Twose Company | The day I Saw Uri Geller

By Dominic Twose - Tuesday, July 2, 2019

I was a very gullible teenager. I fell for every April Fool going. When Uri Geller came on the scene in the early Seventies I was a young teenager, and completely believed in his powers. I remember pestering my mother to think of shapes and numbers to see if I could read her mind.

By the early Eighties I’d joined the Magic Circle, and found books in their library which took a more sceptical view than I did.

In December 1987 I was working in an office just off Oxford Street in London. One lunchtime I went to in Hamley’s toy store, looking for Christmas presents. I was looking for the toy section, but on the escalator I saw a sign saying that Rolf Harris would be there on the 18th. And then one saying Uri Geller would be there on the 11th. I checked; that was today. Just one sign, which no one was paying much attention to.

I found the magic stall. ‘Is Uri Geller here?’

‘No; he’s around the corner.’

I walked around and almost missed him; I was looking for a crowd, but there were only about ten people looking at him sitting behind a counter, looking fed up, talking to an excited Indian woman about his new game. It was such a strange sensation; I’d read several books about the man and here he was. I looked at the game.

‘Are you interested?’ he asked.

I shrugged. I was just looking, I said.

‘There are so many games here,’ he said sympathetically. He asked me about my job, I told him a bit about market research.

Someone asked him to do a trick.

‘You should have brought a spoon,’ he said.

I asked him for his autograph for my nephew but said I wouldn’t buy the game as it was too old for him. I wandered away. But five minutes later the Tannoy announced, ‘Uri Geller will be doing his mind reading on the fourth floor.’ I went back. I guess about twenty people were around him now. Three spoons had appeared on the table. (Magic?) He was standing up. He picked up a spoon.

‘I’d better be in the middle of you,’ he said and moved from behind the counter to the middle of us. This was odd; we could all see better when he was behind the counter. The spoon was out of sight. And when he held it up again his left fingers held the bowl and his right fingers covered the whole handle. I wouldn’t swear to it, but from the glimpse I had of the handle it seemed to me that it was already bent. He rubbed the spoon, and slowly tilted back the bowl to show the handle rising.

He held it up, claiming it was still bending.

Someone asked him if he could bend it in the middle of the handle. He didn’t answer, instead asking that one of the other spoons be passed for comparison. He looked back at the spoons on the counter. I watched his hands; they came together, and in a second performed a movement that looked like bending the spoon. This was the moment when I knew he was cheating; that action could have meant nothing else. Someone gave him a second spoon; he held them both up. The first spoon now had a more pronounced bend.

He said the molecular structure changes. ‘There is no explanation for this. It’s unbelievable.’

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ muttered a girl behind me.

‘I must sign it,’ he said, rushing back to the counter. Again his hands came together, and when we next saw the spoon the handle was bent at right-angles. He signed it and held it up. A girl took a photo. Someone asked if he would bend another. ‘No; it’s hard for me. This one is at right-angles – they rarely go further. If I did another it would only go so far.’ Some people bought his game.

I shook his hand. ‘Thank you very much; it was an honour meeting you.’ I meant it.

He had a firm handshake. ‘I’m glad you saw the spoon bending.’

‘So am I.’

I went back to my office and wrote this up.

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