Vasectomy man holds nerve under hypnosis: Ian MacKinnon joins the media circus as operation goes ahead without anaesthetic

WHY a 36-year-old baldness consultant from Woking in Surrey would want to be the first to have a vasectomy without anaesthetic - and one that the surgeon conceded was of no medical significance - is a complex question.

Andy Bryant maintained that by using his technique of self-hypnosis he is able to overcome pain, reduce bleeding and eliminate swelling and would thus be able to continue his busy schedule as if nothing had happened.

Never far in the background of pre and post-match briefings for the media circus that this remarkable act had managed to attract, was Mr Bryant's Natural Hair Products baldness cure company and its claim to have achieved a 50 per cent re-growth for Labour MP Bryan Gould, no less.

Mr Bryant emerged minutes after the four-minute operation - involving one cut in his scrotum followed by the heat sealing of the two sperm-carrying tubes - looking as calm and relaxed as he had before he went under Dr Tim Black's knife at the Marie Stopes clinic in London.

'I feel great. It was a success,' he said, though he admitted that at one point he had flinched when he felt a little pain because his subconscious thought process had not isolated a large enough area.

'That was a bit worrying. I had not realised the blood supply in my stomach would be affected and I felt a sensation of the nerve being cut, so I gave myself another instruction. Then I felt the sensation of the knife and being clamped, but no further pain.'

Dr Black was amazed there was so little bleeding. 'It was fascinating. I thought beforehand that he could cut the pain off. But I didn't believe he could isolate the blood supply as well.'

While this was going on out of view, the media circus had to make do with watching a close-up video of one of the 25 (anaesthetised) vasectomies carried out daily at the clinic at pounds 140 a time. Frances Perrow explained that Mr Bryant, a father of two, was a 'fairly average Mr Vasectomy'. Well, not quite.

(Photograph omitted)