Does this man look like someone you'd want mentoring your child? Perhaps not, yet as part of his mission to rid the world of hatred, he's helped hundreds of troubled teens. Sarah Foster meets the man who calls himself The Scary Guy.

THE teenage boy is slumped in a chair, eyes downcast, as he formulates an answer. The man to his right, a human canvass of tattoos, has just asked him to name his greatest wish. He looks up and, oblivious to the journalist and the TV men, engages the man with a frank gaze. "I want my family back," he says.

There's a collective intake of breath and an awkward silence settles in the cramped room. I don't know about the TV men, but I'm close to tears. Without flickering, the boy's interviewer carries on: "So what's your second wish?"

The TV men - two German documentary makers - and I have just sat through about an hour of this. We've heard that the teenager is one of five children, all to different fathers, and that his mother beats him up. We know that at the age of about ten, he started drinking and smoking drugs. And we know that three months ago, he tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of paracetamol. Yet throughout these painful disclosures, it was as if we weren't there. The boy completely ignored us as he poured his heart out to his counsellor.

When I asked to interview this man, officially known as The Scary Guy, this wasn't quite what I had in mind, but seeing him in action gives me a fascinating insight. He treats the teenager firmly but with respect, using diagrams and simple language to deliver complex psychology. His tone is jokey and relaxed, and he manages to engage the boy without patronising him. He says things like: "I think you're pretty hip, dude" and somehow gets away with it. He signs off sessions at Scarborough's Pindar High School, with: "I love you. Keep up the good work."

The Scary Guy - or Scary, as he likes to be called - has made quite an impact on the school since he first visited last year. Brought in to address behavioural issues, he achieved instant results, drastically reducing signs of aggression among pupils. The headteacher, Hugh Bellamy, was so impressed that with sponsorship from the local Pindar Corporation, he signed Scary up to a three-year contract. Now a familiar face in the school's corridors, he's clearly built up a rapport with its troubled teens.

Just as we're about to chat, a pupil wanders in. He shyly hands Scary a letter and with faltering speech, asks him to read it. Giving him an affectionate hug, his mentor duly complies. The letter is about the boy's forthcoming holiday and before he leaves, he extracts the promise of a reply. When he's safely out of earshot, Scary's agent, Gary Lee, fills me in - did the youngster seem nervous? Before meeting Scary, he never spoke a word.

Although he's unremittingly Scary now, the man sitting beside me started life as plain Earl Kaufmann, an ordinary guy from Tucson, Arizona. His childhood was conventional, except in one respect - he couldn't read. He recalls this as a source of frustration. "I remember my mom locking me in my bedroom, telling me, 'You've got to read.' I couldn't read and I didn't know how to tell her. I think there was always this tension in my life," he says.

Perhaps as a reaction to this, Scary, who's 51, became a tattoo artist, adorning his entire body with aggressive looking art and piercings. His look became so extreme that a rival businessman took out an advert in the local paper saying: "Are you tired of dealing with scary guys with war paint tattoos?" Although he never fully explains it, this triggered a seismic change, prompting Scary to adopt the intended slight as a badge of honour - and to completely subvert its inference.

Looking back at who he was before, he sees himself as misguided. "Back then, anything could make me anything because I thought I was in control. The lie is that you think you are. Now I accept full responsibility for all my actions and all my words. I walk in that space every day and it's the most clean, comfortable environment I've ever existed in," he says.

This is a theme he develops in shows, when he encourages audiences to look within themselves to find contentment. "In order to make change or transition in your own life you've got to understand that I can't change anybody. All I can do is open doors and when I open the door to awareness, it's not so pretty," says Scary.

By making people confront their true natures, he hopes to inspire more loving behaviour. One of his methods is the so-called Seven Day Challenge. "For seven days and seven nights don't say one negative word about anyone on the planet and don't call anyone a name other than their own," he explains.

While it may be easy to scoff, a surprisingly diverse range of people is taking heed of Scary's teachings. He's not religious, yet has had holy men of all persuasions wanting to adopt him as their proponent. Despite being completely untrained, he's also been asked for help by social services, psychologists and psychiatrists. Last year, he was called into Birbeck Secondary School in North Somercotes, Lincolnshire, to deal with the aftermath of a fatal stabbing, and he'll soon help survivors of a shooting spree at a school in Minnesota.

He claims he can engage with people's emotions in a way that surpasses understanding. "I do not have the definitive answer to how and why this works. I have ideas, but the truth is, it's totally irrelevant. What matters is, it works," says Scary.

I must admit that whatever talent he might have, he certainly has charisma - and is genuinely intimidating. This has nothing to do with his hard-man looks but stems entirely from his demeanour. I find myself squirming in my seat when he fixes me with his steely gaze and says: "I'm absolutely a black belt when it comes to people. I find that in some ways, people sense that and it's very intimidating and scary. The truth is that I can see right through you. I can read you and I can tell you about you in a split second." I'm highly relieved when he doesn't.

Scary's presence in the Scarborough school is part of a much larger project. He explains: "Scarborough, the Pindar Corporation and Pindar School have signed a three-year contract with me to work with all the children in all of Scarborough and the mission is to empower children to teach people how to teach love. Let's make an impact on the whole city of 45,000. That's what I believe - in fact, I know it can be done. If you go and talk to a bunch of adults about that they don't believe it, but when you talk to kids they say, 'What do I have to do?'."

But Scary's ambitions don't end there. To suggest he's aiming for world domination would be a pretty fair assessment. "My mission has always been the total elimination of hate, violence and prejudice worldwide. It's never been anything less than that," he says simply.

Until he succeeds, he'll continue wandering the globe, spreading his message of boundless love to whoever will listen. And at least for the time being, it seems the man once dubbed the messiah has a captive audience.

* To enlist the services of The Scary Guy, call 07746 741414. For more information, visit www.thescaryguy.com