My friend Hugh Lennon, who has died aged 77, was a magician, mentalist, daredevil and master of “the world’s only hypnotic dogs”.
When I met him at the Edinburgh festival in the mid-1990s, where he performed several sell-out shows and gained a cult following, Hugh was all over the tabloids. Oscar the “Hypnodog” had escaped their flat and was now roaming the streets of Edinburgh. Hugh told journalists he was terrified the dog, a black labrador retriever, would start randomly hypnotising people. Of course, as only to be expected from a master publicist and keen practical joker, this was not quite true. Oscar was back at the flat watching television. But Hugh’s story ran for days.
Born in the town of Beau Bassin-Rose Hill on the island of Mauritius, to Gladys (nee Simpson) and Franz Lennon, who worked at the tax office, Hugh went to a nearby Catholic college. In 1964, Hugh’s youngest sister, Sheila, needed medical treatment unavailable in Mauritius and the family moved to Stoke Newington, in north London.
Hugh’s early jobs included cartographer’s assistant, multilingual switchboard operator at the General Post Office, and demonstrating magic tricks at Hamleys toy shop, having developed an early fascination with card tricks.
This passion would lead to him performing his own magic shows in working men’s clubs around the UK in the 1960s, before a switch to mind-reading in the 70s, and a side hustle as a film extra, including as a stormtrooper in the first Star Wars film. Later, while in and around Gibraltar in the mid-80s, he also tried his hand at daredevilry, performing the “blindfolded moped drive” to great acclaim.
But it was his move to hypnosis in the 80s that proved crucial, finding the unique comedy act that would take him from Leeds and Reading festivals to the stage of the Comedy Store in London. After claiming one day to have stumbled across a lost puppy with magic powers somewhere in Yorkshire, together they became Hugh Lennon and Oscar the Hypnodog.
In 2001, after 12 years of performing, Oscar’s eyesight failed and he was no longer able to hold the penetrating stare necessary for stage hypnosis. Hugh then discovered that one of Oscar’s sons, Murphy, shared the same incredible magic powers.
Hugh settled in the town of Mountain Ash, Rhondda Cynon Taf. He continued to work as a hypnotist and mind reader until his retirement in the early 2010s.
Hugh was known to all as loyal, generous and funny. He kept dozens of handwritten notebooks, containing nothing but jokes collected over decades that made him – and everyone around him – laugh. He made friends easily, and made sure he kept them.
In 1969 he married Margaret Owen. That marriage ended in divorce, but they reconciled in later life until her death in 2008. Two sisters, Sheila and Kathleen, predeceased him. He is survived by his children with Margaret, Simon and Katie, four grandchildren, Alfie, Eliza, Tegan and Leah, and his sisters Patricia and Eileen.
