‘I still blow my own mind!’ Uri Geller on spoon-bending, showbiz and the museum he built to his own life

I will bombard you with interesting material,” Uri Geller warns me on WhatsApp, before giving me a tour of his new museum. I expected a healthy amount of exaggeration from the self-described psychic, who has for decades claimed he can bend spoons with his mind. If anything, he is underselling the experience. A 16m (53ft) curved steel spoon – certified the world’s biggest by Guinness World Records in 2019 – sits in front of the Uri Geller Museum in the port city of Jaffa, at Tel Aviv’s southern edge. The giant spoon is a taste of what is to come.

Geller left behind the marble floors and silk-lined walls of his mansion in Berkshire in 2015 and moved back to his native Israel with his wife, Hannah. Soon after resettling, he spent $6m (£5.5m) on an Ottoman-era soap factory, and more than five years renovating it and turning it into a museum. The seemingly adrenaline-fuelled Geller, 75, runs every tour, answers every email sent to the museum – about 300 a day, he says – and, save for his brother-in-law, is the sole employee.Read more