Graham Kibble-White interviews David Icke

First published February 2007

In January 2006, I found myself on the phone to David Icke, who’d been pressed into publicity service for the Discovery Channel to promote a show about UFOs he was appearing on as a talking head. Here’s what happened …

OTT: I’m ringing to talk about The World’s Strangest UFO Stories – I believe you’re in one of the episodes later on …

DAVID ICKE: Apparently.

OTT: What are you doing in the show?

DAVID ICKE: They want to talk to me about what’s in my books, 16 of which I’ve produced since 1991. And, part of it is … What’s been happening over the last 16 years is that what I’ve been writing about has been coming to fruition, not that you’d know about that because you haven’t read the book and not a lot of other people would – but people who have, they’d realise that’s what’s been going on.

OTT: I have read a couple of them, actually. Some years ago.

DAVID ICKE: Yeah. Well, I’m talking with the production company at the moment for a television documentary for which the working title is David Icke: The Man Who Got it Right [NB: This came to fruition in the part of 2006 with five's David Icke: Was he Right?]. First of all, the producer saw me talk back in the 1990s and then he’s seen what’s happening in the world today, which is a mirror of what I was talking about. They’ve since gone through the books with the proverbial toothcomb and seen a string of things that are happening now, which were in my books years ago.

OTT: Can you give me some specific examples people might recognise?

DAVID ICKE: Well, it’s over a range of subjects which all interconnect in the end. It’s about what’s happening now with the extraordinary speed of the destruction of freedoms that’s occurred around the world as a result of 9/11. When people read my books – one, for instance, called … And the Truth Shall Set You Free – I wrote that in 1994, and they see what I said the agenda was, and they’re shocked when they see what is happening today. Another one – Alice in Wonderland and The World Trade Centre Disaster which takes the official story of 9/11 apart – is another one that shakes people to their boots. I had journalists around on Monday – and I said to them, “How do you know the official version of 9/11 is true?”.

OTT: And what do they say?

DAVID ICKE: Well, what can you say? “Because that’s what the authorities say”. So the next question is, “How do you know they’re telling you the truth?”. Then comes the silence. See, the people who have told us they had to invade Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction are exactly the same people – never mind the same authorities, they’re the same personalities – who told us the official story of 9/11. Incidentally, in another book, Tales From the Time Loop, written at the end of, or the beginning of the end of, the invasion of Iraq, the initial “shock and awe” campaign of 2003, again, when people read that it says, “There are no weapons of mass destruction” – proved correct. It also says that Bush and Blair agreed to go to war at least a year before. In fact, the people that control Bush and Blair agreed back in the 1990s this was going to happen, and that’s proved to be correct from government leaked documents. So, all in all, people who have read books, particularly who read them now in the light of current events, are shocked by what they read. In terms of this programme, another area that I’m writing about which is absolutely connected to all this other stuff, is the nature of reality.

OTT: Does this tie-in with the UFO programme?

DAVID ICKE: Yeah, yeah. The nature of reality, because, you see, if you want to suppress people’s perception of what is possible, then you suppress the information they have access to about what seems to be possible. The two are completely correlated. If I said to you that if the Earth was round the people on the bottom would fall off, your perception of a possibility of a round Earth would just not be there, and anyone who said it was round, you’d laugh at because the only sensible thing is it’s flat, because that is the only sensible thing according to the information you’ve received.

OTT: Okay …

DAVID ICKE: Now, from the cradle to the grave we are told that basically this world is solid, that there’s empty space between objects. But even at the cutting edge of conventional science, that is being shown to be bollocks. Now, the key thing in terms of … I’m talking about this planet being manipulated by non-human entities through a network of inter-breeding bloodlines that go back to the ancient world.

OTT: Is this the Illuminati?

