Colonoscopy, limo girls, horror story

My greatest ambition is to walk on the moon. I believe it can happen, perhaps 20 years from now. Spaceports in the Sea of Tranquility and EasyShuttles for lunar tourists look impossible today, until you remember that it took just two decades to evolve from the first helicopters and jet engines to manned Apollo launches.

As the launch date for my Russian show loomed, I was aware that I’ve been pushing myself to the physical limit for many months. I’ve jetted between cities for rehearsals and conference, juggled two completely separate shows each week in Holland and Germany, as well as Hungary and Turkey, and launched new lines of watches and jewellery.

To stay healthy, I’ve worked out in hotel gyms on a daily basis, as well as devising keep-fit routines that had me and Hanna jogging up flights of stairs and through city streets.

My muscle-tone is great, but only a doctor can tell how good things are looking on the inside. So I decided to book in for a full-body MoT. I do this every five years or so… but this would be the first time I dared to undergo a colonoscopy.

Don’t turn the page. Put your breakfast on one side, if you have to, but read on. If my self-inflicted ordeal prompts readers to talk to their own doctors about the risks of colon cancer, this article could save lives.

The death of President Bush’s spokesman Tony Snow, a former Fox TV anchorman, aged just 53, had hammered home to me that colon cancer shows no mercy. You have to hunt it down and wipe it out before it gets the chance to kill.

Dr Anthony Mee at the Berkshire Independent Hospital in Reading  warned me that the preparation would be the worst part. I was to have no food for eighteen hours before the examination… and my colon had to be ‘cleansed’. That meant a powerful laxative, and about 50 trips to the toilet.

In the medical theatre, Dr Mee gave me a sedative through an intravenous needle. I felt a wave of relaxation ripple though my brain, but no tiredness: I was totally aware and awake. And part of me would have been happier to be unconscious.

“When were you born?” the doctor asked casually, and my mind flashed back to the moment in 1967 when, as an injured paratrooper in the Six Day War, I was asked the same question by a medic who was about to sedate me.

The next moment I felt what can only be described as a blunt object. The best I can say is that it hurt less than the shrapnel did in ’67.

On the tip of the blunt object was a camera. I stared in fascinated disbelief at the 21” screen, broadcasting live from my bowels, with 100 per cent clarity. At every moment I was expecting Kate Adie to leap up and start reporting breathlessly on the situation: “That distant rumbling thunder you hear isn’t the American guns… it’s the sound of Mr Geller’s alimentary canal, which has now been deprived of all sustenance since yesterday tea-time.”

The camera reported my colon was in fine fettle, with no pre-cancerous polyps. If it had found any, it was equipped with tiny teeth to nip them off.

If only I could have captured it all on DVD, I might have been tempted to put it on my website…

My life has been threatened many times, but the prize for the first person to kill me goes to a horror writer from Ipswich. John Mains is a 32-year-old fan of dark and gruesome fiction, who concocted a tale about my last-ever chat-show appearance.

My head is lopped off — with a spoon. I have to admit it made me laugh out loud… and after all, I’ve been attacking spoons for 55 years. It is only right that finally, a spoon should rebel against Uri Geller. In fact, it’s an honour.

You can read John’s story in The Third Black Book of Horror… and the editors liked it so much, they’ve asked him to contribute to the fourth book too. If he sticks to his chat-show theme, I predict he’ll kill off Jonathan Ross — probably with a horrible pun.

It’s not unusual to be mobbed by fans when we’re shooting a promo for a new TV series. Outdoor filming gets everybody’s attention, because it requires so much equipment. And since the crew are recording footage, and not beaming it out live, the stars tend to do a lot of waiting around.

We got around this problem in the US, when Criss Angel and I were whisked off to the searing heat of the Californian desert. The only spectators there were lizards and vultures. I’m glad they kept their distance.

The temperatures in Moscow’s Red Square were less sweltering, and I was much happier about getting up close to my fans. A crowd of Muscovite girls crowded round me between takes, and they were all fascinated by the stretch limo that had brought me from my hotel.

After the filming was over, I gave them a ride around the city. The car was so big that all the girls fitted easily into its depths… I wouldn’t have minded very much if one or two of them had sat on my knee, but I think Hanna would have had something to say.