'OF COURSE, YOU CAN BE TRICKED AND COERCED'\With this ringing in his ears, our critic goes under TV hypnotist's\spell.

Byline: Ray Richmond 

I am sitting in a room at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood very calmly explaining to a man named Paul McKenna that I am, in fact, Tom Brokaw.

"Have you interviewed any members of the royal family?" asks McKenna.

"Yes, all of them," I say. "The queen, Prince Charles, Princess Di. Fergie, too."

"Any other interesting interviews?"

"Well, yes, the last five presidents."

"What difficulties crop up in your job?"

"It's difficult sometimes when they make mistakes that show up on my TelePrompTer. But that's just part of the job."

The reason I was lying? Hypnosis.

McKenna, you see, is a professional hypnotist, working with everyone from heavyweight boxer Frank Bruno to the Duchess of York in his native England to help overcome whatever stress ails them.

Me? I just wanted to prove the guy was a phony.

My wife and several friends had already screened a tape of "The World's Funniest Hypnotist," an ABC special and potential series pilot airing at 9 p.m. Monday. And quite frankly, a lot of it looked staged.

McKenna, 31, uses his powers of suggestion during the ABC hour to make a woman forget the number 7 (a dangerous move for Channel 7), convince a burly college football coach to dance ballet, inspire a third person to believe he is James Bond and a fourth that he is Elvis Presley.

He even apparently made a man believe that a wooden broom was Cindy Crawford.

"Oh, puh-leez!" my wife groused. "There is just no way. Those are actors."

Other segments appear equally improbable, including one in which three men are made to believe that braless "Baywatch" babe Gena Lee Nolin is an ugly pig - until McKenna snaps them out of it.

"I don't buy it," I told a publicist named Shawn Blake.

"Why don't you get hypnotized by him and find out for yourself?" she asked.

Fair enough. Skepticism fully loaded, I agreed to meet with the dapper and charming McKenna. And then I started to worry. What if the guy hates journalists and convinces me I'm a bird that should take flight from the balcony?

"You won't do anything that you don't want to do," McKenna assured. "Hypnosis is really just like a daydream, a man-made one where the imagination is much more flexible."

Wait a minute. He was trying to lull me with intellectual mumbo jumbo and that adorable accent of his. It had to be a trap. Pretty soon, I'd be chomping carpet fibers, convinced they were Cheez-Its.

"You don't do anything that will contradict your morals or values," McKenna said. "Of course, you can be tricked and coerced into doing so."

After reassuring me that no one has ever actually married a cleaning tool in the hypnotic belief that it was a supermodel, McKenna got down to business.

"Is there something I can particularly help you with? Do you have a fear or phobia?" McKenna asked.

"You mean, besides being hypnotized?" I replied.

I told McKenna that heights sometimes bothered me. Not being up in airplanes, but the kind of heights where you're leaning over your fourth-story balcony tending to a hanging plant.

No problem, McKenna assured. He could help cure me of that and give me a dandy endorphin release to boot, kind of like the bonus knife set that's mailed with your CDs.

I also admitted that I'd like him to help me with problems of overcontrol and anger that sometimes crop up in my existence. Again, McKenna said that could be done. He was a full-service hypnotherapist, a one-stop brain wave shopping source.

McKenna instructed me to relax and revealed that he would be communicating with my subconscious through my finger signals. Move the left index for yes, the left index and middle finger for no - and all 10 fingers for "Mommy!"

I was asked to fix my gaze at a single spot on the ceiling and lock my eyes in. McKenna had me look skyward to help release a burst of alpha waves, the ones that make you heighten your awareness. The Alpha Beta waves, of course, are the ones that tell you to go shopping.

"Just listen to my words," he said soothingly. "You may have already begun to feel changes taking place."

It was true. I had a cramp in my right calf.

But as McKenna kept talking - ever more softly and slowly, counting down from 300 with hypnotic rhythm - I began to lose the moment. I remained aware that he was there, but everything around me disappeared and everything felt dreamlike.

Still, I didn't feel hypnotized, exactly. More just quietly floating, as if my brain were numb. Kinda the way Pauly Shore must feel all the time.

As my tape recorder told me later (because the recollection was fuzzy), McKenna asked me to come up with three ways to better deal with stress, asking me to respond with a finger movement each time one popped into my head.

Then he instructed me to forget that the number 7 existed. Just like in the show. I felt enough awareness to find the concept ridiculous. But when he asked me to count from 1 to 10, sure enough, I hesitated at 6 and went straight to 8.

If you'd asked me the name of the hit movie starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, I'd have told you "Eight."

After that, McKenna asked me to turn into the world's biggest liar and tell him my name.

"I'm Tom Brokaw," I said as matter-of-fact as you please.

"And what do you do?" McKenna asked.

"I'm the chief anchor for NBC," I replied, a bit miffed that this guy didn't recognize me.

I carried a vague awareness of what I was saying and that it wasn't quite right, but it felt so good that I decided to go with it.

Why Tom Brokaw? God only knows. I had been talking about him to someone the day before, so perhaps it was prior suggestion or some such concept. Maybe if McKenna had hypnotized Brokaw, he'd have lied that he was me.

Meanwhile, I've since regained my memory of the number 6, er, uh, 7. And I no longer say things like "NBC News has learned that ..." I also, unfortunately, remain fearful of certain heights and have yet to conquer my issues of control and stress.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a hot date with the woman of my dreams. Her hair's a little stringy and her body's like a stick, but man, can she clean.

THE FACTS

The special: "The World's Funniest Hypnotist."

When: 9 p.m. Monday.

Channel: KABC (Channel 7).

Hosted by: Paul McKenna.

Grade: B

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO

Photo (1) Daily News TV critic Ray Richmond, left, succumbs to hypnotist Paul McKenna's power of suggestion. (2) "You won't do anything that you don't want to do. Hypnosis is really just like a daydream, a man-made one where the imagination is much more flexible." Paul McKenna hypnotist Michael Owen Baker/Daily News