Interview with Uri Geller, Summer 2003
If there is such a thing as an average celebrity, Uri Geller is not it. Not by some distance. Unfailingly polite and even-tempered, he is also, in the eyes of many, profoundly eccentric at best, and borderline insane at worst. He himself admits to being “strange”. One thing that is not in doubt, however, is that he makes for compelling television, as anyone who witnessed his antics in the Australian jungle will verify. The good news is, he’ll be back on screens on Channel 4 on Thursday 24th July, in On Holiday with the Gellers, a one-off programme in which Uri and his family visit Croatia. Not surprisingly, it’s more about Uri than it is about Croatia – but then there’s a lot to learn about this extraordinary man.
He first discovered his unusual gift at the age of four. “I was eating soup, and when I lifted the spoon towards my mouth, the spoon bent and broke in half. But I don’t see it as a unique gift. I believe that we all have certain dormant abilities, and I learned to awaken them.”
But it wasn’t until 1973 that he achieved wider recognition. “It was 30 years ago this month. There was a show presented by David Dimbleby. He invited me from California, where I was being tested by the CIA at Stanford Research Institute, and he asked me to demonstrate my abilities, and suddenly stuck a fork in my hand. And I looked into the camera and asked people to get their broken watches and spoons, and I didn’t realise that I was sending 37 million people to the kitchen. And then the telephone system just blew up, because so many people were reporting that spoons were bending in their own hands. And that flashed worldwide, it put me on every newspaper, magazine and news broadcast worldwide.”
It rapidly becomes clear that Uri is prone to hyperbole. For example, 37 million people is considerably higher than the highest ratings ever achieved on British television, and besides, they can’t all have gone into their kitchens, surely? Added to which, can he really have been on the cover of every magazine worldwide? Anglers Weekly? Playboy? But hang on a minute: Did he say something about the CIA? What’s that all about?
“The American Defence Department lured me out of Israel. The US was concerned that the Russians were dabbling with the paranormal. They had people there that could move objects with the power of their mind. They had no one that they were testing in the west, so they sent a scientist, with a letter from an astronaut who had walked on the moon, to convince me to leave Israel, and that was in 1972. And I went through a lot of tests in America, and they actually validated these powers. And they were also published in Nature magazine, and that of course gave me huge scientific credibility.”
It’s not exactly been a dull life, then. What would he consider to be his greatest supernatural ‘feat’. “It depends what you mean. I’ve done a lot of quirky things, from stopping Big Ben – twice – to stopping a ship in mid-ocean, to getting a women pregnant by bending their contraceptive coil while they were watching on television.” (Quirky?) “But the serious stuff was when I was asked by the American government to convince and bombard the Russians to sign the nuclear treaty.” Yeah, of course they invited you along every the time two Cold War enemies met up to try and rid the world of the nuclear menace, Uri.
Um, except it seems they did. Visit Uri’s website (www.urigeller.com) and you’ll see a picture of him at the Geneva Summit, standing alongside the Chairman of the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee and the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Chief Arms negotiator. So just when you start to think he’s all hyperbole and nonsense, you discover there’s more to him than that. Certainly he’s ended up in some interesting places, and met some extraordinary individuals. One, of course, ranks head and shoulders above the rest.
“Michael [Jackson, of course] read about me when he was a teenager, in American textbooks. He always wanted to meet me.”
At this point in the interview, something bizarre happens. The building’s fire alarm goes off, and the office has to be cleared. Without missing a beat Uri, at the other end of a phone line, chimes in. “That will be me. I was going to tell you at the beginning of the interview, many times when I am being recorded, there is a very strange energy that I produce, and this does happen. Tell the chief that I am sorry. I didn’t do this on purpose, but it does happen.”
True enough, there is no fire, and twenty minutes later, the interview is resumed, but Uri has something to add to the mixing pot. In On Holiday with the Gellers, he speaks of his connection with the number 11, and explains in particular how strange things seem to happen to him when the clock says 11:11. “I just wanted to tell you, to add a little more mystery to that alarm – you know that it started at 11:11 exactly. I have a digital clock here on my exercise bike [Uri is a fitness obsessive, and cycles all the way through the interview] and it was 11:11.” Shortly afterwards, an email is sent round, explaining that the alarm was triggered by a problem at one of the building’s coffee points. Decide for yourselves.
