Uri Geller's magic reappearing trick

Spoon-bender's offer to wake up Ariel Sharon from his coma rebuffed

Dec. 9, 2006. 01:00 AM
MATTI FRIEDMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

JERUSALEM—When the young Uri Geller packed his spoons and self-styled supernatural powers to seek fortune abroad, no one could have predicted he would return to his native Israel in triumph 35 years later as a reality TV star.

No one, presumably, except Uri Geller.

The premise of Geller's new show, The Successor — which has received smash ratings here and started something of a paranormal fad — is that the psychic celebrity, now approaching his 60th birthday, has come home to choose an heir.

On recent episodes of the live show, the nine contestants aspiring to succeed Geller read the minds of audience members and made them imagine different tastes in their mouths on command.

One contestant stopped his heartbeat for several seconds, leading an unfortunate 10-year-old in northern Israel to try the same trick at school and pass out briefly.

Geller, who gained fame bending spoons using what he says are psychic powers, also performs on every show.

In one episode, he drew a copy of a picture that had just been drawn by a pilot flying an El Al jet above the Sinai desert. (It was a fish.)

In an interview, Geller attributed the show's success to Israel's Jewish mystical traditions.

"People here have roots in positive mysticism carried through the centuries by the Kabbalah," he said, referring to the ancient mystical work that has won non-Jewish enthusiasts, most famously Madonna.

While the show's content of illusion, sleight of hand and the supernatural might stretch a picky viewer's definition of a reality program, its format sticks close to the staples of the genre — judges, manufactured drama, celebrity cameos and viewer participation.

Contestants show off their powers over 10 episodes and the winner gets fame and fortune as Geller's anointed successor, along with a secret prize, though one can assume the contestants have guessed what it is.

For Geller, his new success in his homeland brings him full circle.

Before Geller became perhaps the world's best-known psychic entertainer and an intimate of Salvador Dali and Michael Jackson, he was an unknown Israeli from Tel Aviv. His biography, in his telling at least, reads like the plot of a spy novel.

At 10, his parents divorced and he left Tel Aviv for Cyprus, where his stepfather ran a hotel that was a front for Israel's Mossad spy agency, and he ran errands for agents.