Lunar Obverse

Uri Geller showed up in New York when he was just beginning, and he was making a minor sensation. I had never heard the name before. But I was invited by Time magazine to attend a little conference they were going to have with Geller. He was going to do a demonstration for them, and he had specified to his manager that there should be no magicians present. They naturally got very suspicious about that, and figured that it was probably a trick. So they asked me to sit in on the demonstration. I posed as if I were a reporter for Time, and I scribbled notes throughout.

All the while I was looking over Mr Geller’s shoulder. At one point he bent a spoon, very obviously, and I caught him at it. He looked up over his shoulder at me and said, “Did you see that?” I said, “Yes, Mr Geller, I did see that.” He stood up and left the room, and that was the end of the conference. He started yelling at his manager that there were supposed to be no magicians. So he knew – as we say in the trade – that he’d been twigged. And the article that came out in Time magazine was very unsatisfactory from his point of view.