DAVID ICKE: The Illuminati, yes. The Illuminati are the, if you like, the network of bloodlines that go back to the ancient world. Just very quickly – and I do this in detail in my book – you can pick the bloodlines up in the ancient world when they were the ruling royal family of Babylon and so on. These bloodlines moved up into Europe and one of the many stopping off points was Rome. That’s when you had the Roman Empire and the creation of the Roman church. Now the Roman church, which became, of course, Christianity, is a mirror in everything but the names they use in the church of Babylon. Even the holy days of the Roman church are the holy days of the Babylon church. If you look at the beliefs of Babylon – like the beliefs in Tanis – in the virgin son of the virgin mother, it was a mirror of Jesus, because Jesus is just another name for an ancient recurring story. So these bloodlines then moved further up into Europe, as did the Roman Empire, and they became the royal families and aristocracies of Europe. And through the British Empire and the other European empires – but especially the British and the French – they exported these bloodlines all across the world, including the Americas of course.

OTT: Can you pinpoint specific people who are of this bloodline?

DAVID ICKE: Sure, but if I can just very quickly finish the story.

OTT: Sure.

DAVID ICKE: What happened was, when the European colonial powers apparently gave independence to these countries, what they did was they left out the bloodline – which goes under different names. If every president of the United States was called Rockefeller, there might be a chance of sussing the secret network through which these bloodlines manipulate themselves into power! But these bloodlines have gone on, controlling those countries ever since. It’s been far more effective than during colonial war, because there are two types of dictatorship: One you can see, touch and taste (communism, fascism). The people under those dictatorships know they’re in a situation of control and eventually they rebel against it. When you replace that with hidden-hand control, whereby you give the people the impression they have freedom, the impression they have choice when you’re fundamentally controlling both, then people will sit in the cell forever because they can’t see the flipping bars.

OTT: It’s a subtle thing.

DAVID ICKE: You know, as someone quite rightly put it, if you put a frog into a saucepan of boiling water, it’s going to jump out. But if you put it in a saucepan of cold water and gently warm it up, it’s going to be cooking before it realises it’s been cooked. And that’s the way this agenda-setting Orwellian state, which is unfolding by the minute now, works.

OTT: So we’re cooking, really.

DAVID ICKE: Well, we are in the sense that … a much better analogy is the bars are being constructed around us day by day. And not least because of the media – who do no investigation into what’s really happening at all, they’re just media correspondents who report the smokescreen that’s stirred up to obscure what’s really happening. By the time we realise we’re in bars, the door’s already going to be shut. These bloodlines manifest themselves in the unique families who control the banking systems, the trans-national corporations, the oil cartel, the pharmaceutical cartel, and they turn up in major positions of power in the government. The Bush family is one of them.

OTT: Really?

DAVID ICKE: I’ve been writing about them for a long time. I was writing about the Bush family in great detail before the present village idiot was ever spoken of.

OTT: To give me an idea of how this works, would the Prime Minister and people at the upper echelons of power in the UK actually be aware of this bloodline, or are they being manipulated?

DAVID ICKE: Right, well, there’s no question that there’s two answers to it. And that is … well, there’s one answer to it really, and that’s that it depends who you’re talking about. Just to do some background: This could never work if too many people knew about it. I know people … I’ve not sat in a darkened room coming to these conclusions. I’ve spent 16 years travelling to more than 40 countries talking to thousands of people and that’s why my books are so constantly sourced at the end of each chapter. The structure that they [the Illuminati] use is like a compartmentalised pyramid. If you think of any organisation today – a government, a business, a university, a newspaper, whatever – the structure is a compartmentalised pyramids. At the top of the pyramid are the tiny, tiny few who know how all the bits stick together and what the organisation is really out to achieve. The further you come down from that pyramid people you’re meeting more and more people who at every step down know less and less about the organisation. They only know what they need to know to do their job and then they go home. They’re not trying to manipulate anybody.

OTT: So there isn’t a moment when someone rise through the ranks and a person says to them., “We’ve got something to tell you” and it’s all unloaded on the,? Is it more subtly revealed?

