About the show
About the show
So what is Totally Mental?
Totally Mental is the brainchild of Graeme Wood and has evolved from a background in performing close up magic and years of personal interest and study into
the human mind, including psychology and displays of extraordinary, and sometimes seemingly impossible mental abilities.
Totally Mental is a fusion of psychological subtleties, mental agility, memory, mind control, experiments, deceptions, magic and (most importantly) humour.
During the course of the show I will take you on a journey exploring mysteries of the mind that will confuse and bemuse yet astound and amaze. Some of the ideas
that I explore are still very new and very much in their infancy and as such not everything works every time - but I like that, it keeps it real, it keeps it fun.
Totally Mental is a truly interactive experience where the audience can get involved at whatever level they choose, whether you want to sit back and be entertained
or whether you want to really become part of the show. I never put people in positions of potential embarrassment or ridicule as I do not believe in that, although I will
guide participants to reach heightened states of awareness that will help them achieve the task at hand.
Please Note: Every care is taken to ensure that everyone who participates in the show, at whatever level, is completely aware of, and
comfortable with, whatever they have experienced. At no point is anyone ever put in a position of potential harm
Graeme Wood is a full member of the British Society of Mystery Entertainers
About Graeme Wood
About Graeme Wood
"From a young age I was interested in magic. Growing up with Paul Daniels as regular Saturday
Night TV had quite an effect on me and it wasn't long before I was experimenting with shop bought magic sets. As time went on I
became quite proficient at close up magic, and when I became a professional DJ at the age of 17 I offered a close up magic cabaret as an additional
service - it was something that gave me the edge over my competition!
"After a while I actually became more interested in the presentation of magic rather than the tricks themselves.
What made a trick work? The importance of the "patter". How what I was doing and saying was affecting the minds of the audience. Little did
I know then that I was starting onto the path away from magic and into psychological effects.
"At the age of 22 I had all but left the magic tricks behind, I began people watching, I started examining how we interact with each other, I studied TV adverts,
looking at what made them work. By chance I also came across some essays about improving memory and mental skills and I started working on those too.
All the time I was doing this for my own personal enjoyment, the thought of actually demonstrating these ideas and abilities to others never even crossed my mind
until one day in 2002 when I was at a party, we were playing cards and, with enough alcohol to dispel any inhibitions (but not enough to turn my brain to mush), I bet someone £50 that I could memorise the entire deck......
"That was just the start of it, not only did I memorise the order of a shuffled pack of cards, but I started demonstrating other skills that I had learned over the years,
seemingly impossible feats of mental arithemetic, reading body language and more. Suddenly I realised I had just done a thirty minute impromptu performance.
"The next morning everyone was talking about what I had done, and it felt good! REALLY GOOD!!! The seeds were sewn, the groundwork was put in place, and in 2007
a whole new show was born, and that show is.......