LEE FONE INTERVIEW — Cosmic Pancakes!

Let’s all meet up in the year 2000 2024! But isn’t it strange now we’re all fully grown..? Yes, in the most mind-bending Cosmic Pancakes! interview so far, Amy reconnects with former teenaged hypnotist Lee Fone to find out what really happened when he brought a powerful dose of TV’s Paul McKenna to the 1994 school kids of an East England town.

The perils of teenagers playing with hypnosis seems a quaint and peculiarly British relic. The instances I come across were invariably sparked by circa 1950s-70s local press ‘sensations’, such as the aftermath of a stage hypnotist coming to a small town. Some young scallywags start ‘fascinating’ one another with shiny tin cans, but then one gets ‘stuck’ in ‘trance’. The parents and local community raise merry hell until The Doctor or The Policeman does his prestige thing and persuades everybody to just stop it. Here’s a fun example.

But something different happened in the merry town of Buntingford in 1994. For our readers in Virginia, USA, Buntingford is a picturesque old market town in East Hertfordshire famed, among the Generation X and older Millennial alumni of our school, Ward Freman, for its parks, pubs, and lax adult supervision. Lee and I both went to Ward Freman, but we didn’t know each other. I arrived aged 14 from a town a short bus journey away; he, A Boy from two years above, didn’t have the notoriety of a ‘Woody’ or the dynasty of a ‘Norris’ or the enduring mystique of a ‘Phizacklea’, and so we passed like confused corridor queuers of the afternoon bell, none the wiser.

Well, that is until British TV hypnotist Paul McKenna’s hypnosis book found its way into Lee’s hands. I’ve written previously about the book and my teenaged glimpse into the sensation of Lee’s ‘Magic Woods’ hypnosis sessions here. But, in a nutshell, Lee was ‘The Paul McKenna’ of our school when we were aged 14-16 years. And I’ve fallen down the hypnosis rabbit hole myself since distantly glimpsing Lee’s park hypnosis shows. So I have CIA-themed questions as regards this corruption of my otherwise innocent soul! Lee, now 45, lives in Hertfordshire and currently works in building maintenance, but is seeking a return to his freelance graphic designer career. He agreed to my eccentric request to find out for myself what a 90s teenaged boy thought about this slippery subject, and what he, as an adult, thinks of it now.

Lee aged 17 because finding schooldays photos involves parental attic raids, etc.

Amy: Thank you so much for humouring me and our *tremendously niche* blog with this interview, Lee! So. We’re here to investigate your secret past as a teenaged hypnotist! I gather I’m not the only member of the Ward Freman school alumni to remember your ‘Magic Woods’ hypnosis sessions?

Lee: To be honest, it does come up... Do you remember Paul B? I work with him quite a lot and he’s a constant reminder of it. He’ll joke about it: “Oh, don’t listen to him, he’ll hypnosis you! Blah blah.” It is always kind of present in the mind. But there was always that little bit of doubt in my head, I suppose. Did it actually work? Or were people just playing along? So when you got in touch, I thought, well, there must have been something in it!

A: I’d assumed you were a fellow fan of Paul McKenna’s TV show, The Hypnotic World of Paul McKenna, as it was a staple of weekend telly for us British Generation X and older Millennial tweens and teens. But I gather you were already a hypnosis fan?

L: Yeah, I’d always been interested in hypnosis, the paranormal, UFOs – that sort of thing. I was a massive X Files fan. So I’d watched hypnosis programmes because I just found it quite interesting. I thought, well, can anyone do it or not just anyone? Maybe give it a go [myself]..? And coincidentally, down Layston Court Gardens, my friend Joe was there one day and he had the book and he said: “Oh, you like Paul McKenna or whatever? I’ve got this book. I’ve read it. Nah, it ain’t working for me. Do you want it?” I said ‘yeah’ and I read it and tried a bit of self-hypnosis, and I felt like it was working. That was the start of it.

A: After you’d read the first blog post draft back in November 2021, you texted me: “Had those times running back and forward in my mind all day! Good memories. Thanks for the reminiscing.” I’m curious to relive your perspective as much as I can. Take us back in time to ‘The Magic Woods’!

