Grant talks with Hypnotist Robert temple about life on the road stage hypnosis and Robert’s theatre tour.
a ghost in the machine i had one gig booked down that i had a gun we did like a it was like a 15 hour round trip in the middle of it uh and it just happened to work because that afternoon that gig was in as it was two o’clock in the afternoon in my edinburgh show was at two o’clock in the afternoon so i had a full 24 hours to get down to the show and get back again wow so uh yeah it was good uh we only missed one show at the fringe so yeah that was amazing as well again really hard because like you’ve got to be constantly out there and self-promoting and all of that stuff but i loved it and what it’s going to give me is we sort of cheated last year with the show um the show that we toured was basically the same show i’d done a couple years earlier so we knew it quite well the plan is that going forward i’ll do edinburgh every august and my tour is in september october every year obviously this year we just pushed it back to next year but um august and then september october on tour so that gives me august to run the show and just get it really tight i watched an interview with i’ve got a massive man crush on ricky gervais and i watched um i watched an interview with him recently and he said on a podcast called the true geordie and he said that um before his last tour went on sale 10 000 people had seen it for free because he did 200 he did 40 40 gigs for 250 people yeah and um that was it so when when when the tickets went on sale for 50 60 100 code whatever they were the people who were paying that money had seen a perfect show yeah and so i sort of see edinburgh as that for me 3000 people saw the show last year so i sort of see that as a as a really good way to warm up before we go on tour yeah i mean that’s that’s especially with hypnosis because there’s so many variables getting out there performing and polishing the show is is a great thing you know like i said there’s a lot of guys that unfortunately if they don’t get the stage time then drive the price down and kind of go out cheap or free to get experience uh whereas getting out there and doing it properly is is the best way to do it really so yeah what was
is there a venue or a town that you you just kind of go by i’m never going back there for some reason over there then i i have a town i don’t work i couldn’t
you can’t be funny in liverpool when everybody in liverpool is the funniest person in the room i i don’t do liverpool that’s hilarious oh it’s just you know when you just you go to a place you have a bad experience you get to a place again you have a bad experience and then you get to a place again i had another hypnotist who doesn’t work now who it’s a nice corporate christmas too and uh i had a look on their facebook all contracted in everything i looked on their facebook two days beforehand and saw this other hypnotist has tagged that he was going to this hotel for a job and i thought oh well what are the odds of them having two and then it turned out that the dj that works in this particular hotel knew a hypnotist from who worked at the holiday abroad type thing who would do it cheaper and he went and did it and at first i was like i can’t believe a fellow professional has done that and then that night on facebook he was putting all the messages going what absolutely a bunch of bastards did ruined my show and there’s that other and i thought that’s sweet that’s three warning flags liverpool for me it’s just it’s yeah oh it doesn’t work the first time i’m getting liverpool i’m not lying i was sat there waiting to go on stage and i’ve looked across at this fellow who didn’t look well and he was just sick down himself like just sick down himself it was disgusting the barmaids come over looked at him called him a terrible word and then started mopping around him and cleaning it up and i’m like are you not are you not going to ask him to leave so it’s like for me liverpool is it’s a place i don’t work is there any way you don’t work uh there isn’t but i really struggle in the west midlands anywhere well for the most part anywhere like round birmingham that sort of area has been a bit of a nightmare for me generally and it stemmed from the tour um we had a couple of nights where the shows just had to be pulled just because we didn’t sell enough tickets again big learning lessons and that still cost you a fortune because you’ve still advertised it and done all the rest of it um so yes there was a couple of shows we had to pull there was one that we made work and it was a really good show but it was hard work to get there uh and yeah so i and and there was a gig that we did on the tour that didn’t go very well and that was in the midlands so for me uh and that theater unfortunately that theater has has been hit by covered and closed unfortunately um but that was a place i was never going to go back yeah yeah i think i think you you get these areas where you kind of go like that when you’ve had two or three bad experiences you you write it off completely i say that we are going back to birmingham the tour next year so anyone in birmingham oh brilliant well you know what i’m saying yeah yeah yeah yeah and after covered i need the money so i work liverpool