DAVID ICKE: if you’re talking about the really key people, the few chosen ones who are brought through into, for instance, government, in awareness and the number of people in awareness are few, compared to the people who think they’re doing things for other reasons. I mean, the Blair cabinet. The brain cell count is not enormous is it? You talk to anyone whether it was old Mo Mowlam or other people who have come out of the cabinet, they’ll tell you there is no cabinet government, it’s a diktat from Blair. The next question, therefore is, where does Blair get his diktat from?

OTT: That’s what I’m trying to ask. Is he aware of this level of authority above him?

DAVID ICKE: Oh, he’s aware. Absolutely he’s aware. That’s why you couldn’t get a cigarette paper between Blair and Clinton, and you couldn’t get a cigarette paper between Blair and the far, far right George Bush. I mean, they’re both answering to the same masters. People think it’s a great coincidence that Margaret Thatcher comes to power in 1979 and launches off with an economic system called Thatcherism. Reagan-Bush comes to power in 1980 and launches with exactly the same economic system called Reaganomics. I mean, please! It’s coordinated. This is where the media miss it, and this is where most people miss it – you can’t understand what’s happening in the world until you take that next step above the people who are apparently in power to where the whole thing’s being orchestrated from. I mean, please, does anyone really think George Bush is running America? I mean, please!

OTT: Do you see a time coming when the Illuminati will do something that will really confirm their existence in the eyes of everyone?

DAVID ICKE: Well, the confirmation of what it happening will come when the cell door finally clicks shut.

OTT: When do you think that will be? And how will it manifest itself?

DAVID ICKE: You know, we’re talking about how will it manifest itself, it’s manifesting itself everyday.

OTT: But for the man on the street, what do you think will be the moment the penny drops?

DAVID ICKE: Well there’s a very simple answer to that: It depends how intelligent the man on the street is. I’ll tell you from my own experience there are millions and millions of “men and women on the street” as they’re called, all over the world, not least in America, who have sussed it. I mean, the idea that … the image that people get over here … I mean, I’m married to an American, I go to America a lot … the idea people get over here that America is all these mad, crazy people following Bush, there are millions of Americans who are absolutely terrified at what’s happening, because they’ve had 9/11 which was an engineered inside job. Any two-year-old could take the official story apart. My goodness me! I do it in the book, and so have others.

And so, what we’re dealing with – this is another important point here for people to understand – the most deceptive technique that advances every day the agenda of global control is one I’ve dubbed “problem, reaction, solution”. It’s absolutely devastating. What is does is this: You want to change society in a way that, if you did it openly, you know you’d get an outraged public reaction. You want to introduce all these changes, all this surveillance, all this control, all this disruption of freedom, you want to launch a war on terrorism and kill and maim hundreds of thousands of civilians. People would be outraged, they’d storm the White House gardens or outside Downing Street if they said this is what they were going to do. So you don’t do it openly. Stage one, create a problem. It could be a terrorist attack, a government collapse to ruin a currency, whatever. You then tell the public the version of that problem you want them to believe. What you’re looking for at stage two here is a reaction from the public of outrage, of fear, and words to the effect of, “This can’t go on, something must be done, what are they going to do about it?” Then you go to stage three in which you offer changes in legislation, changes in society, the solutions to the problems you’ve covertly created. We have a war on terrorism. We have all this destruction of freedom which is increasing by the day. I have a website – www.davidicke.com – which follows these changes daily, and I can tell you, if people just followed the number of things that are happening that are taking away basic freedom and building this Orwellian nightmare it would make their bloody hair curl. But of course, we must know who killed Phil Mitchell, what the lottery numbers are going to be and the price of flipping beer. Therefore, we’re so mesmerised by that crap we don’t see the guy tip-toeing behind us with a swatter.

But the point is that I’m saying about “problem, reaction, solution”, there is all these things that I’m talking about are happening for one reason and one reason only: 9/11. Which was not orchestrated by Bin Laden, by the way. Who’s benefited from 9/11? Only those people that wanted to stamp on society.

OTT: How successful do you feel you are in getting your message across? Are you constantly frustrated?

DAVID ICKE: Well, I get frustrated at talking to journalists, yes. Certainly I was on Monday, crikey.

OTT: What happened?

