Event: Zack Polanski

There is one thing we can say for Zack Polanski, the ‘eco-populist’ leader of the Green Party. He stands out. And not entirely for the right reasons. How Zack must regret that, in his former career as a hypnotherapist, he agreed to go along with Sun journalist Kasie Davies when she rocked up at his swanky Harley Street consulting room back in 2013, and asked him to use his mesmeric powers to increase the size of her bosom. How much better, he must reflect, it would’ve been to say, ‘Don’t be ridiculous’, slam down the phone and get back to the serious work of helping people with more money than sense to hand him some of that money. But he’s stuck forever now, whatever he says or does, with his reputation as the Boob Whisperer, Hypnotits, Derren Bra-on, the Mammary Master, etc. It’s quite unfair, really. It’s not as if he made a habit of offering this unusual service. This was a one-off, a bit of fun. Unfortunately for him, it’ll make him a living Benny Hill Show sketch – Playtex Polanski, the Gazonga Guru, a politician who certainly has his knockers, etc – in the eyes of the public for the rest of his days. What bad form it would be to linger on the incident here. So let’s linger. ‘Hypnosis essentially involves taking a person’s fixed attention’, reported Davies, ‘and moving it from one place to another’. Polanski explains it as follows: ‘Take, for example, the last time you were engrossed in a book or TV show and didn’t hear someone say your name. Right then, you were under a form of hypnosis…The unconscious mind also controls our bodily functions.’ In this instance, he was speaking to the part of the brain that controls the release of growth…