Israeli 'psychic' Uri Geller still baffling fans at 75
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-59609232
By the entrance to the new Uri Geller Museum, overlooking the sparkling sea in Jaffa, lies, appropriately enough, the world's largest steel spoon - 16.18m (53ft 1in) long.
The eclectic collection housed inside includes hundreds more spoons - many of which are bent - testimony to the Israeli self-proclaimed psychic's signature skills.
But it also tells the story of an extraordinary life and career threaded through five decades of pop culture.
"I came from a poor background and I wanted to be a psychic superstar so I pushed myself into the limelight," Geller tells me.
"What I had that other people didn't have is Israeli chutzpah. It's that cheekiness. I had the guts to approach Elton John and say: 'Can I have a photograph with you? Can I visit you?'
"Famous people started talking and saying: 'Hey, I just met a guy called Uri Geller and he bent a spoon in front of my eyes. Wow!' So, that's how I started climbing on the ladder of success."
The charismatic showman - who turned 75 this month - takes me on an energetic tour rich in anecdotes.
Alongside pop memorabilia, there are all kinds of curiosities: a crystal ball from Salvador Dali, which is said to have belonged to Leonardo da Vinci; a model plane from the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi; and a golden egg, which John Lennon claimed came from aliens.
Rise to fame
A black-and-white photograph on the wall of the museum shows Geller's humble childhood home, not far away, in Tel Aviv.
He was born in 1946, in what was then British Mandate Palestine. He describes how at five years old, he bent his first spoon while eating a bowl of soup and was soon showing off his seemingly supernatural talents at school.
"Our teachers kind of freaked out," he says, grinning. "I could look at the clock on the wall and move it with the power of my mind."
Later, after a spell living in Cyprus where he learned English, Geller returned to Israel. He joined the Paratroopers' Brigade during his military service and fought in the 1967 Middle East War.
By his early 20s he was working as an entertainer. His acts - which he attributed to psychokinesis and telepathy - included bending spoons and keys, making clocks stop or run faster, and describing hidden drawings.
At a private event he impressed the then-Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, whom he credits with his rise to national prominence.
Soon he was drawing the attention of international intelligence agencies.
"As a result of Geller's success in this experimental period, we consider that he has demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner," states a contemporary CIA report which Geller proudly displays on the wall.
Bouncing back
But not all were so easily convinced. Back in 1973, soon after he launched himself in the US, Geller suffered a crushing humiliation on a hugely popular programme, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
The host had prepared a table with silverware - which Geller proved unable to bend with his mental powers, something he blamed on the hostile atmosphere.
"I thought: 'I'm finished,'" Geller remembers. "I went back to my hotel and started packing to return to Israel because that was it. I was destroyed."
However, early the next morning a rival of Carson was on the phone asking him to appear on his TV show. The experience served as a lesson for the "psychic" who has since been subjected to many more set-ups - but says he has learned to embrace his critics.
"There's so much controversy around me: is it real or not? Is it a trick?" he reflects.
"I have to go with what Oscar Wilde said: 'There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.'"
However, he is frank about the toll that working in showbusiness can have.
"I was on such an ego trip that I became bulimic and had anorexia nervosa," Geller says, looking back to the decade he spent in New York. "I couldn't take being in the limelight, the pressure and the sceptics."
He believes spending a year in Japan with his family helped turn his life around. Later, they moved to the UK, living in the quiet Berkshire village of Sonning-on-Thames for some 35 years.
Gifts from stars