Israeli 'psychic' Uri Geller still baffling fans at 75

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.

Geller became world-famous for his apparent ability to bend metal objects with the power of his mind

"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."

Geller claimed to be able to stop clocks and fix broken watches using willpower

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 - on which Geller proved unable to demonstrate his mental powers convincingly, something he blamed on the hostile atmosphere.

He demonstrated his purported powers on TV shows in the 1970s, but one such appearance was disastrous

"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

Our fast-paced museum tour involves bewildering name-dropping. Geller first explains how he is a distant relative of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, through his mother.

Many of the 2,600 shining spoons stuck to a Cadillac once belonged to historic figures or celebrities from Winston Churchill to John F Kennedy and James Dean.

Geller has now amassed his memorabilia in a museum in Israel

There are Muhammad Ali's boxing gloves; a football top belonging to Diego Maradona; and many gifts from the surrealist artist Dali, who was a mentor of Geller's and encouraged him in his own artistic pursuits.

The model aircraft sent to Geller by Gaddafi after they met in New York had a sinister message. It is a replica of a Libyan Arab Airlines plane downed by the Israeli air force in 1973; the psychic believes the leader saw him as a channel to convey his anger to Israel.

In his heyday Geller was feted by celebrities, including Salvador Dali, pictured here

And then there is the mysterious gilded ovoid.

"John Lennon gave me the egg, claiming he got it from an extra-terrestrial," Geller declares. "The first thing I asked him: 'What were you smoking?' But he swore that it was real."

Geller says John Lennon gave him an egg-shaped object which the musician said had come from an alien

Several items dating to the '80s and '90s belonged to Michael Jackson, who was then a close friend of the entertainer.

Some visitors whom I speak to question the decision to show these, given new allegations of sex abuse which have been made since the pop star's death. However, Geller maintains the singer's innocence.

'No-one like me'

It was six years ago that Geller returned to Israel with his wife, Hanna. Their grown-up children now live in London and Los Angeles.

"In every Israeli's heart, there's a kind of spiritual, burning desire to come back to their homeland," he says. "For me, it was massively important."

Much of his personal wealth comes from dowsing for oil and mineral companies, as well as entertainment, but he does not think of retirement.

He remains a favourite of the British press. A perusal of recent headlines has him predicting football scores; threatening to stop Brexit; and taking credit for moving a cargo ship stuck in the Suez Canal using telepathy.

Geller says he has no plans to retire

The idea of creating the museum in a former Ottoman-era soap factory came about after a chance encounter with a real estate agent, who showed him the empty property in Old Jaffa.

"I just immediately knew that everything I had in Sonning-on-Thames, I was going to bring here," Geller tells me. "I guess I'm a hoarder. I didn't even know I had so much stuff. It was strewn all over my house. It was stored in sheds, in suitcases."

Geller was so well-known he even once appeared on the front cover of a Marvel comic

With walls plastered with posters and personal tours - complete with a spoon-bending demonstration and Geller's own recorded rendition of the song My Way - it has turned into a memorable showcase for a unique character.

"I'm so pleased and satisfied when visitors leave, I just ask them: 'Did you enjoy it?' Everyone says: 'Wow! It was amazing,'" says Geller with his contagious smile.

"It is an unusual museum," he exclaims. "You won't find anything like it anywhere around the world and you won't find a guide anywhere like me!"