IMAGINE living with manipulative Doug Segal. He can read your mind and, dear reader, I can vouch for him because he read mine only two days ago.

Doug, whose face is framed by a curtain of liquorice-black hair that acts as a decoy, will be in York tomorrow to present How To Read Minds And Influence People as part of the Theatre Royal’s TakeOver Festival 2013.

Relax, his 8pm show is billed as comedy and he carries a seal of approval from The Evening Standard to back that up. “Imagine if Derren Brown was funny,” the London newspaper wrote.

“In a nutshell, I’m an ex-advertising man who specialises in subliminal influence,” said Doug, working his rakish charm and those subliminal influences on What’s On’s correspondent in the cloistered calm of the Theatre Royal’s Kerrigan Room.

“Everything in the show is achieved by using one or more of my skills from my background in psychology and advertising: persuasion techniques, statistics, reading body language, subliminal influence – and two key advertising skills: ‘Cheating and Lying’.”

If you have encountered Tom Binns’ spoof mind reader caricature, Ian D Montfort, at the Hyena Lounge Club at City Screen, Doug’s show is a different kettle of mind-reading fish. “Interestingly, I worked with Tom in the development of his Ian D Montfort act in 2010,” said Doug. “His show is character-based, mine is me.

“Normally I get compared with Derren Brown, but the blue water between us is that I’m funny. After doing a straight mind-reading act for five years, I started doing a stand-up comedy act simultaneously and realised that my main point of difference was that I was amusing.”

Whereas Derren Brown maintains the mystique, Doug has – if you will excuse the pretentious word – deconstruction at the core of his act. Put another away, he breaks downs the barriers of the traditional performer-audience relationship.

“The difference with my show is that I promise to make the audience into mind readers. I teach people how to do it, so they all go home with a ‘trick’ for their friends.”

One such routine involves teaching one person on stage how to read three people’s minds. “That will be the starting point of my next Edinburgh Fringe show this summer, I Can Make You A Mentalist, in which a random member of the audience will be chosen by me to perform the show – which will be incredibly novel,” said Doug.

“To understand how that new show will work, it’s probably best to have seen the current show, as it will take it to the next stage. What I’ll have is a cross between a mind-reading show and a two-handed sketch show in which one of the participants is not a mind reader, nor an actor and hasn’t seen a script.”

Do not mistake Doug Segal for a spirit medium. “Psychic mediums? I don’t believe in them. There’s nothing spooky or supernatural in my show.

“I’m an honest liar,” he said with a smile. “As my poster says, it’s hard science abused for tawdry entertainment. It’s hard science at one end and absolute balderdash at the other and what I say is mainly a mix of the two: chicanery and plain old science.”

Ultimately Doug does not like the position of “performer or magician as God”, hence his progression to his I Can Make You A Mentalist show.

“What I’m trying to create is performer as hero, setting up a difficult premise and then we’re off on an adventure together.

“Where I’m taking that forward is by becoming a performance facilitator, an amusing figure that will help someone else to read minds on stage.”

And how did he read my mind? Find out tomorrow when Doug Segal peels back the curtains on all that subliminal influence. In the meantime, do you believe a word he said?

Week One of Takeover Festival 2013 runs until Sunday. Visit takeoverfestival.co.uk for the full programme and tickets details. Box office: 01904 623568 or online at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or takeoverfestival.co.uk