Alas (for me) I saw the last show given by the Canadian hypnotist Titan Knight at the Edinburgh festival.  He had been doing a two week run at a nightclub near Waveney station (no friday/saturday shows for some reason).    It was very different from the sort of shows that Peter Powers/Ken Webster do (which come from the theatre tradition).  Titan likes to encourage a lot of audience participation.  Presumably because the room was fairly intimate (about a hundred capacity) he could walk about the room and interact with the audience.  This gave the show much more of a party atmosphere and he encouraged the audience to shout things out (eg shouting "sociable" every time he took a sip from his drink - a little silly, but it created a fun atmosphere).

Prior to the show we had a brief cabaret performance involving a man spinning a chainsaw etc (not my cup of tea) and a diva with her toyboys singing a few disco ditties (yes, for those who need to know, I can confirm that Josh is indeed a 9.9).  I didn't notice anything untoward about the leading lady but it turns out she was a he so she was very convincing, and in particular her voice was very feminine.  First time a trannie ever fooled me, but there you go.

Titan then started his show and I did mention to the other tists that his stage photo doesn't really do him justice.  He quickly had no problems filling the chairs on the stage (about 15 or so) and presumably some of them were repeaters from his earlier shows.  Titan also pointed out that unlike other stage shows he would not be asking the volunteers to remove any clothing (... however, more on that later!)  This did disappoint some members of the audience who are no doubt used to the full monty routines at the end of most other hypno shows (or to be factually correct, partial monty routines in most, but not all, cases).

The show itself was quite funny although I felt the induction was overly long (I think it lasted in total something like 25 minutes) and as the show progressed about half the volunteers ended up leaving the stage anyway.  There were of course a couple of volunteers who sat there like class dunces, very obviously not following the instructions of the tist and then not understanding why they weren't hypnotised.  However, those who did remain on the stage were genuinely hypnotised and did participate (more or less) quite fully in the various routines.  One funny routine was having the volunteers going into the audience to get the left trainer on people's feet believing that it was a lottery ticket.  When they returned to the stage some volunteers had quite a number of trainers and some had none.  The volunteers refused to share their trainers/lottery tickets with the volunteers who had none - interesting to see such a naked display of human selfishness.

  When the show ended one of the stage crew happened to have a birthday so to give him a "treat" Titan gave instructions to one of the muscle jock volunteers that he would do a strip routine for the stage crew member.  However, given that Titan doesn't normally do a strip routine in his shows he got the instructions slightly wrong.  He prefaced his instructions with the phrase "only take off as many clothes as you are comfortable with" and then gave instructions that he must keep his underwear on (or if not wearing any underwear, he would keep his "pants" on)  So the music starts and the muscle jock volunteer didn't take anything off (presumably he wasn't comfortable with that...)  So Titan had to whisper something off-mic to the volunteer and then with a big smile on his face he was quite happy to take his shirt off and do a little dance.  

There was an after show party and the performers, stage crew (but not Titan) were happy to mingle with the audience which continued the party atmosphere.  I had an early start back to London so would have liked to stay longer and admire Josh but it was not to be.

One thing that did annoy me at the after party was the actions of another self-proclaimed "well known" stage hypnotist, who nobody in our group had heard of, and he went to the volunteers, rehypnotised them and just sauntered off again which left them very confused.  I don't know whether  he just put them into trance and gave no further instructions, or whether he gave an instruction they didn't like.  Luckilly, one of the other tists with us spotted what had happened and was able to undo some of the nastiness.  A pity that some smartass tists treat subjects like that with not the slightest thought regarding the impact of their moronic behaviour on people who are still vulnerable and highly suggestible after a show.