Liar Seeks Heir

Famous fork-warper Uri Geller is looking for contestants to take part in a reality TV show to find an 'heir' to his legacy.

So, calling all magicians who haven't updated their act since the '70s.

Geller is a strange character, a man who has seemingly made a living playing on the benefit of the doubt that some people seem to give him that he really has mystical powers.

Nobody goes and sees David Copperfield and thinks, "Holy shit! That guy can really fly!", because he doesn't claim to be anything other than an illusionist (and even if he did, the high tensile wire riding up his arse might be a bit of a clue).

The fact that Geller claims to have supernatural powers and never, ever backs down appears to be enough evidence for some people to believe whatever he says.

In a sense I don't really blame him - he's just exploiting the woolly thinking and ludicrous belief systems people find themselves adopting. In a world where you won't find a single newspaper that doesn't feature horoscopes, entire channels devoted to 'contacting the dead', or, most alarming of all, the increasingly scary rise of religion on different sides of the planet, the only surprise is that more people don't chance their arm with claims of mysticism. The odds seem fairly good that you'd have at least a degree of success.

The thing is, performers like Derren Brown have proved you don't even need to pretend to be something you aren't in order to turn out impressive performances. Brown has never claimed to be anything other than a magician/hypnotist, and yet has fashioned an air of freakiness around him that Geller couldn't hope to emulate, no matter how much cutlery he vandalises.

It's unclear why Geller and his 'gifts' have endured for so long - what kind of 'special power' is the ability to (eventually) snap teaspoons after fannying around for quarter of an hour?

If you look around though, Geller's the least of it. With 'evolution' virtually a swear word in parts of America and sales of dreamcatchers on the increase (probably), we may be soon pining for the days when some nutty Israeli used his impressive psychic powers to guess that David Frost had drawn a picture of a cat.