The implications of this would seem to me to be quite colossal. [If a man could influence inanimate objects by the power of thought,] then surely it becomes more than possible that we all either have within our minds or can be in direct touch with powers so massive as to dwarf our mightiest machines and maybe ultimately to make our whole materialist technology obsolete? In medieval times, the Establishment, faced by such a threat to its orthodox beliefs, would quickly have burnt Uri Geller at the stake. In our more sophisticated modern world The Times simply maintains a dignified silence.

Hamish Scott of London SW10, reading perhaps just a teensy bit too much into the conjuring tricks of Uri Geller, in a letter to The Times in 1973, quoted in Francis Wheen’s Strange Days Indeed : The Golden Age Of Paranoia (2009). A more sensible response to Mr Geller was uttered by Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, no less, who secured herself a wee corner in history when, on television early in this century, she uttered the immortal words “These are Uri’s underpants. Burn them.” A contemporaneous report can be found here.