DAVID ICKE: Well, you know, you talk to people … See, it’s not just journalists. The world is imprisoned by preconceived ideas. By preconceived ideas in general. What preconceived ideas do is they edit how people perceive reality. I mean, this has been shown in psychological research, which is one of the things I write about. When you put two people in a room – and I’ve seen experiments of this being done – you get two people who have really preconceived ideas about each other, right. You get them to talk to each other and you film it then take the people aside individually and ask them what the other one said and how they said it. And then you play the tape back, and they are shocked because they never heard what the other person really said. They heard what they thought they said after it had gone through the filter – the editor – of their preconceived idea of that person.

OTT: Do you feel that happens to you?

DAVID ICKE: All the time, mate! People come with a preconceived idea … I’ll tell you what’s happened, it makes me laugh. I saw a wonderful sticker in California once, it said, “You laugh me at me ‘cos I’m different, I laugh at you ‘cos you’re all the same”. It does sum up my experience in many ways. But, I’ve actually said to journalists, things that are mainstream science. I don’t go around taking the piss.

OTT: I wonder, then – when you do interviews it must be a perpetually disappointing experience.

DAVID ICKE: Well not really. I’ll tell you what it is mate – sorry I didn’t get your name.

OTT: It’s Graham

DAVID ICKE: Oh yeah, Graham. I’ll tell you what it is. I’m not personally frustrated about what people write about me. That’s not the point. I’ve taken so much shit over the years that it goes in one ear and out of the other. I don’t care what people think of me. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if I did. What frustrates me is when I see what I’ve been warning about, year after year happening minute by minute, day after day, getting faster and faster and journalists come to me – as one did on Monday – and ask me questions about tracksuits. So, turning around to the programme, one of the things I talk about on the programme is this nature of reality. If you believe – as we’re led to believe all through our lives by the information we receive that this world is solid and our bodies are solid and it’s all dense, physical and the rest of it – then the idea of a body being able to move from one shape to another (what is known as shape-shifting) something that goes way back into the ancient world in terms of accounts of it and all the rest of it – then that’s ridiculous. It’s not possible. But … I’ll tell you what it’s like with the media. When people said the Earth was round and people said you could fall off the bottom, today’s media, in terms of me, they want to hear that I’m saying the Earth is round, but they don’t want to hear me explain the law of gravity. Do you follow me?

OTT: Why do you continue to entertain the media, then? Is it because it’s the only conduit you’ve got to get your message out?

DAVID ICKE: I tell, you, it’s not, because my website – www.davidicke.com – gets vast numbers of hits from all over the world, it’s an enormous source of alternative information.

OTT: And people come and see you talk.

DAVID ICKE: I’m talking in London on 5 May at the Brixton Academy. Four months in advance the tickets are just flying out, which is unheard of for someone talking about this stuff. The talk, by the way is “Freedom or Fascism: The Time to Choose” and, my God, is that where we’re at.

OTT: Why do you still court the media, then?

DAVID ICKE: I don’t court the media. I don’t go looking for it. I was asked by the press officers for the Discovery Channel if I’d talk to people to promote the show, but point is this, er, Graham. I know from my experience over 16 years, when you talk about these things no matter how unfairly it is transmitted to the public, there are still people who are intelligent enough to see through it.

OTT: So that’s why you do it? You think a kernel of truth gets through?

DAVID ICKE: They don’t get through to the majority, they get through to an increasingly significant minority. So, for me, talking to someone from the media, it may be frustrating when the stupid questions come at you – I have to say, you are a refreshing exception to that – but if just a handful of people get it as a result of me doing it, then I’ll keep doing it.

OTT: Have you ever thought that if you tailored what you were saying and didn’t make it so extreme it might be received better?

DAVID ICKE: There are people, you know, all around the world, thousands of researchers, who are operating at that level, and good luck to them – the more the merrier. But, for me, I have a simple philosophy: If it’s true, then why not say it? That’s my approach. We are now looking down the barrel of the shotgun. We don’t have time to be subtle anymore.

