She seemed to have it all, but fans of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here were stunned by the long list of phobias suffered by neurotic popstar Natalie Appleton. Health Correspondent Barry Nelson meets the mind coach who claims he could cure her in a single session.

A CHEEKY, chirpy Geordie reckons he has the answer to pop star Natalie Appleton's well-publicised problems with phobias. Self-taught hypnotherapist and "mind coach" Matt Hudson from Wallsend has offered to "de-programme" the former All Saints singer so that her multiple phobias just melt away.

Millions of viewers watched earlier this week as Natalie spectacularly self-destructed during a tricky phase of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here. The 31-year-old quit and was flown out of the Australian jungle by helicopter rather than undergo a record fifth so-called "Bushtucker Trial", which involved wading through a swamp full of rats.

But before she bailed out, her erratic behaviour illustrated how she is completely at the mercy of her multiple phobias, which include cars, planes, lifts, crowds, hygiene and food. At one point, she even freaked out when she touched a tree.

Matt admits he's not a follower of the hit reality show - he's too busy seeing clients and training the latest batch of wannabe therapists - but he is offering his services to the fallen star free of charge.

"I'd work with Natalie for free. It would be fun, wouldn't it?," laughs Matt, a larger-than-life character who has achieved impressive results working as a motivation coach with North-East businesses.

But it's his work as a "phobia buster" that means the former RAF man-turned-hypnotist is well qualified to help the troubled pop singer.

He's certainly not put off by the musician's multi-layered problems. "It could take at least an hour to sort her out," he chuckles. "There is no need to tackle each individual phobia. It is the pattern that you need to break."

Matt makes the process of re-programming people's minds sound easy but he has years of experience in the UK and in the Middle East working with a wide-ranging client base, including big business, public and medical sectors. His fascination with the working of the human mind began when he was a child.

"I got into all this through seeing a black and white movie on television when I was about seven years old. This guy had broken his leg but he hypnotised himself so that his leg was well again. I thought 'wow', that's what I want to do," he says.

Matt went out and bought a DIY stage hypnotism book and has never looked back. He has become particularly interested in a technique called Neuro-linguistic Programming, or NLP, which is based on how verbal and non-verbal communications affect the human brain. It is this approach which can defuse long-standing phobias within minutes, according to Matt.

"This is how it works," he explains. "In order to have a phobia, you have to make a picture in your head. That image will give you the phobic response."

He cites the example of a recent client who was petrified about going over bridges. "All I did was change one word in a sentence and it fixed her phobia. I told her I could understand why she was terrified to travel over a bridge - so would I. However, I could easily travel across a bridge. You see, it's a completely different picture. One is about crossing the bridge, the other version is where you are going over an edge," says Matt.

"My task as a mind coach is to listen to what people say and how they say it because everything has a pattern and the words they use will tell me exactly the way they are thinking."

While he thinks it is unlikely that London-based Natalie will come knocking on his North Tyneside door, Matt is deadly serious about his offer. "I would be really over the moon if she came to me and I could help her," he says.

He hates the idea that anyone could continue living in a state of fear for no reason. "Phobias tend to be the issues that people don't want to address because the phobia itself prevents them from confronting their fear," he says.

By changing the way people think about their phobias and encouraging them to process their fear in such a way that they are laid to rest, Matt says he can usually sort problems out.

"We know where you keep good stuff in your mind and where you keep bad stuff. We know that people code the good and the bad stuff differently. All I do is to direct some of your good stuff onto that side and it changes the pattern.

The more Matt learns about computers, the more parallels he sees with the workings of the human mind. "It's like hyperlinks on your computer, any word which is remotely connected with your phobia will trigger it off," he says.

Matt is so convinced about his methods that he reckons that he can do job remotely. "If you have a flight phobia I've got a specially made CD for you. After 22 minutes you will be able to fly anywhere. You don't need to be here, I can just send you the CD."

Apart from phobia busting and motivating business people, Matt has also been developing a programme he calls GROFF, or "get rid of fat, forever".

He says one of his clients, a woman called Nancy, has gone down from a 22 dress size to a size 14 and is heading for a size 12. "What I have done is just changed her state of mind. She now chooses what she eats and has lost a lot of weight."

One of the most satisfying areas Matt works in is helping people come to terms with bereavement. "If I meet someone who is stuck in a pattern of grieving 20 or 30 years after someone has passed away, all they have to do is file that "picture" where other people file pictures. I just guide them through the process, it takes less than an hour... suddenly they are celebrating the life that was."

Despite the mantle of guru, Matt is keen to stress that he just an ordinary bloke. "I'm a normal sort of guy, I've got a wife and kids, I enjoy my garden, I've got two dogs... I'm not a therapist type of guy. Some of those therapists, I wouldn't let them walk the dog!"

* To contact Matt Hudson, visit his website www.matthudson.org or telephone 0191-236 9800.

Sue Heath of North Yorkshire tried Matt Hudson's fat-busting course. She says:

"I was invited to join Matt's Groff course last June, and it changed the way I approach food. There's no dieting involved, just helping to get rid of hang-ups that make you overeat. It's up to you how much you get out of it, but several women on the course dropped up to five dress sizes, and a young lad named Steve reckons GROFF has changed his life for the better. Fat is no longer a rude word!"