Paris, web, swan

In a perfect world, everybody would live in glass houses. We would all be able to see everything our neighbours did and owned, and of course nobody would throw stones.
You might not like the thought that all the passengers on every bus that rolled by could see straight into your bathroom through the transparent walls. But I think we’d all be allowed a little bit of frosted glass and a shower curtain.

We flew in for the weekend after I was invited to appear with top French TV presenter Christophe Dechavanne, for his latest spectacular show. Christophe is the host of Wheel Of Fortune, as well as Je Suis Une Celebrite, Sortez-Moi De La!

(Even if you don’t speak a word of French, I’m sure you could translate that title… and if you need a clue, the series was filmed in the Amazon jungle.)

Saturday night’s live special was called La Soiree De L’Etrange, which means An Evening Of Strange, Weird, Peculiar And Outright Creepy Events. I knew the show would live up to its name when I shook hands with Moussa Huit Huit, the contortionist from Angola — he dislocated his shoulder and stretch his arm around his back to grasp my hand.

I have not appeared on TV in France for years — the last time I made a major splash here, I was on the cover of Paris Match in 1974. Most of my viewers now were not even born back then.

For me, the most significant difference between those far-off days and now is the power of communication — as I walked off-stage, my Blackberry was already buzzing with emails from excited new fans.

Most were schoolchildren, not only from France and Switzerland but from French-speaking African countries such as Gambia and Senegal, where the show had been beamed instantaneously.

All of them had experienced incredible phenomena — spoons that leapt off TV sets, clocks that started, mental images that matched the pictures I was telepathically projecting. I was thrilled by the thought of making contact with youngsters in Africa, from a European capital.

Now my ambition is to perform a live global broadcast, and create a mindpower web around the whole planet.

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The biggest muscle in the body is the brain. With the power of thought we can move mountains — try doing that with your hands alone.

I’ve known Kevin Lewis, on and off, for years. He contacted me when his Manchester-based pop band, Slam!, was trying to break into the charts. Kevin was the singer and guitarist, as well as playing the drums — I told him to concentrate on writing great tunes and to change the name, because it made them sound like a Wham! tribute band.

Kevin’s dreams were more about becoming the new Beach Boys… and it was his love of surfing that taught him the power of the human mind. It was a tough lesson to learn — he shattered his arm in a tumble from his board. There’s a reason why they call those big waves ‘breakers’.

“The doctors warned me I wouldn’t be able to use that arm again for two years or more, and that I would need intensive therapy,” Kevin told me. “The radial nerve had been completely severed. They could only repair it with grafts from the nerves in my leg, and there were no promises.

“I focused all my mental energy on willing my fingers to move. For weeks I tried, and nothing happened, but I refused to accept defeat — I just visualised what I was determined to see, my fingers wiggling and waving at me.”

Kevin had intuitively hit upon the most powerful mindpower technique of all. By forming a powerful mental image of something specific which he wanted with all his heart, and fixing his mind on it intensely and obsessively, he was able to turn his dream into reality.

“Next time I visited the specialist, he couldn’t believe it. He actually grabbed my hand to look at it, as if I had to be performing some kind of illusion. But my recovery was real — so real that within eight months I was surfing again.”

Kevin is an internet guru now, and he’s working with me to make my website even better. His hobby is being “the coolest guy on the planet”, and if you don’t believe me try typing those words into an internet search engine.

This isn’t just vanity, he assures me — it’s something called Web Optimisation. Kevin tried to explain it, but I kept falling asleep.

I’ve set him a challenge, though: whenever anyone types “the weirdest guy in the galaxy” into Google, I want a picture of me to appear.

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When a group of mothers from the Ezer Mizion charity visited my home, Hanna and I took them down to the banks of the Thames at the foot of our gardens, to watch the narrow boats go by.

All of the women were either recovering from cancer or undergoing treatment, and every one of them was determined to beat the disease for the sake of their children.

It seemed nothing less than a sign, a synchronicity with a crystal-clear meaning, when a gorgeous swan sailed up to us. Perched on her back, sheltered by her wings, were her two baby cygnets.