OTT: Doesn’t it worry you you’re possibly repelling more people than you’re attracting?

DAVID ICKE: But, but, but … you know. Intelligent people who are intelligent enough not just to get it, but to start to do something about it, are not going to be put off by that. 16 years ago I couldn’t walk down any street in Britain without being laughed at by most people. A comedian only had to say my name and he got a laugh. My kids were ridiculed by these “brave” people. When I first started talking about this I used to book the village hall, I used to put the chairs out, I used to talk to no bugger, put the chairs back and go home poorer than when I arrived. Now, I’ve published 16 books, I’ve got my own publishing company that does it so I don’t have to worry about some editor trying to stop me saying, “What about the lawyers?” Media lawyers only have one word, which is “no” most of the time. I don’t have that problem. Last time I spoke in Los Angeles – 2,000 sell-out. I’ve spoken in a tiny, tiny place in northern California called Mount Shasta – could have sold it out three times. This is 5,000 miles from home. In London it’ll be a sell out on 6 May. My books are getting more and more popular around the world, they’re in nearly 20 languages. I think I’ve made a decent contribution to waking people up.

OTT: You seem to be on a mission. So what’s your goal?

DAVID ICKE: It may sound dead trite, and I don’t care if it does, really. I have a simple ambition. I want to see people free to express their uniqueness. I want to see my kids free to express their uniqueness and not be controlled by some global, fascist, Orwellian nightmare. That’s where we’re going. And unless we wake up, we’re just sleep-walking into it. I’m trying to set off the alarm clock so we might wake up before we step over the edge.

OTT: What progress do you think you’ve made since 1991?

DAVID ICKE: Massive. Massive. Yeah. Massive. What’s happening now, people in the media – they’re not all stupid, I’m not saying they are, but what I am saying is the ratio seems to be very bloody high. But there are some intelligent people in the media, there are. I knew some when I worked in it. I also, when I worked in it, realised that … you don’t need an intelligence test to get a job at the BBC for instance. In fact it’s a bad career move in some departments. But, they’re coming to me now and wanting to help me get this stuff out.

OTT: Are you a one-man band, or is there an organisation?

DAVID ICKE: No, you’re talking to him, really. The publishing in this country is run by my former wife of 25 years, Linda. My daughter works for it, and so does my boy when he’s not in his rock band. One person runs the organisation of getting the books printed in America and then there’s me. I do have a couple of people who help me with the website technically, but I do all the research, all the writing, all the website content, everything.

OTT: So you’re punching above your weight in terms of visibility.

DAVID ICKE: Oh, you’re kidding, yeah. See, the thing is, Graham, I don’t want an organisation. I don’t want it to be about me, I want it to be about the organisation. Funnily enough, I’m an extremely private person, I don’t like being in the public eye. I never have. It’s strange because I’ve had this stream of jobs that have put me there. It’s an irony that’s not lost on me. The point is, I do things all the time I don’t really want to do, because if I don’t do them, then I can’t be effective in … how can you be effective in getting the information out if you don’t put your head above the parapet, much as you don’t want to? My son Jaymie – J-A-Y-M-I-E – is 13. He’s a brilliant goalkeeper. He’s been on the books for Portsmouth for the last four years. We’ve just left there, actually, because we didn’t like the way it was organised, but we’re now talking with another premiership club. Some of the greatest enjoyment I get in life is actually coaching him. I’ve been coaching him since he was seven. Seeing him progress, it’s been an incredible antidote to all this stuff.

OTT: I want to get an idea of what it’s like to be you. If you see all these things going on around you – the conspiracy and the problems – can you be happy? Are you happy in your life?

DAVID ICKE: I tell you what you have to do, Graham, and you have to be able to move between – as I do seamlessly – knowing that children are being abused and tortured by some of the most famous people on the planet and the organisations they operate … I mean, you won’t print this, but I’ve printed it in my book and said it on American radio goodness know how many times over the last 10 years: [name omitted, for obvious reasons], is an infamous paedophile and child-killer. I’m not kidding you. Just like [another omitted name] was. I name him in a book called The Biggest Secret as a child abuser and child killer. A journalist, when the book first came out in 1998, rang him and read him the section and he just said, “Oh, David Icke must be mad”. I never heard another thing! Why? Because it was true.

