Michael Abrahamson is a true jack of all trades, excelling in a variety of fields that include broadcasting, lecturing, entertaining, study skills and memory programmes, and serving as an MC. With a diverse skill set and a passion for sharing knowledge, Michael has carved out lucrative careers that leave a lasting impact on his audience. He is also fluent in English, Afrikaans and Spanish, and is currently learning six other languages.
A leading South African sports presenter and commentator with 35 years of experience and multiple awards, known for his engaging coverage of major global sporting events.
As South Africa’s longest-serving mentalist, Michael captivates audiences with his innovative and interactive performances, combining his skills in magic, body language and memory.
Michael offers engaging memory courses that have helped thousands of learners and corporate clients enhance their memory retention and study skills over 28 years of teaching.
Michael provides extra lessons in Mathematics and Statistics related courses to students worldwide, utilising technology to ensure effective and accessible learning experiences.
Born and raised in Johannesburg, Michael’s journey is shaped by a multitude of experiences and influences from his formative years. His dynamic background has equipped him with the tools to connect with people and deliver engaging content that resonates.
Michael Abrahamson is a versatile professional with successful careers in broadcasting, lecturing, entertainment, study skills and event hosting. He achieved a multitude of distinctions in matric and pursued studies in Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he earned a B.Sc and a B.Sc Honours degree (first class), receiving the Liberty Life gold medal for top student.
While nearing qualification as an Actuary through the Institute of Actuaries in London, Michael pivoted to explore his other passions. He also began working on a Masters degree in Statistics, focusing on a new method for determining the outcome of rain-affected cricket matches.
Michael is a leading South African sports presenter and commentator with 35 years of experience, covering major events such as the Olympic Games and World Cups across over 30 sporting codes.
He has won 17 major broadcasting awards, including the SAB Radio Commentator of the Year three times. His radio show, TOP SPORT on SAfm (every weeknight from 7 to 8pm), recently won the prestigious Telkom Radio Award for best sports show on Public Service Radio and quadrupled its listenership since he took over in April 2023. Currently the senior sports commentator for SABC TV and radio, Michael has also voiced and scripted numerous ad campaigns for commercials and corporate events.
In 2019, shortly after breaking his first Pi World Record, Michael was selected to be a contestant on the longest running and hugely popular Afrikaans TV music game show, Noot Vir Noot. He became one of very few English speakers to win the entire series, beating the other 26 contestants along the way.
It is one of Michael’s most prized moments, for which he had to use all his memory skills to memorise lyrics and facts about thousands of songs in the few weeks he had before the recording. Michael had previously reached the semi-finals in 2000 and was only allowed back on the show 19 years later.
Here are some clips of Michael’s more recent commentary work for SABC:
https://x.com/i/status/1799162870090895559
Michael is South Africa’s longest-serving mentalist, with a passion for magic that began in his youth. Drawing on his expertise in probability, body language, NLP and memory techniques, he creates unique and inspiring routines that leave audiences amazed. Having performed for many of South Africa’s major corporations and sold out numerous stage shows across the country, he also headlines international cruise ship contracts.
Michael’s fully interactive performances are known for their astonishing reactions and he frequently appears on TV and radio to showcase his talents.
On Pi Day 2019, Michael shattered the SA record by recalling 1,500 digits of Pi blindfolded in 4 minutes 7 seconds, setting an African record and a world record for speed (6+ digits per second).
Three years later, on Pi Day 2022, he broke his own record, recalling 2,000 digits blindfolded in 5 minutes 12 seconds—an even faster rate—verified by three independent judges. He believes this record may never be beaten. On Pi Day in 2025, Michael recalled the first
200 digits of Pi blindfolded, live on national radio, in an astonishing time of 30.46 seconds (a rate of 6.56 digits per second) without error. He now holds these three world records.
He has also memorised the flags of every country in the world, their capitals and locations and demonstrates this in his memory courses and talks.
When teaching Statistics at Wits University in 1997, Michael’s students (over 800 at the time) approached him to ask how he is able to remember all their names. He told them that he had worked on his memory skills for some time and was able to recall information easily.
He immediately had 123 students who signed up, and the process began.
Since then, over the past 28 years, Michael has taught memory skills, mind-building techniques, study skills, exam techniques, motivation, time management and other skills on his courses to thousands of learners, staff, parents, corporate clients and other interested parties across the country (including at over 60 schools).
Each course runs for about 2.5 hours with a short break in the middle and is very manageable from a concentration point of view, while packing in tons of info.
Extremely affordable, costing the equivalent of a private one hour extra lesson, the skills learned will be used every day for the rest of your life, so it’s a huge investment in your brain development and recall ability.
The most popular course for schools and corporates, memory retention improves by around 200% in the first 10 minutes. Attendees build confidence when they see how easy it is to develop a trained memory and achieve immediate and amazing successes from the word go. Michael also teaches useful lifestyle tips and skills (such as what happens to your brain when you sleep, what foods and vitamins to include in your diet daily to boost brain capacity, and what bad habits to avoid), and he shows you techniques to improve your spelling.
This course covers a wide variety of techniques that Michael has acquired and developed based on his many years as a student, teacher, lecturer and examiner. Many of the techniques he teaches are his own and they illustrate how to study profitably and efficiently using the full brain, how to prepare for exams, what to do the night before and the morning of the exam, how to know which questions to answer first, how not to panic, what to do if you run out of time or can’t answer a question and much more. These are essential skills that learners need to know.
This course expands on the ideas from the first course and allows people to use far more efficient and sophisticated memory methods to retain far more information.
Michael teaches extra lessons in Mathematics and Statistics related subjects to students all around the world. He has a touchscreen computer that allows students and learners to see exactly what he is writing and explaining, from the comfort of their own home.
He has regularly achieved a pass rate of over 95% among the students he teaches and has a unique way of imparting information so that his students gain confidence and belief in their abilities.
