Fear of spiders is said by experts to be one of the biggest phobias worldwide. London Zoo has been trying to cure people of that terror for 25 years with its Friendly Spider programme.
This week, a number of famous faces, including singers Sinitta and Fleur East and author Kathy Lette, took part in the course alongside terrified members of the public, to celebrate the quarter century anniversary.
Course leaders hypnotherapist John Clifford and head keeper of invertebrates at London Zoo Dave Clarke use a combination of hypnosis and teaching people more about the eight-legged creatures in the attempt to cure people of the fear.
The zoo says it has helped over 5,000 arachnophobes - some travelling from as far afield as Australia and North America.
Mr Clifford estimates that around 98% of people are able to hold a spider after the course, and a majority have managed to retain their lack of phobia for years afterwards.
After the education and hypnosis parts of the course are over, attendees are encouraged to walk around the zoo's spider house, as well as attempting to trap a spider in a plastic box to replicate the process of removing one of the creatures from a house.
Those especially brave also had the chance to hold a large, bird eating spider - named Carol.
While Mr Clifford and Mr Clarke can't say exactly why so many people are afraid of spiders, they told Reuters that they are a mostly harmless creature who are more frightened of people than people are of them.
Mr Clifford said: "It's very odd because there's no danger involved in them, certainly in the UK and we have an incredibly high prevalence of arachnaphobes in the UK.
"I think maybe it's partly because we've become very dissociated from nature and that is one of the most obvious bits of nature that habitually invades our personal space.
"So that may be one of the reasons it's so common, but we're not quite sure why. It must be partly cultural as well and it's just developed."
Mr Clarke said: "People are often terrified of spiders but there's no reason to be whatsoever, they are just very different from us and they're one of the few species that does kind of invade our own homes and appear unexpectedly.
"They also look very different to us so they're quite alien in a way and also they live in a very unusual way, grabbing their prey and venoming them to kill them.
"So those sort of combination of things builds up a person's fear of spiders but we can explain why they act in that way and that helps people get over their fear.
"It is a really genuine fear and you could really see that in the people coming onto the course tonight.
"Some of these people have lived with a phobia for over 30 years and it's a very serious thing and it's not, sometimes people make a joke of it but if someone crashed a car because of a spider being in there, then that makes it very serious and people can harm themselves and other people.
"So it's really debilitating to those that do genuinely suffer from arachnophobia. It's really important that they get over it."
Course participants say they are now far more friendly towards spiders, and even that they understand their viewpoint for the first time.
