Excuse my lack of blogs for a wee while…What with wedding plans, moving house, illness, TV recording and catching up with work, the last fortnight has been crazy… Lets get back on track…

So Ben Affleck has been waxing lyrical about how he stopped smoking. He went on Oprah and said:

“I thought I would give up at 25 and then 30, but that came and went.

“I finally decided to quit smoking when I was going to have a child.

“I actually went to hypnosis. Matt Damon turned me on to this guy.

“Matt quit the year before me. This guy just sat there and told me nicotine is poison.”

The Pearl Harbour star admitted he was hooked on cigarettes for almost 20 years before Matt advised him to try hypnosis.

He decided to give it a go for the sake of his daughter Violet, now aged two, when wife Jennifer Garner fell pregnant.

And the treatment worked as Ben gave up puffing his way through at least a pack a day.

He told US talkshow queen Oprah Winfrey he has not had a cigarette for more than two years. Great testament to the effects of hypnosis, eh?!

Nicole Richie overcame her birth fears with hypnosis apparently too and she is reported to have happily given birth just recently.

Slightly different kind of star… Bobby Davro had his fear of spiders cured by Paul McKenna recently too.

The ‘EastEnders’ star — who plays newcomer Vinnie Monks in the BBC soap — says the famous hypnotist ended his phobia by making him picture the eight-legged creatures “with funny noses and big boots”.

Bobby told Britain’s Inside Soap magazine: “I was absolutely petrified of spiders, and I just decided it was something I really had to get over one way or another, so I went to see Paul McKenna.

“He put me in a trance a couple of times privately and had me visualise spiders with funny noses and big boots. Amazingly, it worked really well.”

What’s more, I read this article at the Guardian last week and see that Paul McKenna is moving to LA in the US because he has a £15million deal with the discovery channel — Hypnosis is getting some glamour!

Away from the glitz, I have a brilliant piece of research to tell you about tomorrow…