‘I have no intention to bend British democracy’
Spoon-bothering illusionist Uri Geller tells Judith Woods that his legendary magic touch can avert a chaotic no-deal Brexit
‘Britain has a global reputation for civilised values, it’s a highly respected player on the international stage. So why is Westminster running around like some sort of mad clown let loose, while the rest of the word watches in disbelief?”
Ouch. It’s an unnervingly vivid description of the opera buffa currently being enacted by our political class. And the fact this verdict has been delivered by none other than Uri Geller – best known for bending spoons – seems perfectly reasonable in these hallucinatory times. Geller, who lived in Britain for 35 years before moving to his native Tel Aviv in 2015, has been using telepathy in recent days to shift Theresa May’s thinking on Brexit.
Thus far, it doesn’t appear to have worked. But that didn’t stop the BBC from booking the celebrity mindreader to go head-to-head with Jacob Rees-mogg on television. Surreal doesn’t begin to describe it.
Their bout, scheduled for earlier this week, was shaping up to be quite the confrontation – until Rees-mogg pulled out. Of course, the archbrexiteer might have been otherwise engaged in shoring up his reputation, after his spectacular “half-a-loaf ” U-turn on May’s deal. But his no-show fuelled the suspicion that the European Research Group chairman was terrified that Geller might use his psychic meddling to make him change his mind again. Live on air.
“I have no intention of bending democracy,” says Geller, breezily. “That would be wrong. I’m not in favour of revoking Article 50, but I want a second referendum to give the people another choice.
“People ask why do I care? I care because I am a British citizen, my son works out of London, my mother is buried in the UK.”
Speaking from his rooftop apartment in the Israeli port of Jaffa, white cloud scudding across vaulted blue skies, Geller – whose previous home was in Sonning, Berks, part of May’s Maidenhead constituency – says he has a clear perspective on Parliament’s three-ringed circus.
It was last week when the 72-yearold penned an open letter to the Prime Minister, to “stop her telepathically from leading Britain into Brexit”.
“Three years before you became Prime Minister, I predicted your victory when I showed you Winston Churchill’s spoon on my Cadillac, which I asked you to touch,” he wrote, adding that he is also using his powers to make sure “Jeremy Corbyn never gets the keys to Number 10”.
Unsurprisingly, it went viral. As a result, scores of placards bearing Geller’s image were raised aloft during last weekend’s People’s Vote march through London. Desperate times demand desperate measures. If anyone could help us solve Brexit, it would surely be a celebrity who can melt cutlery, wouldn’t it?
But, in the intervening days, Geller has changed tack. Along with the rest of us, he has recognised that in our madcap Brexit circus, May is no longer the proverbial ringmaster, but is struggling to keep up with events while riding a tiny cycle. “I have broadened my scope,” he says, seriously. “This is no longer just about Mrs May. I have switched my focus on to the minds of certain people, the right people. Trust me, I know how to do it. I am in touch with certain individuals and I will not name them as I don’t want to burn bridges.”
Given that Geller has called upon the British people to join him in directing their thought power at Mrs May at 11.11am and 11.11pm every day, it’s something of a tall order to expect us to cope without a cribsheet. Can we ordinary civilians be realistically expected to visualise David Lidington? Does anyone really want to conjure up Arlene Foster’s face at bedtime?
“I know this all sounds bizarre, freaky and sci-fi,” he concedes. “But telepathy exists and I have used it very effectively in the past.”
I have previously met and spent time with Geller in both
Britain and Tel Aviv, where he is now creating a museum dedicated to his career. It will feature his 1976 custom-built Cadillac encrusted with contorted spoons owned, used or touched by the rich and famous in whose circles he has effortlessly moved.
Geller was a close friend of Michael Jackson, whose reputation has been tarnished by recurrent child abuse allegations, most recently in Leaving Neverland. “I have been approached by hundreds of journalists worldwide to talk about MJ,” he says. “I give respect to a dead man; dead men cannot defend themselves. I don’t wish to get involved with the mammoth controversy [over] the film.” In person, Geller is weirdly intense but unequivocally entertaining. I watch as metal teaspoons curve between his fingers like sticks of liquorice. He also reads my mind – when I secretly scribble a picture of an apple tree, he copies it – right down to the correct number of fruit. But there has always been a serious side to his party tricks. Geller, who served in the Israeli military in his youth, claims to have spied for Mossad, the CIA and MI5. He shot to fame after he bent the nation’s cutlery and got stopped clocks to restart on British television in 1972.
“I believe MI5 was behind my invitation to appear on David Dimbleby,” he says. “MI5 or MI6 wanted to get me to the UK, so that was how they arranged it. They knew about the tests in the US and wanted to see for themselves.”
There is certainly evidence of this; in an extraordinary series of declassified
‘All I am doing is answering all those cries for help that I have received’
documents published in 2017, the CIA revealed the results of a week of experiments it conducted on Geller, over eight days in 1973.
He was tested for “clairvoyant” or “telepathic” abilities as part of the Stargate programme, aimed at weaponising what the CIA called “remote viewing” and trying to recruit so-called psychic warriors.
Elements of the bizarre research featured in The Men Who Stare at Goats, a 2009 film starring George Clooney, which took its name from attempts by Stargate operatives to kill goats simply by looking at them.
Geller was never asked to stare down farm animals, but his handlers’ conclusions were unequivocal: “He has demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner.”
Washington asked him to use his ESP to stand outside the Russian embassy in Mexico and erase floppy disks being flown out by Russian agents. His skill was also deployed to convince the Russians to sign a nuclear arms reduction treaty.
“I got very close to Yuli Vorontsov, the head Russian nuclear negotiator,” says Geller. “I bombarded his mind to sign the treaty by repeating ‘sign, sign sign...’ – and the Russians signed.”
A cynic might suggest that engineering a non-proliferation agreement at the height of the Cold War is child’s play compared to the pantomime chaos of Brexit. “All I am doing is answering all those cries for help that I have received by email from despairing British residents and anguished expats,” says Geller. “My only concern is that I’ve been summoned too late.”
Perhaps there’s something uniquely fitting, in these days of smoke and mirrors, that so many are placing their hopes in a bona fide illusionist.