L: Yeah, it was ‘The Magic Woods’ where most of the hypnosis sessions took place. (It’s not there anymore, by the way, it’s an industrial estate.) I suppose we’d all just go down to the woods, or Layston Court Gardens, and I had the book and it was, like: right, let’s just see if we can try and get anyone to go ‘under’*. One of my main memories of being down there was with our friend El. I remember she had a pack of cigarettes. And I thought to really test this [hypnosis], let’s see if she’ll snap her remaining two or three cigarettes out of the box. Presumably, if she wasn't hypnotised, she wouldn't do that. I said: “Okay, you’re no longer a smoker, you don’t need these any longer.” And she took them out of the box and snapped them up. Now, whether she had another box or not, I don’t know. But we were 15/16, so you’re not going to destroy three cigarettes for the sake of pretending to be hypnotised.

A: Tell me about what process or processes – ‘inductions’, in hypnotic terms – you used to hypnotise people?

L: If I remember rightly, we started with a staircase. And then you get to the bottom and then you sort of ‘fall off’ and supposedly go ‘under’. To start with, I guess you might have 10 percent that were either ‘under’ [hypnotised] or just messing around or maybe they were slightly ‘under’, or I don’t know. But then it started to catch on. People started asking for a hypnosis session. Why would you ask to do that if it wasn’t doing anything for you? Then I started making up my own stories of hypnosis. Like the paths that you’d go down... I started doing a skydive one or something like that – you know, you’d fall out of the plane and then you’d go into a tunnel and then it goes dark and you’re slowly losing your senses, if you like. There must have been six, seven, eight people at a time.

[Editor’s note: Lee was a teenaged boy, so these inductions aren’t for the faint hearted!]

A: That’s what struck me about Paul McKenna’s book when I read it, remembering the buzz you’d caused: it just isn’t a very practical/instructive guide, per se. So I love that you made up your own stuff and tailored it to our peer group. How did you come up with stories and skits?

L: I just figured out that you had to create this sensation of closing the senses off and almost ‘falling down’, in a way. Creating my own journeys. How can we start from a sense of being higher up to getting fully lower down? So, from high up in the sky down into a cave or into the ground, rather than just a set of steps – just to expand it out. And presumably it worked because people kept turning up and asking to be hypnotised!

A: That’s no different to how it works for stage hypnotists – seriously! As I wrote in the original post, El, and maybe others, would say they were playing along. Maybe we’ll have to do a poll of all your hypnotees?! But, as far as 14-year-old Amy knew, you had The Powers of TV’s Paul McKenna! At one point you just used a stick, right?!

L: If I remember rightly, if you get someone to focus on an object, then it’s easier to distract the mind and then start the hypnosis session before you’ve started it. So, yeah, probably the stick was my ‘wand’! Paul McKenna’s show was quite big back then, so I was watching the shows and just had a real interest in it. I never knew people were actually talking about [my hypnosis sessions] and that word was getting around. The fact that people were talking about it says something. Otherwise it would have just been a bit of a joke. There’s always that doubt in your head when you’re the one that’s the hypnotist. You’d think that as soon as my back was turned people would be, like: “Yeah, we had him going, didn’t we?” But why would people go through the same hypnosis process again and again just for a wind up..?

A: Paul McKenna was famous, to us, for making men dance like ballerinas and cluck like chickens. Perhaps your success was based on ‘hypnosis’ meaning something co-created, consensual, and generative rather than a perceived power imbalance. My sole experience of your hypnotic powers was watching Cliff, the boy I was ‘going out with’, imaginary fishing, casting the invisible rod and reeling it in, whilst in a squatting position held for ages. He was willingly absorbed, it seemed. What other fun scenarios did you suggest?

L: I do remember making people laugh hysterically at the stupidest of objects – the slide or whatever was up Bovis [the then-new housing estate park]. I’d say: “When you open your eyes, you’re going to see this and you’re going to find it the most hysterical thing you’ve ever seen.” People – Cliff was one of them – would be laughing with tears coming out. It’s 25 years ago so I can’t really remember others…

A: I suppose I remember 1994 fondly because, come 1995, it got pretty ravey and hardcore, and, by 1996, we were like jaded peak Madchester music scene members stumbling off towards our different futures, splintered and bewildered. So I don’t remember your hypnosis sessions featuring beyond 1994, but you wrote me that you used self-hypnosis since then?

L: Yeah, after those sessions it kind of went away. For me, college started, etcetera.

I always knew TV would possess me eventually.

A: I can’t believe you didn’t go to college telling everyone you were a master hypnotist!

