Jonathan Royle (real name: Alex William Smith) is a controversial figure in the magic and hypnosis communities. A few people appreciate his contributions, while many others criticize him for various reasons.
There have been accusations and discussions regarding Royle’s marketing practices, course content, and general behavior in the industry. He started spamming “USENet” newsgroups in the early 2000s advertising his garbage to everyone and thankfully nobody took him seriously. When confronted about his spamming, he threatens lawsuits but they are only threats as his bite is impotent at best. I personally have a CDROM of “psychic and cold reading effects” that he sold on ebay that was utterly full of pirated material. When confronted about that he claimed he had the rights to republish the books but then promptly stopped including all the pirated material after he was reported to ebay. That’s not suspicious at all.
Some in the hypnosis community have called out his methods as either derivative or questionable, and somehow he convinced someone at Magic Seen to give him a second chance after they gave him a bad review on “his” products.
Here are some articles that illustrate his behavior.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140209210356/http://www.magicleaks.com/people/alex-smith-jonathan-royle-reveals-himself.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20140209204229/http://www.magicleaks.com/people/jonathan-royle-dangerously-misleading.html
It is the opinion of this author that Johnny is a scammer and a spammer and lacks any morals that would make him trustworthy either as a teacher or a performer.