The Shape I’m In: Keith Barry, magician..
KEITH BARRY’S new hypnotic show, You’re Back in the Room, got massive ratings from when it premiered on TV3 in March. Ratings were impressive in Britain too and the show is set to head Down Under after the format was sold to an Australian broadcaster.“People are hugely fascinated by the workings of the human mind and by my being able to hypnotise them and get them to do things they wouldn’t normally do,” he says.No matter what hair-brained deeds Keith gets his subjects to do, nobody has ever come back and complained, he says.“With hypnosis, the whole idea is to get rid of inhibitions and free up somebody’s mind to allow them act in a way they wouldn’t normally. People enter it willingly. “They know going in they’re going to do something outside their boundaries or rules. Most of them end up being more positive.
When I’m taking them out of hypnosis, I instil a sense of positivity they’ve never felt before.”Almost a decade on, Keith’s TED Talk remains in the top 20 of most viewed TED Talks. “For it to be still in the top 20, I find just amazing. It has brought me a lot of work. "Somebody in Hong Kong saw it and I ended up going there to do a corporate gig. But when I look at myself on that TED Talk, I cringe.I was a chubby, spiky-haired young fellow,” says the 38-year-old father of two. His children Breanna and Braden are aged six and three. Read the interview below….