OTT: They’ve never brought legal action against you?

DAVID ICKE: Oh, no, no.

OTT: But if you have knowledge of all these things, i just wonder how you can have any contentment.

DAVID ICKE: Like I say you have to be able to move seamlessly between that sort of information and the frustration of seeing this thing unfolding by the day, and then wondering if Leicester City are going to beat Tottenham Hotspur. Or, reading a magazine about steam trains. Me and my boy love going to stream trains. And just having a laugh. Me and my wife have a lot of laughs. If you’re in a joke of a society, you can’t help but bloody laugh a lot. But it’s not easy, mate. It can pull you down.

OTT: I can imagine. I get the sense you have quite a lot of frustration.

DAVID ICKE: Oh, by far the biggest thing. The frustration’s the biggest thing. I described it once as like a cow rushing into a field saying, [in a vague Brummie accent] “Hey, hey, I’ve just found out! You know when those lorries come and they take us away, they’re not taking us on vacation. What they’re doing is they cut your throat, they bleed you dry and then they cut you up and put you in packages and the humans eat you!”. And what are the cows going to go? They’re going to go, “Oh, don’t be stupid! I’ve got me swimming-trunks! I’m all ready to go. Don’t be stupid!”. You can imagine the frustration. That’s what I feel like. I guess it must have been like this in Nazi Germany. You know the people in Nazi Germany who sussed what was going on before that happened, but the thing is we’re now talking of a global version of that.

As my books reveal in enormous detail, the true Nazis … people like Josef Mengele, the angel of death in the concentration camps, he was taken to America and South America, he operated in the United States after the war in something called Project Paperclip, which was a CIA operation to get the main Nazi scientists and people like that to the US. There was an infamous mind-control project which was denied by the government but came to light eventually, they had to pay some compensation to victims, called MK-Ultra, you may remember it in the 1970s. Josef Mengele was actually one of the key architects of that. I’ve talked to loads of people in America who were victims of that who met Mengele. He was known as Dr Green.

So the amount of research I’ve done in the last 16 years, it’s just unbelievable. And what gives me more and more confidence that it’s correct – not just because I research it anyway, because it’s happening by the day now.

OTT: Without getting too depressing about it, do you think you’re going to go to your grave thinking, “I wish they’d listened to me” or do you forsee a breakthrough?

DAVID ICKE: There will be a breakthrough. The sensible [people], they realise the path leads to the edge of the cliff … most people who are more concerned with the size of Jordan’s breasts, etc. they have to look over the edge, teeter over the edge and have someone grab them by the shirt and pull them back before they realise, actually, they’d probably better change direction. So what I’m seeing, Graham, is it’s going to get a lot worse before enough people hear the pennies click.

OTT: What’s your personal feeling towards these people? Do you think, “Damn them”?

DAVID ICKE: Yeah, it was due to run out at the end of 2006, and they said, “Let’s keep you in for another 18 months”.

OTT: Why do you think they did that?

DAVID ICKE: I learned a long time ago not to do things for people, because you just get disappointed. I do things because I believe they’re right. I don’t care if people abuse me, I’d still rather like them to have the opportunity to be free to express themselves into the future and not be told … I’m not just talking about being told what to say, we’re being told what to think here. I don’t see this in the mainstream media, but because I have the website that I run I follow these things in great detail and I have people who scan the papers and the internet, finding the emerging technologies. These technologies are now emerging that can read your bloody mind. There’s one this week that’s been patented which is a lie detector test without you realising that you’re actually taking it.

