You get added impact. Added value. Added understanding. Added options. Added entertainment. Added confidence. Added control. Added all kinds of things.

It's the one additive you can use without regard for your health and well-being or fears for your blood pressure.

It gives you the ability to control and focus the attention of your audience. It can highlight the ideas and intentions behind what you are doing. It will pull together disparate strands and give your event a coherent shape

It makes your production work.

It certainly can do a lot for you, but it gives us a problem. At least it gives the Mac in The Factor a problem. Will McFadzean, the performer concerned, spends so much of his working life putting words into other people's mouths or speaking on their behalf that it doesn't seem natural to talk about himself.

Besides, have you ever seen an ad for anything that doesn't say the product in question is wonderful? Why should anyone believe such claims?

Instead, how about taking the opinions of the people we have worked for. Those who have seen the impact and enjoyed the benefit of adding The Mac Factor to their productions - whether on stage or on film, in character or straight, providing entertainment or tackling serious issues, scripted or improvised, on projects large or small.

They should know exactly what the Mac Factor can do. They have experienced the effect and paid for the privilege. Check what they have to say.

Case Study - GNER Employee Development Conferences

Corporate Communications specialists SCAPEGOAT Ltd produced a series of 24 conference events for GNER over a period of six months, during which time every single member of the company - drivers and directors, cleaners and clerical staff, marketing teams and maintenance crews - was invited to attend in mixed groups of 120 per show.

With a combination of content that ranged through culture change, policy review, staff relations, government responsibility, the impact of tragedy, the celebration of success and the needs of the customer, the show's creator, Dave Howard, used a TV studio set and theme. Content was presented in a variety of styles designed to engage and entertain the audience whilst getting across some very serious and important points.

He needed someone to hold the whole show together and not just cope with but make the most of changes that spanned game show to documentary, Question Time to comedy and Newsnight to This Is Your Life.

He needed the Mac Factor.

"Normally when you hire a presenter, especially for a corporate production or conference, you hire an empty suit, a blank canvas. You stick a load of words in front of them and depending on their background - journalist, TV presenter or personality - they approach it in a different way and impose something of themselves on the event. With Mac you don't get that. He adapts to the event and gives you something you don't get with someone more concerned with their own image or career.

Mac has a unique talent for grabbing hold of a subject; understanding it and creating metaphors that anyone across any audience can also understand. In performance, this means he can take you places you didn't know you were going, but he always brings you back to exactly where you want to be - understanding better.

As a producer this gives you a confidence and a guarantee of a safe pair of hands that means to me he is worth at least four times what we pay him, but for God's sake don't tell him that, because he's not getting it!"

David Howard, Creative Director, Scapegoat Ltd.