Lost at sea

In the end I will get to meet Richard Bandler and Paul McKe

•   •   •

EARLIER TODAY I had coffee with Sue Crowley. She’s been friendly with Paul McKe

Modeling is a practice at the heart of NLP. This is how McKe

Sue said Paul McKe

“Paul is an unexpected protégé of Richard’s,” Sue said. “The squeaky-clean DJ and the . . . uh . . .” She paused, not knowing which bits of the Richard Bandler life history to mention, in case I didn’t know the full extent of the horror. “The . . . uh . . . Hells Angel, up for God knows what, CIA . . . But Richard Bandler is a Leonardo of our times. He is one of our living greats.”

(Much later, by the way, after this story appears in the Guardian, I’ll chance upon a flier advertising a Richard Bandler seminar. It’ll read: “Richard Bandler is a Leonardo of our times. He is one of our living greats—The Guardian.”)

Now “Purple Haze” booms through the speakers and Richard Bandler climbs onto the stage. He hushes the crowd. They sit down. I am momentarily lost in my thoughts and I remain standing.

“ARE—YOU—GOING—TO—SIT—DOWN—NOW?” hisses a voice in my ear. I jump. It is one of Paul McKe

“I marched up the Amazon,” Bandler tells the audience. “I threatened gurus to get them to tell me their secrets. They’re pretty cooperative when you hold them over the edge of a cliff.”

There is laughter.

“There was one Indian guru,” Bandler continues, “I was holding him over the edge of a cliff. I said to him, ‘My hand is getting tired. You have seven seconds to tell me your secrets.’ Well, he told me them fast and in perfect English!”

I have to say that had I been tried for murder, I would be less forthcoming with the murder gags. Practically every one of Richard Bandler’s jokes is murder- or at least violent-crime related. I hope—when I finally get to meet him—to ask him about the murder trial, although I’m nervous at the prospect of this.

Suddenly, we hear a loud noise from somewhere outside.

“A ghost,” Bandler says. “I do have ghosts that follow me around. And they’re angry ghosts. But I don’t care. The truth is, the ghosts are more afraid of me than I am of them.”

He is mesmerizing. Two hours pass in a flash. He talks about childhood trauma. He puts on a whiny voice: “When I was five I wanted a pony . . . my parents told me I was ugly . . . ‘Shut the fuck up!’”

He gets the audience to chant it: “Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up!” If you hear voices in your head, he says, tell the voices to shut the fuck up. “If you suffered childhood abuse, don’t go back and relive it in your mind. Once is enough!”

He says psychotherapy is nonsense and a racket: Therapists are rewarded for failure. The longer a problem lasts, the more the therapist is paid. Who cares about the roots of the trauma?

“Don’t think about bad things!” Bandler says. “There’s a machine inside your brain that gets rid of shit that doesn’t need to be there. Use it! I can give myself amnesia. I can just forget.” He clicks his fingers. “Just like that.”

This seven-day training course is costing delegates £1,500 each. Which means Paul McKe

•   •   •

IT IS LUNCHTIME NOW. I walk past the Bentley. A delegate sidles up to me. “You’re a very naughty boy!” she says. “Richard will be very cross with you!”

“What?” I practically yell.

“You kept writing when Richard was talking even though you know you weren’t supposed to!” she says. “And you didn’t have a smile on your face. Everyone was laughing, but you were scowling.”

I missed yesterday’s session, which is perhaps why everyone is so far ahead of me in the frenzied-adoration stakes. In fact, earlier today Richard Bandler said he had no unhappy clients. His exact words were “The reason why all my clients are a success is that I killed all the ones who weren’t.”

Lots of delegates have told me they signed up because of the TV star Paul McKe

•   •   •

THREE OF PAUL MCKENNA’S NLP-inspired self-help books (Change Your Life in 7 Days, Instant Confidence—which is dedicated to Bandler—and I Can Make You Thin) are currently in the WHSmith Top 10. So that’s the therapy side. The NLP-can-do-wonders-for-your-business side is thriving too. In fact when I meet Iain Aitken, the managing director of McKe

“I get the picture,” the NLP-trained salesperson can reply, rather than “That rings a bell” or “That feels good to me.”

•   •   •

AFTER LUNCH, we split into small groups to practice NLP techniques on one another. I pair up with Vish, who runs a property company in the Midlands.

“What did I miss yesterday?” I ask him.

“It was great,” he says. “We did anchoring. Let me show you how it works.”

Vish moves his chair closer to mine.

“How are you enjoying your time here?” he asks me.

“OK,” I say.

Vish pokes my elbow.

“Brilliant!” he says. “Did you have a good lunch?”

“It was all right,” I say.

Vish prods my elbow again.

“Fantastic!” he says. “Have you got kids?”

“A son,” I say.

“Did you have fun with him last weekend?” he asks.

“Yes, I did,” I say.

Vish pokes my elbow.

“Brilliant!” he says. “Now. Did you notice what I was doing?”

“You were poking my elbow every time I expressed positive feeling,” I say.

“Exactly!” says Vish, although he looks peeved that I spotted the poking, which is supposed to be so subtle as to exist only on the unconscious level.