kirsty Young both swear by his weight-loss strategies. Comedians Rob Brydon and Gary Delaney have both cured a fear of flying. US chat show host Ellen DeGeneres relied on McKenna when she gave up smoking. David Walliams used his tips to deal with pain and boredom while he swam the English Channel.

But it's the thousands of ordinary members of the public that McKenna is most proud of treating; people such as construction worker Ray Mash, who sought his advice after being afflicted with a very rare condition called hysterical blindness while working at a construction site and was immediately struck completely blind. After many months and multiple hypnosis sessions, McKenna succeeded in restoring the unfortunate chap's sight.

"With Ray, they couldn't find any neurological reason for his blindness," McKenna explains. "It took months to treat him. Then one day, I got a torch and put it underneath his wife's face and suddenly he could see his wife for the first time in eight years. After that, bit by bit, his sight came back."

McKenna says it's life-changing cases like this that make him feel most fulfilled.

Although he used his early career to hypnotise people on television shows, the no majority of his time is now spent writing books and conducting live online psychology and therapy seminars. It allows him to treat many more patients much more efficiently.

McKenna was born in London in 1963, and brought up in Enfield, in the north of the capital. His father was a building contractor and former university lecturer, his mother a teacher. He has a brother who is also a building contractor.

As a child, he admits he was "nerdy". He disliked his school - a strict Jesuit-run Catholic institution - which he once described as "very violent". Being dyslexic didn't endear him to his teachers.

"It was the eternal indoctrination, guilt, the worthlessness, all of that," he once explained. "It was a very rough school as well. A number of people in my class have gone to prison, some of them for quite serious crimes."

After school, he cut his teeth in local radio, also recording voice-overs for adverts. Later he worked as a presenter on BBC Radio 1. It was after interviewing a hypnotist that he became intrigued by altered states of consciousness, eventually carving out a career as a prime-time TV presenter in the same field.

Initially, he persuaded willing guests to take part in his comedy show and let their inhibitions down - dancing like a ballerina, for example, or thinking a broom was a supermodel.

There was controversy in the late 1990s, though, when a former guest tried to sue him, claiming hypnosis led him to become schizophrenic. McKenna was cleared of all blame by the High Court, but the row was the cause of untold stress and lost earnings.

By the 2000s, having become an expert in psychological techniques such as Neurolinguistic Programming and Havening, McKenna had switched to much more serious hypnotherapy and self-help treatment. He spent many years living in Los Angeles, where life was, he says, "all about status and power".

Nowadays he's based in Kensington, in west London, with his wife Kate and his pet Great Dane, Misty.

"I am the happiest I've ever been," he says. "If you'd met me years ago, I was driven and ambitious but my life was all about pleasure. Pleasure is not a bad thing, but if it's only about pleasure, there's never enough and then it's insatiable."

Kate had worked for years as McKenna's personal assistant before they became romantically involved. He remembers how he first realised he loved her after subconsciously "drawing an Excel spreadsheet" in his mind.

He believes his and Kate's personalities complement each other perfectly. "I tend to be very optimistic, upbeat, gung-ho, while Kate is good at thinking through things that could go wrong," he explains. "So we're a good team. She is incredibly organised with a photographic memory. And she thinks in a very logical, linear way. With my ADHD, I'm off all over the place. I can think of several conflicting things simultaneously."

Despite his years of psychological training, McKenna admits he occasionally gets upset and angry, just like the rest of us.

Ten years ago, he was "wiped out" by his father's death. Then, a few months ago, his father-in-law died.

Sometimes McKenna will use his own therapies on himself. Eight years ago, he successfully hypnotised himself never to drink vodka again - but when he is particularly worried or upset, he seeks others' help.

"You don't cut your own hair or do your own brain surgery," he stresses. "Sometimes it's a good idea to have somebody else do it."

Recently he had to visit hospital for a medical procedure, for example, and he called upon the advice of a therapist friend as he was so nervous about going under anaesthetic.

But would he ever use his Jedi mind tricks on his wife Kate? "She tells me: 'None of your voodoo is going to work on me,'" he explains to me. "But occasionally I might try to convince her to do something. The trouble is she always catches me out."

While Kate may not fall for his therapeutic charms, McKenna admits he did once use them on her mother.

"There is a story to do with my mother-in-law," he admits. "But it's probably best kept as a private story. I used [my skills] to achieve something. But don't worry. It wasn't anything terrible."

McKenna's ultimate aim is far more ambitious than manipulating mother-in-laws, however. When asked how he might create positive change in the world, he says the following: "I would teach hypnotherapy to as many people as I could. I would teach as many people as I could to go into a calm, relaxed, peaceful state at will; to be able to switch off the fear and anger and all the bad stuff in the world right now."

One genuinely gets the impression McKenna wants to use his skills as a force for good.

"When someone asked me recently how I would like to be remembered, I jokingly said: 'In the Sultan of Brunei's will.' But seriously, I would like to be remembered as one of the people who brought hypnotherapy to the world.

"I've taught it to 100,000 people in the last few decades. My goal is to get to a million people if I can."