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The ascent from Arbour Hill to Paradise

MORE THAN 100,000 people have passed through Tony Quinn training courses and seminars since he first emerged as a alternative medicine and fitness guru in the early 1970s.

A native of Arbour Hill on the northside of Dublin, Quinn was extraordinarily focused on self-improvement and success from his teenage years and, by the time he was in his 20s, he had accumulated awards for yoga and 12 Irish bodybuilding titles.

This year, he celebrates the 25th anniversary of his first health store at Eccles Street in Dublin.

From that base, he has seen his business interests expand rapidly and he has become one of the highest paid health and fitness specialists in the world.

Such is the demand for his services and the astonishing results claimed for his "unconscious attention" philosophy by devoted followers that Quinn can earn as much as £100,000 for a one-to-one personal development seminar.

These seminars are held in the Bahamas on Paradise Island where the 54-year-old now lives. He also owns property in Monaco and has held onto a Martello Tower in Malahide conservatively valued well in excess of £1million.

He scored a major publicity coup in 1996 when he was hired by Steve Collins to provide psychological and nutritional advice in the run-up to the Dublin boxer's two world title bouts against Chris Eubank.

Quinn's presence and a deliberate leak that Collins might be hypnotised entering the ring angered Eubank who threatened to pull out of the first fight.

"This is not right. How can I fight a man who has been hypnotised? He will not feel pain. This is dangerous. This is wrong," the British boxer claimed at the time.

Collins later denied that he had undergone hypnosis and that the story had been leaked to undermine his opponent's confidence."

The publicity associated with Collins helped Quinn get his Bahamas seminars off the ground in 1996 and he also organises seminars in other exotic locations – a party of 70 took part in one workshop in Egypt last September.

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