L: No, I didn’t tell anyone! Not for a long time. No, hypnosis just took the backstage. It’s probably about 2009 I started to get into self-hypnosis again. I was living in London, and that was probably the first time I put myself properly ‘under’ through self-hypnosis. Only for about 10 minutes, but it definitely worked.

A: Were you following a particular hypnotist or method?

L: No, it was more like I had a structured story in my head.

A: So your definition of ‘self-hypnosis’ is simply (and accurately!) some imaginative process that you’ve generated and tailored for yourself?

L: Yep, I’ve just structured a story in my head. It’s very similar to meditating – controlling your breathing and emptying your mind of the thoughts and probably some background music or something like that going on. Nothing with words. And then, yeah, just focus on, well... nothing but the story that I created in my head.

A: I read vintage hypnosis books for this blog, and they’re mostly mad but all bursting with inventiveness. Maybe you should become a hypnotist because you’d be a good one!

L: Wow, yeah, no. I guess I started getting more interested in the last couple of years more from a self-hypnosis point of view. But I haven’t attempted to hypnotise anyone since 1995. So it would be interesting now, as a full-grown adult, I guess!

A: Between me and Paul McKenna, there is, of course, the one and only Mr Derren Brown! Has his presence on TV, stage, and beyond influenced your interest in hypnosis?

L: Amazing, amazing guy. Definitely, yeah. I’ve always liked his programmes. I can’t say I’ve seen all of them, but he does some amazing stuff, without a doubt. That one he did where someone wakes up and they think they’re in some sort of apocalypse or something like that..?

A: Yeah. Literally Apocalypse.

L: Yeah, it was amazing. So definitely when he came out. But I just don’t really talk about hypnotism. You know what it’s like with people with ‘hypnotism’ – it’s a bit like Father Christmas: “Oh, it’s all make-believe.” But it isn’t.

A: Absolutely. But also: wait! Are you saying Father Christmas might also be a *bit* real?! That would make me really happy.

L: People go: ‘it’s all make-believe’, ‘it’s all just a show’ – like with Derren Brown – but it isn’t. Some people you just can’t convince and I used to try, but they think it’s just a load of old rubbish so I think: why bother bringing it up? You can tell, I think, the people suggestive to the idea of hypnotism. So, no, I didn’t really talk about it until the last two years when I first worked back with Paul B. He started bringing it up: “Hey, do you remember when you used to hypnotise..?” Then we’d meet someone, a colleague, and he’d say: “Don’t talk to him, he’ll put suggestive thoughts in your head!” and stuff like that!

A: Paul B knows how to work ‘The Hypnotist’ angle! It makes me wonder what our teenaged peer group hoped hypnotism would do for them? Did people ask for help?

Me, aged 14. I remain just as confused about which trousers to wear three decades later.

L: No one ever asked for any sort of help on giving up smoking or anything like that. I think they were more interested in some sort of hallucinogenic experience without the use of LSD or magic mushrooms. You know, I think that was more of the thing back in the 90s. I think they wanted to be transported to this other place for half-an-hour or whatever, and they’d come to me and--.

A: Sorry! [Laughter.] Our school was SO WEIRD! As if it wasn’t weird enough for me and all of us with all sorts of ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ and ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ stuff going on each lunch break! And now you’re telling me kids were walking around hypnotised by The Great Lee Fone to believe they were in another dimension?!

L: That was the main interest of people back then, to be honest! It wasn’t, like, from a therapy point of view or anything like that. It was more about going on a journey. One’s just come back to me, actually... One girl, we tried past-life regression* hypnosis and she had a World War II prisoner of war ‘memory’ experience. Now, she could just have had a history lesson the day before, of course. But she said she had red marks on her back from what she said she’d experienced ‘in the war’ and, sure enough, she showed us her back and the marks were there. Well, I don’t know what to make of that..? Had she known they were there and just gone through the whole hypnosis process..? I dunno. But, yeah, that past-life regression has just come back to me.

A: Young minds processing big history lessons and semi-noticed PE injuries can ‘marry up’ such things to produce seemingly compelling phenomena: that would be my suggested, and evidence-backed, explanation for that. Ultimately I just love that your experiments brought a big community of kids together than otherwise would have had the confidence and motivation to mix.

L: I think the group did start to expand, so there must be something in that, yeah.

A: You were the Jesus of Buntingford!

