Weekly News: Nationwide Tour

HERE I go again. Theatre managers all over the country are reaching for their caffeine tablets, because the Uri Geller nationwide tour is getting ready to roll. And I’ve got a reputation to keep up . . .

During my last tour, in 2002, I developed a habit of taking my act out into the foyer after the show. I wanted to meet the audience, and they must have wanted to meet me, because I’d often be sitting long after midnight, signing programmes, hearing stories, giving motivational chats and posing for photos.

That didn’t make me too popular with the backstage crews. The staff want to get home, not hang around on unpaid overtime. In one place, up in the north of England, they were ready to hand me the keys and tell me, “Switch the lights off before you lock up.”

I appreciate the people who keep theatres running — they do physically hard work, for long hours and low pay. Without their dedication, Britain would lose its stages, and with them one of the most important components of the country’s culture.

Thanks guys . . . but I’m still going to keep you up late.
Live shows are very special to me. It’s personal. I can pop up for a 10-minute segment on Graham Norton’s chatshow and be seen by six million people — or I could tour every night for three years and not reach half that many.But when I perform in front of a live audience, and they crowd round to talk with me later, I know I stand a far better chance of changing people’s lives.

The most satisfying part of my career is hearing how I’ve motivated fans to make a change. It’s inspirational to hear a man with school-age children say, as one guy told me on a London street yesterday, “I saw you on TV 30 years ago, when I was the same age as my kids, and you told the viewers, ‘Never touch cigarettes!’

“It was like you were looking straight out of the screen at me. I made you a promise and I stuck by it — I’ve never smoked. And now, I realise, you’ve probably added a decade or more to my life.”
I was thrilled I had made such an important connection to this man when his mind was at its most impressionable. My experience, though, is that it’s far harder to do that with television than face-to-face — when someone has paid for a theatre ticket, enjoyed a whole show and then queued to talk with me, I know their mind is receptive. What I tell them will stick.

On my website, I publish some of the most inspirational emails from fans with similar stories to tell.
“My life has changed since I participated in your seminar in Athens,” says one. “I really get enormous strength from everything you teach. I’ve just been elected an assistant professor, and I feel that a part of my success I owe to you.”

An anxious mother in Los Angeles writes, “All the love and healing you have sent, and the positive photo and autograph, has helped my son fight his drugs problem. He is clean right now for and has been for about six months — you would never think he was once on hard drugs.”
Another man writes simply, “I would like to thank you because you made me believe again in God.”

It’s inspirational letters like these that give me the energy to tackle a gruelling tour, spread over four months, from Stirling to Brecon, South Shields to Worthing, Rhyl to Fareham. And though it’s going to be carnage for the cutlery, what really excites me is the chance to motivate my audience to quit smoking, tune in to life’s mysteries and live positively.

If you’re in the south-east, do come along and see me over the next few days, at the Playhouse in Epsom (February 3), the New Theatre in Wimbledon (February 4) and the Corn Exchange in Maidstone (February 10).