This is the other key thing, Graham. I was saying more than 10 years ago in my books that the agenda was to have a microchip population, where children are microchipped at birth and the indentity card thing … There’s “problem, reaction, solution” and then there’s the technique that goes alongside that which I call “the totalitarian tiptoe”. And that is, you want to get from A-Z, you may want to get to Z, that’s where you’re going, but if you get to Z in one leap, the change is so vast that people just look up and say, “What the hell is going on?”. So you go from A, to B, to C etc. And so the identity card is a stepping stone to the microchip. I was talking about the microchip agenda more than a decade ago, and now people are being microchipped. I even named the chip and the company behind it in one of my books. Applied Digital Solutions is the very chip and that’s the company and the chip that they’re chipping people with in America.

Now, here’s a quick story, to tell you the real deal here. I was approached in 1998 in America by a CIA scientist who joined the agency in his early 20s. He was a genius in the area of magnetics and they wanted to use that, he felt, for the good of people. He thought he was serving his country, as many people did because we’re in the compartmentalisation thing. When he joined the CIA he realised his knowledge was not wanted to help people but control them, and he realised this agenda that I’m talking about was real. I said to him, an obvious question, “If that’s how you feel, why do you stay with them?”. As he answered he opened his shirt and on his chest was like a see-through shampoo sachet with this orange liquid in it and he said, “This is why I have to stay”. He told me the story of … they call these things “patches” in the CIA – someone’s been “patched”. He told me this story that when he realised what they wanted him to use his knowledge for, which was … one thing was killing people without weapons – killing people electro-magnetically, no blood, hey, isn’t that great?! He refused to work for them, he said, “I walked away”. He said, “One day I left home to go somewhere and I have a complete period of missing time, I remember nothing. The next thing I remember I woke up on a medical type bench in this room. When I got my faculties back I realised I’d got something stuck to my chest.” And what it is, it’s a drug which his body was manipulated into needing to survive.

These patches have to be replaced every 72 hours, and if they’re not, he starts to die an agonising death, because he tried it once when he refused to work for them with a patch. He said there are thousands and thousands of scientists who are patched so their genius will be used to this end. “I’m holding knowledge back from them that I know, and I’m letting them know I’m doing it because once the scientists have been bleed dry of their useful knowledge, they don’t patch them again so they die and their knowledge of what they’re involved in dies with them”.

The reason I tell you this story in relation to microchips is this: He told me – this was in 1998 – “First of all,” he said, “there are microchips in secret underground laboratories that are so small they can be inserted by an hypodermic needle in a vaccination programme. Secondly, even though there are people who have some awareness of what’s going on think that the microchipping campaign is to do with electronic tagging, it’s only part of it. It’s not so much the message from the chip in the person going to the computer that people need to worry about, it’s the message coming the other way. Once you’re chipped, the computer can manipulate you, either as an individual, or en masse. So they can manipulate you emotionally, they can manipulate you mentally, and they can take you out physically from a distance.”

This is what the microchip agenda is all about, and it’s happening. It’s happening. But you know the federal food and drug administration in America which gives the official yay or nay to things coming on the market? They have in the last year given approval for microchipped people. You know, I don’t see that in The Daily Mail.

OTT: I want to change the focus slightly. I wondered what you thought was the greatest common misconception about you?

DAVID ICKE: The greatest common misconception is that I’m crazy. This is the way it works: All you need to do to control a mass of people is to control the norms in society, what is considered normal. What is considered right and wrong, moral and immoral, sane and insane, possible and impossible. Once you control them, you control the people, but more than that, you can get the people to control, or attempt to control, those who don’t accept those norms. So the norms, which are bombarded at us through the education system and through the media … But the media is also controlled by norms. Not only do you control the people, but you control the media, because the media takes its point of reference of someone’s credibility on the basis of norms.

Two centuries ago the media would have given the treatment that they’ve given to me to those who said the Earth was round. Because, the norm was that it was flat. Now once the norms switch through weight of evidence, from that moment on, anyone who says it’s flat gets the treatment. So the media is completely controlled by norms, because that’s the perception of reality that it comes from. So what happens is, you control the norms, and you control the perception of possibility and you create this … what I call this “hassle-free zone”.