L: Taking them to a different planet! Yeah.

A: I actually think experiencing Planet Earth ‘as if’ it’s a different planet is a really useful way of communicating how I think about hypnosis (and magic). It’s all about exploring different perspectives and pursuing what’s not ‘on the menu’ of this thing we call life – all whilst keeping your feet on the ground and your hat on your head. Positioning yourself as a ‘guru’ of hypnosis with all the answers to monetise your own journey disempowers people, which is why Kev and I just stick it all up on this website for free.

Secret Buntingford teenaged magicians is the next *Cosmic Pancakes!* special investigation…

L: There’s still a bit of a taboo about it though – hypnosis – isn’t there? But I think it’s moved along a lot since the 90s. Especially with people like Derren Brown. I think it is more acceptable now; people are more willing to accept that it’s real. It’s more that people don’t want to admit that they were hypnotised..?

A: Before we wrap up, I must ask my most pressing question. We were planning to do this interview towards the end of 2021, but then you messaged in the middle of our scheduling chat to say I’d appeared on your television set..? This thought disturbed me so much that I said of course it could not be true. You later grew quiet about the interview so I dropped it. We’re doing this now because a Facebook ‘memory’, where I wildly boast of Mr Derren Brown’s apparent appreciation for my writing, caught your attention and we reconnected. So my question is: HAVE I ACCIDENTALLY DRIVEN YOU MAD?!

L: [Laughter!] It was bizarre! Vicki, my partner, she didn’t know anything [about Lee’s teenaged hypnosis past]. I don’t talk about it. I’m not gonna go: “Oh, I used to hypnotise people when I was 15 years old.” Because I’ve got no reason to. When you contacted me I had Coronavirus, so I was in bed isolating from everyone, so I didn’t have time to tell her about it. When I got the all-clear, I was back downstairs and I thought, yeah, I’ll mention it. “So, anyway, I used to do this hypnosis stuff... back in the 90s.” And she said “okay” because she’s open minded – I wasn’t concerned. “Oh, yeah, that’s interesting?” I said I was thinking about doing this interview and said ‘I know this person from school’ blah blah. We’re watching this documentary on TV. It’s a presentation going on in a conference or something. I’m sitting speaking and I said: “Bloody hell! That’s them there on the TV! Rewind it, rewind it, pause it! That is them! 100 percent them! That’s them!” And Vicki’s just sitting there and she must have thought: “What’s up with this guy..? He’s telling me he’s a hypnotist and now the people he’s having an interview with are on TV?!” It was bizarre! It was!

A: What’s so weird about it is that I stare directly into the camera! In a previous life, I did a lot of positive discrimination via photography and videography to disrupt and undermine the ‘old white dude’ leadership narrative. Kev, my now-husband, and I were on an early date in 2017 at a Professor Nutt talk on drug science when a videographer squatted beside Kev to collect audience footage. I have a violent aversion to being filmed, but more so to being ‘painted into the photo’ as just the blurry background companion of a wise and thoughtful male audience member. So I just turn and stare TERRIFYINGLY into camera. I figured they’d never be able to use such a Matrix glitch! So now I’m dispensing ‘hypnosis’ via Netflix’s Magic Medicine despite having wholly different views on how to cheer people up... Anyway! I then totally gaslit you about it when you messaged me, causing you to question reality even further..?

L: Yeah, so you didn’t know anything about it at all? Yeah, oh, it was so weird. I’d just literally started the conversation and then you appeared on the telly!

A: That’s... magic! [Nonsensical jumble of words about being a magician or a hypnotist or maybe both or neither because any sense ‘Amy’ was as coherent as this interview makes her seem is my magic trick. And then comes my final outburst...] Well, if I ever am to appear on television again, I shall let you know in advance!

So there we have it, Cosmic Pancakes! people – the transfer of power from Lee to me as ‘The Hypnotist’ is complete. Feel free to watch Magic Medicine and become – the very moment my magical TV-powered hypnotic gaze meets yours – A Hypnotist, too! Certificates available upon request! And, seriously, it really is a simple as that, Dear Reader: create your own positive stories from your own imaginations and apply them artfully as suggestions.

Oh, that and... don’t forget to buy yourself a splendid hat!

* Please read our ‘Basics’ section if you’d like to better understand why Cosmic Pancakes! seeks to move outdated, disempowering hypnosis terms on.