Listening to the Croatian-born entertainer Dragan Matijevic describe his career is like watching him pull a handkerchief out of his mouth, followed by more multi-coloured handkerchiefs until there is a whole rainbow of them.

Each facet of his career as an entertainer is a handkerchief and all are linked back to the war in Croatia. This is where his career began, when he would regularly burst out of a top hat during a tour in 1993 - a tour that he organised specifically to bring laughter into the lives of wartorn children.

Aged 51, he is a magician, entertainer and storyteller, who operates through the company EdukEmotion, under the names Sol Ray (for children), the Magic Dragan (for adults) and The Invisible Man.

But he is also a trained hypnotherapist, and a special Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) trainer. From those interests he has developed a life-skills model called TUNE - Tunes Unravel Navigate Emotions - which he incorporates in his entertaining and corporate workshops.

Mr Matijevic first came to England in 1973 from the former Yugoslavia and finally settled in Oxford in 1979.

"I came because it was the country of the Beatles," he said.

He supported himself through a variety of jobs, including managing Bretts Burgers, that much-missed takeaway near Oxford station, before studying art and video-making at Oxford Polytechnic.

He had just finished that when war broke out in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

He said: "I was feeling a little bit frustrated, as you can imagine, being stuck here and everything completely collapsing in my country and people killing each other."

After a rather disastrous aid trip to Bosnia, a chance comment about a woman visiting the camps made him change tack.

"She said it didn't take very much to make the kids laugh," he said.

He decided to build a puppet theatre, had a two-hour lesson in puppetry techniques, raised £6,000 and set off.

"We spent about six weeks of touring, organised beautifully by my sister, doing the shows," he said.

In 1994, he set up a charity Rise Phoenix and spent the next few years going to Bosnia, organising theatre, puppet and magic shows, with support from actors such as Jerome Flynn, Linus Roache and Emma Thompson.

As the war ended, Mr Matijevic looked back and wondered if there was a way to not only teach children theatre and give them an exciting one-off experience, but also, at the same time, impart vital life skills.

"This is where EdukEmotion came in, educating emotions. I found out about neuro-linguistic programming and did two courses with founder Richard Bundler. I wanted to find out the ways that you can actually use it in theatre," he said.

Out of that came TUNE, which incorporates NLP philosophy.

"There are four parts to the process. Tune in' is about being aware of and managing your feelings, while tune out' is to be aware of others and act in harmony. Tune to learn' is concerned with finding your own learning potential and tune others' is about passing on what you have discovered."

In 2000, he founded the Funforlife theatre charity, with the aim of bringing holistic education, based on developing emotional intelligence, plus the joys of theatre to youngsters worldwide.

Trips to India and tsunami-hit Sri Lanka have followed and he has also set up projects at schools here. However, recognising that there was a need for this in the workplace, he also developed corporate workshops alongside.

"Research into employment has found that formal education supplies us with only enough knowledge to get us onto the employment ladder.

"The biggest influence on subsequent success is our emotional intelligence. EQ (emotional quotient) is about four times more influential than IQ on career success and personal influence."

There are currently four workshops which look at emotional intelligence, communication skills, presentation/public speaking and team building, starting at £175 per person a day.

However, Mr Matijevic does not only provide workshops: "I regularly provide entertainment at parties and events of all sorts," he said.

In many ways, he is an inventor, coming up with ideas, implementing them and moving on.

He said: "My main focus is on the entertainment but those other things are seedlings, or already grown plants that need very little care.

"I'm giving magic lessons, so I'd like to develop that further, teaching youngsters and grown-ups using the NLP side of things, too."