1. In 2008, Alex Lenkei had a problem with the bone in his arm and he needed a serious operation. Normally, with an operation like that, the doctor gives the patient an anaesthetic so that he or she doesn’t feel any pain. But Lenkei refused the anaesthetic. Instead, he hypnotised himself and simply told himself that he could not feel any pain. That took about thirty seconds. Then the operation started. According to Mr Lenkei, pain signals do not reach his brain when he is hypnotised.

2. The doctor, David Llewellyn-Clerk, was a bit worried. He had to take some bone from Lenkei’s arm. He watched Lenkei carefully during the operation, as he wasn’t sure that Lenkei could feel no pain. ‘I didn’t think Mr Lenkei could hear us,’ said Dr Llewellyn-Clerk, ‘but halfway through the operation, he said “How’s it going?” That’s when the doctor realised that Lenkei was not in pain. The operation lasted 83 minutes.

3. Mr Lenkei started hypnotising people when he was sixteen and is now an expert. It wasn’t his first operation without anaesthetic. In 1996, a friend hypnotised him before a thirty-minute operation on his stomach. Both operations were successful, so Lenkei had a third operation without anaesthetic in 2013, this time on this ankle, which also went well.