The strangest feeling ever delvins teresa will never forget hypnotic experience

Anyone who's been in the audience for RTÉ's The Late Late Show will tell you it's a memorable experience, but when Delvin girl Teresa Smith ended up volunteering as a guinea pig for celebrity hypnotist Keith Barry last Friday, she discovered it could be as mind-bending as it is memorable!

Teresa (née Moran), a native of Cartenstown, Delvin, was pretty skeptical about the hypnosis game until Friday night, when she "went under" Barry's spell in front of the nation.

While in a deep trance on live television, Teresa:

- forgot her name; and guessed it was 'Mary';
- spoke in, and translated, an "alien" language;
- thought she'd won the lottery!

Teresa, who went to RTÉ with her sister Liz, brother Kevin and his girlfriend Barbara, expected to sit back and listen to host Ryan Tubridy chat to musician Paul Brady. But when Barry turned up looking for volunteers, the night took a different turn.

"Keith came in and introduced himself to us and looked for volunteers," said Teresa. "Ten of us went upstairs, and he relaxed us.

"Very soon I felt like I wanted to go asleep. He told us to imagine we were on a beach, and you could feel it getting hotter and hotter - almost burning my face.

"Then he told us to imagine we were in the Arctic, and the chair vibrated we were shivering that much."

After that point, Teresa was one of three guests deemed by Barry to be ready for the show.

She remembers everything - being in the green room with the waiting celebrities, listening to the show as it ran. "It was a great atmosphere," she said.

"Keith would come over every so often to 'top us up', and send us into a deeper trance.

"We all felt like we were twisted drunk, and we were only drinking water to keep ourselves hydrated. But the more water we drank, the more drunk we felt. He had me singing 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' in a German accent.

"We signed consent forms and we were hardly able to hold the pen!"

The high point of the show - and the best example of Barry's uncanny talents - was the "trigger" he planted in the mind of Teresa and her fellow volunteers: that when Ryan Tubridy said "good night" to the country, the trio would believe they had won the lotto.

It made for side-splitting viewing for everyone back in Delvin - including Teresa's husband Brian and their four children.

Before pulling the three out of their trance, Keith Barry had one more gag up his sleeve: he convinced them that Ryan Tubridy had hidden their winning lotto tickets.

Thankfully, Teresa pulled out of it and came back to reality soon afterwards.

"I remembered everything," she said. "You remember it all, but you just don't have control over it.

"We were told that we'd be very tired the next day... and I was!"

Teresa will be in the audience when Keith Barry comes to the Mullingar Park Hotel on November 20 of this year.