|
Useless watch helped
me tick on German TV
LET'S start with an apology. When I flipped open my laptop
two minutes ago, on a Lufthansa flight back to Heathrow from
Cologne in Germany, I was intending to write about how the
media distorts statistics, especially when the stats are about
Israel.
I had an intriguing survey filed among my documents, conducted
by the Ipso research unit for the Italian newspaper Corriere
della Sera.
It showed that nine per cent of people across nine European
nations ''did not like or trust Jews'' and that 46 per cent
thought Jews had a ''different mentality or lifestyle''.
I'd prepared a clever line about those 46 per cent, saying
that they obviously meant 'worse' when they said 'different',
because if 46 per cent of Europeans thought the Jewish way
of life was better than average then our synagogues would
be crammed with converts.
In other words, almost half of Europeans admit to being antisemites,
according to this survey - which means that either we're facing
the worst outbreak of racism in 60 years, or the statistics
are wrong.
So here's the apology. Enough about statistics already -
let's talk about me!
I'm flying home from a TV show that provoked an upsurge of
paranormal phenomena like I haven't seen for 30 years.
Gunther Jauch is the man responsible. He's the best-known
TV host in Germany, a 48-year-old who combines the talents
of Trevor McDonald and Chris Tarrant.
As well as hosting the German version of Who Wants To Be
A Millionaire?, he fronts the serious and hard-hitting Stern-TV
on the RTL channel.
Gunther invited me onto the show late last year to talk about
Michael Jackson. We have plenty of friends in Germany, so
the trip was a pleasure.
In the dressing room, Gunther challenged me to bend a spoon.
He's an experienced journalist and inclined to scepticism,
so I wasn't surprised that he watched me like a hawk.
I had the feeling that he wanted to catch me out in a conjuring
trick in order later to discredit everything I said about
Michael - not that our interview was hostile, but Gunther
doesn't pull his punches.
It's often the way that the greatest sceptics make the strongest
converts and Gunther was swift to admit, as the spoon lay
curling in the palm of his hand, that what he had seen was
no trick.
He was courageous enough to tell the viewers live on air
that I'd shown him a power that he could not explain - and
then, as he pulled the spoon out of his pocket, he dared me
to do it again.
I hadn't flown to Germany to give an impromptu demonstration,
of course. I was there to face questions on the Jackson case.
So I issued my own challenge - did Stern-TV dare to do this
the right way? Would Gunther Jauch give the viewers a chance
to judge my claims for themselves and test out their own latent
abilities?
Three decades earlier, I'd had a stunning triumph on the
late Wilm Tölke's chat show, when every bit of metal
I touched turned to jelly. Now, as I prepared to reprise that
performance, I searched my archive of cuttings for reports
from the Seventies.
I found three German newspapers, including a copy of Der
Spiegel, the German equivalent of Time magazine, with my youthful
face on the cover.
The date on the papers was January 28. And my appearance
on Stern-TV was booked for . . . January 28.
Gunther was staggered by this synchronicity when I spread
the vintage papers on his desk. And he was stunned when I
demanded RTL had to set up a call centre to cope with the
deluge of calls I predicted.
I guessed that, if the show went well, I might get 5,000
to 7,000 people ringing in. But I was nervous, because the
Stern-TV crew were aggressively suspicious, insisting that
I must not touch anything or bring anything to the programme.
I didn't feel it was a set-up, because I know the German
character is inclined to doubt extravagant claims. But I did
fear one of the flatliners that periodically afflict my powers
and leave me, temporarily, about as psychic as a pot-plant.
That would have been humiliating. I need not have worried.
The phones started to ring off the hooks even before the first
demonstration.
As I urged the studio audience to join me in making a compass
needle spin by the force of Mind Power alone, excited viewers
started to report that compasses and even barometers in their
homes were going crazy. We handed out hundreds of spoons,
and they melted like plasticine in the hands of volunteers.
Gunther was jumping around like a kid at Xmas - he knew he
was making dynamite TV. People besieged the switchboards to
report not only spoons that bent or broke but spoons that
flew, hovered and vanished.
The chairman of RTL told me later it was the biggest reaction
to a German show he'd seen since . . . well, since my 1974
showstopper.
My prediction of 7,000 calls was dwarfed - we drew 50,000.
At one stage the influx to the call centre was so vast that
the studio lights dimmed.
The most dramatic phenomenon was still to come. In an effort
to debunk my powers, Stern-TV had booked a master watchmaker,
Heinz Boxberg, a man who could make any broken timepiece tick
again by strictly mechanical means.
A beautiful watch was placed on the table before me, its
hands quite still.
I urged the audience and all the viewers to join with me
in a combined focus of wills, a massive array of connected
Mind Power, as we shouted in German: ''One! Two! Three! WORK!''
And the watch began to tick.
I thought the watchmaker was going to faint. ''It's impossible!''
he exclaimed. ''It is physically impossible. There are jewels
missing from the mechanism - it cannot be ticking!''
But it was. The second hand was moving forward smoothly.
And at the same moment, I felt time take a flying leap backwards,
winging the decades... to 1974.
Email
him at uri@urigeller.com
|
Engage
Uri Geller - Maximise your potential, the world's leading motivational
speaker
