Brexiter spiritualists will raise hell over this hatchet job but, as they’ll understand, it’s all for ‘entertainment purposes only’
JESUS, the original and best rabblerousing socialist firebrand with the initials JC, once advised his flock that it’s easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven. You’ll note he didn’t mention how women qualify, but maybe it’s because there’s simply no requirement for defined gender “up there”. Sex is likely infeasible in spiritual orb form.
Such speculative theological musings do beg one serious question, however – do we keep our genitals in the afterlife? It’s a condundrum that inspired the late Chuck Berry to write My Ding A Ling – an earnest ode to his old chap. Perhaps this legendary non-musical instrument should have been pickled in a jar and displayed next to his guitar in the Hard Rock Cafe.
Spare a thought too for the eternal soul of late ch-ch-changeling David Bowie. Who knows which of his many questionable hairdos he’s now forever lumbered with in immortal spirit form.
Then again, Jesus made clear that only the skint and meek get into Heaven – definitely ruling that pair out. Ironically, this strict door policy must also then knock back those who claim to have a direct line to Heaven – spiritualists, the reality-distorting grief parasites fuelling what is now a highly lucrative multimillion-pound global industry.
It’s as if these well-heeled practitioners of other-worldly communion aren’t actually that bothered about entering the afterlife themselves. In fact, it’s almost like they don’t believe in it at all.
The original Meg
PERHAPS I’m being a bit hasty in presuming these trans-dimensional conduits are all Christians who follow the words and teachings of a zombie Bee Gee. The legendary Mystic Meg certainly didn’t.
Presenting herself as a glam sorceress styled by Prince and the Revolution – and quite likely Jessie J’s mum
– Meg’s powers during her
News Of The World heyday actually seemed on an equal par to God himself. Predicting the future, talking to the dead, tarot, crystals, horoscopes, past-life regression, your bathroom grouting – you name it, Meg had it covered.
Indeed, so awesome were her abilities that that she could even identify individual readers of the now-defunct newspaper by printing their initials next to a personal message from the great beyond. Perhaps she simply was privy to the subscribers’ list.
Despite searching every Sunday morning for many years, I never got a message – but one memorable communication lingers long in the mind: “F.B. of London, you will have no need for the gloves in America.” Perhaps Frank Bruno could have saved himself a tanking from Mike Tyson if he had simply checked his horoscope. Meg, however, certainly had an insight into the future when it came to the art of monetising her “gift” using the power of technology. Blazing a trail for career psychics, Meg would fleece the naive, desperate and vulnerable with a premium rate phone line – no websites, apps or Facebook then. This cost 90p a minute, yet callers were greeted not by Meg, but a sloooooowly and spoooookily spoken recorded message telling callers everything was goooooing to be ooooooook in their troubled lives. But Meg was lying. It wasn’t going to be OK – all those callers were going to die. Perhaps alone and painfully. As are you and I. Our last thoughts peppered with regret and remorse, before their eternal erasure from the cosmic canvas forever.
The odd delusion
GIVEN the unpalatable reality of eternal nothingness, our species’ desire to believe in something other is understandable. Yet, our willingness to be sedated by comforting delusions has now birthed a £100 million industry in the UK – one which is growing at a startling rate. When algorithms render us all useless and redundant, it’s likely you’ll fancy a piece of that action yourself.
It doesn’t even say whether supernatural powers are a requirement at one online “Psychic Development Course” (just £225), so we must assume folk are simply being trained to be good old-fashioned confidence tricksters.
Even something as innocuous and silly as psychic mailings – letters promising spiritual messages – is estimated to cost UK believers £40m each year, according to Office of Fair Trading research.
Yet, it’s newer technological devilry such as online and satellite TV services that have allowed spiritualism to join the dark pantheon of digital cam-sex, casinos and bingo in casting a spell of mass zombified stupor over the nation.
Right now, millions sacrifice their dignity scrapping over yellow Whoops! sticker food items just so they have cash to send on a one-way journey to humming servers registered for tax reasons in the Isle of Man – chasing the dragon of thrills and comfort clearly missing in their real lives.
Psychic Brexiters
IN a world where a TV advert highlighting the environmental folly of palm oil production is banned, you may wonder how mediums get the green light to advertise that they can contact the dead and predict the future. Well, since 2008, they actually can’t – and it’s how the spiritualist community found unlikely solidarity in another set of confidence trickers – the Brexiters. Unamused by folk profiting from the misery and vulnerability of others, the EU brought in new Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations forcing all commercial traders to substantiate claims made about their business – not easy for psychics with the whole chatting to the dead thing. They clearly never saw it coming. (The EU also states that every article like this has to include that joke.) Humiliated spiritualists have since been forced to describe their oncerevered services as “for entertainment purposes only” or “an experiment”. Perhaps they should be happy they’ll never need to prove their creative fabrications are valid banter from the spirit world. It also seems the EU made a sound prediction itself – that in Brexit Britain, more “entertainment” will be necessary to stop us eating each other.