AHEAD of his show Sixth Sense on February 14, mind reader Luke Jermay reveals some of his secrets to the Adver.

When did you discover you had a gift?

I came into it an atypical way. I was born in a family of believers – not beliebers, that’s to do with Justin Bieber. They were all interested in things like spiritualism, tarot cards and divination. For most of my life it was kind of normal.

Then I did the typical teenager thing and rebelled against my parents’ beliefs. I thought ‘This is just craziness’. In an effort to debunk what was around me I read the work of James Randi, who is very big as a sceptical. He tries to debunk anything that’s supernatural. I moved away from mystical things but he was the guy who brought me in contact with traditional magic and deception with cards. I became very interested in that area.

But in my early 20s, I started thinking there was something in these mystical things I had shunned and now I use all these things. My job is to mix it on stage and keep people guessing. Some of it is a traditional magical tricks and some it is absolutely real. Often what people thing is a trick is real and what they think is real is a trick.

I want to inspire a feeling of uncertainty.

So how do you do it? Do you have powers?

I’ve got natural intuition. We all have intuition but it was just a case of me paying attention and focusing on that skill.

Intuition is your brain working so fast that your reason can’t keep up.

It happens so fast that your brain doesn’t know why it knows. It’s like that feeling of déjà-vu. It happens without effort and you’ve no understanding of how you got there but you got there.

The challenge is not necessarily to have intuition, it’s to make it mechanical, to be able to use it at will. The idea that people have of the mind reader is that he looks at people knowing what they are thinking. But it’s really not like that. It’s not a Hollywood film. I have to have people focus their attention on an idea before I can get even close to what that thing might be.

My ability to do it gets stronger and stronger with time but I need a warm-up, even in my show.

What is your approach to stage shows?

The truth of the matter is that no two shows I do are ever the same. It’s similar to a kind of improvisation, like in a comedy show. I ask the audience to think about personal memories and depending on what they think about it goes in all sorts of directions.

It’s generally very funny because we are dealing, at times, with very personal things.

Even the themes we deal with are decided by the audience, not by me. We might think about childhood and then stories about embarrassing moments. It’s about them thinking about things they think a stranger couldn’t know about them.

The whole motivation for what I do is very different from other magicians. I want it to be fresh and different every night. It keeps everything exciting for me and I enjoy that.

My goal is to work with as many people as possible. That’s why they come to the show. In the second half of the show I try to answer as many questions as possible. It’s machine gun hour.

What do you make of sceptics?

If you mention mystical things people think you’re mad. A lot of people think I’m mad now. Some people reading this article will think I’m a liar, a charlatan or a conman.

I think a lot of people have never thought about these things. They see the Mystic Meg characters. Sometimes when they see somebody like me who doesn’t appear crazy or sound like they’re insane, they might open to this whole world of things they thought was mad. We have had people saying they came to the show very sceptical and now believe in this.

What are your stage highlights?

There are two memories that stand out for me. I was in Las Vegas, I was there for three years, and I had a couple on stage. I had this feeling so I turned to the man and said ‘There this question you want to ask, not to me, but to someone.’ So he took a ring out and proposed to her. The audience assumed he had come to me before the show. But he had planned to do it at a restaurant; I just blew it for him.

There is another memory that stuck out for me. There was this woman in the show. She stood up and I thought ‘She’s pregnant’. I told her but she hadn’t even told her boyfriend, who was there. Thankfully he was happy.

You make a lot of predictions. Many have come true. How do you do it?

At the Edinburgh Magic Festival I predicted the outcome of the World Cup, the Germany victory including the score. A lot of people made bets and some tweeted me after saying what they did with their winnings. It’s looking at the past and present and identifying gaps in the future. I’m looking at trends. It’s more a sociological approach than a psychic approach and there’s perhaps that sense of intuition.

Have you ever bet on one of your predictions?

I never place bets on my own predictions; nor do I suggest other people do. It’s not for the want of trying. It seems whenever I attempt to do so the prediction is wrong!So instead my reward for not betting on them is that they seem to be accurate when I do not.

Luke will be at Swindon Arts Centre on Saturday, February 14 at 8pm. Tickets cost £16. To book visit swindontheatres.co.uk or call 01793 524481.