um so yeah um i mean where’s where’s the tour at for the kind of the autumn season which we’re about to go into now where where was it up with that do you still have any dates in for this year no so we moved everything uh it came down to it was before the uk went into lockdown i i felt a bit touchy about what might happen yeah and then and then the the country did go into lockdown and i thought i’ve got a choice now i can either put a massive advertising budget into selling a 20 because it’s a 27-day tour so i can add a massive advertising budget into selling 27 dates up and down the country um and find out that because of coronavirus i can’t do the show and then all of that money is lost yeah or i can make the decision to cancel it well push it back a year and uh and then and then at least it’s within my own terms because i believe that we’ll be back to normal ish by this time next year so and then and then cameron mcintosh came out and said that none of his theaters were likely to be open this side of christmas and i thought that says loads yeah i’ve got lots of friends who work in theater and they’re all saying similar things so i just made the decision to put it unfortunately all of the theaters every one of them with the exception that well all of them were amazing and all of them just picked up the date and moved it to next year now we were looking two regards one is we already had a lot of dates penciled for next year anyway so all we’ve done is i’ve said well let’s just pick up that date and just replace with the one we’ve already got penciled um the only one that was difficult wasn’t difficult because they’re horrible people they’re um they’re just they’re undergoing a two-year refurbishment and that means they’ll be closed until 2023. yeah so we were like okay great nothing we can do there so the whole tour with the exception of two dates that are still penciled because they’re trying to shuffle everything around has just been rescheduled to september october 2021 but i wanted to push it if i thought i’m going to push it back i want to push it all the way back yeah i don’t want to push it to the spring and still be at risk and not have the full because at the minute if we had posters and flyers in theaters nobody’s getting them so yeah fortunately under the circumstances of like moving shows for theaters is the most painful thing uh or cancelling shows but they were all amazing just because every you know every show that should be on right now is is in the same boat yeah yeah exactly and i think that that that’s what helps and it’s it gives you longer to to build it up and find out exactly where things are i know next week we’ve got uh patrick picard on uh the belgium hypnotist yeah who who’s the only guy who has worked solidly through kovid really oh he’s just he was supposed to be on a couple of weeks ago but he’s doing a tour in france and he’s doing like four nights a week doing the holiday parks in france and it’s like he has not stopped working throughout the whole thing so how how that’s going to work with france and their lockdown i have no idea but it’ll be interesting to get interesting to speak to him next week just to see how he’s doing it with social distancing and how and how that works out for him but yeah that’s uh i know i’ve had a couple of inquiries for sure in lockdown going oh it’s a private part can you do this it’s like it’s not worth the risk now doing something that’s going to ruin it for everybody and i agree yeah i totally agree yeah it’s a it’s a crazy world but yeah hopefully things will but a venue that i book messaged me two days ago kind of going uh are we still going ahead very much all paid for are we still going ahead with the booking uh if we are it’s uh limited to 40 people i’m like well well no so i mean but they’re trying they’re trying to make me cancel it rather than them canceling it so we’re just trying to we’re trying to find out where that line is financially it’s a mutual breakup i think is what you need there yeah exactly yeah that’s that’s the only option so yeah um you know what’s what’s next for you um you’re probably one of the few hypnotists that you don’t have a book out yet at the moment book yeah have you got one yet are you writing one yet absolutely no chance i actually have um obviously back in the day we released the seesaw uh induction dvd which which alex smith released um yeah and i did i did a lecture i did a lecture for penguin magic who are a magic shop in ohio so they fly out magicians and mentalists and stuff to do lectures that are broadcast live um so i did that i did a penguin lecture on stage hypnosis from the angle of somebody who’s a magician and wants to move into that world but actually i um i have no interest in teaching hypnosis or talking about it or or going that route i’ve worked with a couple of people like one-on-one um but i i have no desire to be part of that world so there’s definitely none of that happening yeah um yeah i um i’m gonna keep doing what i’m doing the plan is that the tour will get bigger and better the plan is that there’s alex doing his thing the plan is that we will get bigger and better and we’ll do more and more venues i make no money from the sales of that dvd