What happens is, if you live your life within this hassle-free zone of norms – in other words you don’t question them and conform to them – then people will leave you alone. “Oh, he’s a regular guy!” Once you start to question those norms, live your life in a different way, challenge what these norms say, then it’s just the nature of the way people are programmed – and it is programming – they don’t even need the authorities to jump on them, because the people jump on them. You know when you get to the edge of this hassle-free zone and you’re thinking, “Shall I, shan’t I say what I really think?” … because, if this gets in the article, ask yourself, how many times a day do you surpress what you really think and what you really feel? How many times in your life have you surpressed what you really want to do because you fear the reaction of others, right?

The fear of what other people think is the prison that holds the masses in servitude. And what keeps the masses in servitude is the masses policing the masses. We laugh at sheep. “Ah look at them stupid sheep following the one in front!” At least sheep need a sheepdog to keep them in line, we’ve even dispensed with that. We keep ourselves in line. So when we get to the edge of the hassle-free zone and we’re saying, “Shall I, shan’t I say what I really think?” you’re not thinking, “If I do, what will George Bush think? What will Tony Blair think? What would the governor of the Bank of England think? What would the editor of the Sun think?”. No. You’re thinking, “What will my mum think? What about the people down the bar?”. We’re all policing each other, and while they’re doing it, those who are manipulating this process will continue to impose more and more power over us.

OTT: Do you ever miss your old life?

DAVID ICKE: Oh my God no.

OTT: It seems a bit incongrous now.

DAVID ICKE: I tell you what, my life’s been a series of links in a chain – or points on a road that have been going in the same direction. When I look back, everything in my life has been perfect for what I’m doing now. I’ll tell you what, The Observer, funnily enough, actually contacted me yesterday. They want to do a picture in the next few weeks – I don’t know why, it’s for some kind of feature – they want to do a picture of all the television sports presenters of the 1980s together. It’s going to be a really surreal experience because the person who presented the sport doesn’t exist to me anymore. You know what I mean? It was a different life.

OTT: Are you going to go along?

DAVID ICKE: Oh yeah, it’ll be a laugh.

OTT: It seems so bizarre. What sort of small talk are you going to trade with them?

DAVID ICKE: I’ve no idea. Can you imagine it? I’d better keep it on the level of sport, I guess, because I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. The BBC sports department when I was there, it was so far to the right it met itself coming back.

OTT: It’s a whimsical question, but when was the last time you got someone coming up to you wanting to talk about Saturday Superstore?

DAVID ICKE: Well, not Saturday Superstore, but football a lot.

OTT: You still get that?

DAVID ICKE: Oh yeah.

OTT: How do you feel about the connection with that world? Are you still happy to maintain that?

DAVID ICKE:Oh yeah. You know, if you lock yourself off only in one world then you lose perspective yourself. I move across loads of worlds. I sit in front of this telly and my wife really laughs, because over and over I say, “I used to work with him”. There’s a guy on the telly now, a guy called John Barnwell who’s the head of the Football Managers’ Association – used to be a manager and footballer. He was my coach when I played. I’ve had an amazing life. If I was on This is Your Life – although, of course, I wouldn’t be – they’d have to do three programmes.

OTT: There have been extraordinary phases, haven’t there?

DAVID ICKE: Yeah, but they’ve all led in the same direction. Every previous phase has given me something, which has given me the ability to do something now. By the way, I’m going on the Wogan show, would you believe? [And, indeed, he did, on UKTV Gold's Wogan: Now and Then].

OTT: What are your thoughts on that? Obviously the whole “they’re not laughing at you” thing is going to be brought up. Are you happy to talk about that now?

DAVID ICKE: Oh yes. It’s going to be a very different interview. The first interview set me free because the ridicule that followed led to the situation where one of two things would happen. Either you’d end up shaking in the corner; or you stand up, you put your chest out, you lift your chin, you say, “I am me. If you don’t like it, well, do the other thing, because that’s all right with me”. What I did, as a result of that, was I let go of the fear of what other people thought. As a result I set myself free of the prison that 99.9% of the population live in. It’s only when you let go of that you realise how small the prison was that you were in before.

WITH THANKS TO DAVID ICKE