2003-10-06 - 2:49 p.m.

As David Blaine�s starvation yawn-fest continues despite the best efforts of the great British public (no-one hurls drunken abuse or paint at pretentious tossers better than us), and the mind-controllery of D*rren Brown means that he sadly survived his live Russian Roulette, it seems that anti-magic is the new magic. I wonder how Vapid Bland would feel if everyone just ignored his caged dieting, or if Mr Brown had been forced to play actual Russian Roulette in a disused meat packing warehouse with two salivating psychotic gangsters from Minsk? I�d like to see him get away with not cacking himself there. Mind control THAT, you tart.

A tad bitter, you might say. Why the bad attitude? Just because I could never do fancy card tricks to pull easily impressed floozies like my friend Gary could in high school and instead sat in the corner, crying into my Shandy Bass as yet another brainless victim failed to catch onto his clumsy slight of hand? Well, yeah, obviously.

Every single brush I�ve had with the unseen world has ended with embarrassment, though. Not that there have been that many. The stand out one, though, was when I was about fourteen. I was OBSESSED with the paranormal, and my curiosity, fuelled by multiple viewings of Ghostbusters, signed up for a Parapsychology course at my local nightschool, much to the disappointment of my parents, as I offended the religious AND professional expectations that they held for me in one fell swoop.

The course itself was pretty dreary, some old duffer waffling on about spooks whilst the misfits that made up the class tried to look interested. At the final lesson, though, he invited a psychic in to give us a first hand look at the dark arts. It was another feeble old coffin dodger, and people were invited to take objects up to him that held a special meaning for them. He would hold the objects, and then blurt forth spurious tales from the netherworld as the spirits came to him with advice for the living people, or observations about them that were meant to impress us. �I�m hearing the word �knee�! Do you or any of your friends have knees?� is the kind of thing, hedging his bets no end and boring everyone senseless.

Finally came my turn to step up to the plate. I handed the old scrote a watch that my parents had given me for my birthday some years earlier. I didn�t expect to hear any amazing truths (�The spirits are telling me you are a very spotty boy!�) but there would hopefully be something entertaining. What I didn�t expect was for him to immediately turn white, sit bolt upright and refuse to even entertain the idea of going on. �I will�.cannot get a reading from this item,� he stammered, looking as though his family had just told him they were about to cart him off to a home for the terminally bewildered. �Please, please take this back. I do not wish to go further with this!� he shouted.

As I went up to reclaim my watch, I was feeling not a little unsettled, not least because everyone else in the class, including the teacher, was looking at me as if I were the antichrist, come down to wreak havoc and evil in a small nightschool in northern England. I grabbed my watch off the hyperventilating crone and sat back down, kind of wishing that I actually could summon up some demonic sidekick to at least take the attention away from me. The teacher hurriedly escorted the old man out. He was visibly shaken, whilst the rest of the class just kind of kept quiet and concentrated on not looking at me.

To this day I can�t really tell whether or not I�m the actual spawn of Satan, but more likely he was just a mad old fruitcake. Next time I shave my head I�m going to look more carefully for the 666 scar, though.