and uh yeah so that that’s the plan i i i’m still doing odd gigs i’m still doing odd gigs like i’m not i’m not suddenly not available for hire anymore because if the gig is right i’ll take it okay but i’m doing very few um i’ve canceled like what used to be my student season is now overtaking because september is is now the tour season the theater tour season and that’s just the direction i want to take it in and i basically want to i think i want to do we had an interesting conversation with the theater manager at the back end of last year the last night of the tour um i was talking to the theater manager chris and he said um he was at the show and he said it’s really interesting he said for the first time in a long the first time ever we’ve got a generate a whole generation maybe two generations of people who don’t actually know what a hypnosis show is yeah um so like when i was doing universities we had these kids of 18 19 kids 18 19 year olds coming in i was the same age as some of them when i started doing it um and they’ve never seen a hypnotist before or a handful of them have because they saw one in marber or somewhere um and so that’s a huge problem what used to happen was you just put the word hypnotist on a poster and everybody knew what that was and what the show was going to be now you put the word hypnotist on a poster and i don’t offend anybody but anybody being over the age of 30 might know what one is over the age of 40 50 you definitely know what that is which is why my audience is mostly full of that age bracket so what i really my goal is to make hypnosis really accessible and cool again not that i’m cool but to make hypnosis accessible and cool again for a younger audience of people because when young people do come in because their grandparents brought them or their parents when i say young people i mean people in their 18 18 19 and 20s they they love it but they’ve never seen anything like that before yeah yeah and i think um talking about when you say about the the student market um i do or i did a few universities but i noticed how that market was changing how it had gone from being very much you know this is what we want to very much now very very pc uh to the point where it makes the show almost impossible uh to do i literally had a a manager uh a booker tell me to use gender neutral language on stage and it’s like you know it just it makes it very difficult so yeah it’s i started to see that happening for sure yeah yeah it’s that market i think it they’re not there’s less and less of them booking stage of those shows now which is you know it’s the way the world is both but the way you’re doing it is right by putting on the theater shows and the production shows it makes people go oh what’s that you know it opens their curiosities that’s a good thing yeah brian glenn said it’s really hard but love it yeah brandon says you’ve got to do two shows a night to make it worthwhile so yeah so brian is uh don’t you know brian glenn i don’t think i do brian glenn is a was a state hypnotist that opened a hypnotherapy training school it’s it’s quite a large hypothetical training school as well okay uh yeah he lives in a cave in spain now by choice place to live yeah it sounds like a place to live in corona virus it’s a it’s a nice cave by all accounts so they go there we go and uh robert temple’s penguin live lecture there’s a link just been put there by alex william smith there you go yeah well yeah it’s been good fun right um i always ask guests for either a top tip or a book recommendation uh so i’ll i’ll leave it up to you if you want to give a top tip for someone that’s wanting to start performing stage hypnosis or if you have a book that kind of changed your perspective on either your career your success path or your performance top tip i’ll do a top tip what’s the top tip from somebody wanting to start out in hypnosis i think the first thing is um you can get stage time in but it doesn’t have to be as a hypnotist i think like i said earlier the stage time i had magic growing up the stage time i had on the radio the stage time i had did mobile discounts for a bit when i was 16. uh the stage time i had uh doing stand-up like just get some stage time doing anything at all yeah and that will support because i believe so there’s an old quote in the magic world that was said hundreds of years ago that um a magician is merely an actor playing the part of a magician and i think that’s totally true i think it’s way more true for a stage hypnotist though very much because you know anyone doing it knows in the world of stage hypnosis it’s mostly performance and the hypnosis comes along with that quite naturally you can be the world’s most technically brilliant hypnotist and if you can’t perform it then nobody gives a toss so i think for me if you can get stage time in and just learn to be a better performer a really good performer could with very bad hypnosis skills could pull off a much better show than a technically competent hypnotist with no performance skills at all so get stage time and do anything go enjoy and there’s loads of ways to do it join like there’s improv classes for adults go and try that that’s that’s fun like just do anything that gets you stage time doing anything yeah no do you know what that is an absolutely solid piece of advice uh you know i mean it’s one of the things i used to be a very nervous public speaker and i did a few things i joined a lodge so you’re forced to stand up there and talk you’ve got toastmasters various different things that force you down there on top yeah brilliant like every town in the country’s got an amateur dramatics theater go and do some plays for nothing for the fun of it and the camaraderie yeah brenda case says great advice totally agree uh brenda’s a phenomenal female hypnotist that does the cruise ships um so yeah robert it’s been an absolute blast thank you for coming on as well and uh yeah hopefully people will check out your penguin magic lecture on the transparency template um and yeah you take care and yeah take care and see you soon cheers man