Anyway, Uri, back to Michael Jackson. “About six years ago I was in the house of Mohammed Al-Fayed, who is a very close friend, and Michael called him out of the blue from New York. Mohammed said to him ‘Michael, Uri Geller is sitting next to me,’ and I heard a shriek, and he handed me the phone and he said he’d always wanted to meet me. A few weeks later I had some lecture in New York and I met him and that’s how the friendship began.”
And what’s he like? “Well, first of all, you shouldn’t believe any of the allegations about him. He’s been many times in my house, he was my best man when I renewed my wedding vows, he became an honorary director of Exeter City FC, and we’ve spent a lot of time together. He’s just very shy, humble, and unfortunately very naïve, but he’s a genius, and he really does a lot for sick children. I feel like Martin Bashir betrayed both of us.” (It was Uri who advised Michael to do the now infamous documentary with Bashir).
For a while Uri, who is a very keen painter, studied under Salvador Dali, a man he describes as even stranger than him. So he admits that he himself is strange? “I would say so. What I mean by that is that I do things that are out of the norm. Therefore there is a woven fabric of strangeness in what I do. Many people see the spoon bending as a strange thing, but also my lifestyle is different. For instance, I don’t handle money. I don’t carry wallets, I don’t have credit cards. I detached myself from materialistic stuff. Maybe I’m a bit eccentric. I might do strange things. Some people might find it strange that I hang myself upside down once a day.” Yep, fair point!
Has life changed considerably since he did I’m a Celebrity… ? “No, that programme wasn’t a life-changing experience, but it certainly was an unusual one. You must remember, I’m known in practically every country around the world, and I’m not saying this to boast or show off. So I’ve never really stopped working since 1972.”
So he doesn’t feel he needs further exposure then. Why bother making On Holiday with the Gellers? “I think the excitement of Natalie [Uri’s daughter] convinced me to do it. We were going to say no, but then she said that she thought it was a brilliant idea, so we thought ‘why not?’”
And what did he make of Croatia? “It is a fascinating country. Beautiful, gorgeous, exciting, the people are incredibly friendly. They remind me of the Irish, I felt that incredible openness and friendliness in the street. But there’s a lot of deep emotional scars and traumatised people.” Indeed, at one point in the programme, Uri demonstrates his spoon-bending capabilities to two women, and they burst into floods of tears. “It’s interesting how they found in me some kind of a saviour. These things are to do with the mind and energies. The reminders of the war are everywhere. You’ll see bullet holes, houses blown up, memorials to people who died, and you know that that country was savaged and people were murdered.”
“I’ve been there myself. I fought in a war. I killed a man, unfortunately. Face-to-face. I fought in the Six-Day War in 1967, and I was in command of eight soldiers. We had two command cars, and we were ambushed by Jordanian tanks, and I tried to disperse my men against a cemetery wall. Suddenly a Jordanian popped up out of nowhere, and he stared me in the eye, pointing his machine gun at me. We were no more than eight feet apart. And I held my Uzi. And we stared at each other, and it was just a split second, but it felt like an eternity. I saw my whole life unfold in my inner mind, and I knew in that split second that whoever pressed the trigger first would survive. And I killed him, I was faster than him, and that soldier is in me now. He’s part of my being, my soul. I have recurring nightmares many times a year. It’s something that changed my life. I know I will meet him some day on the other side, and I’ll have to deal with it then.”
As he speaks, it becomes increasingly clear that he really does believe this, just as he believes everything he says. He is undoubtedly odd, and many believe him to be utterly self-deluded, but he is no con artist. And self-deluded or not, he’s a multi-millionaire who has enjoyed adulation across the world, friendship with some global celebrities, and led the most extraordinary life imaginable. Self deluded? Possibly, but it’s hardly done him any damage.
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