December 21, 2006

The much ridiculed world of David Icke has been shocked into real-life turmoil by a court case that threatens to bankrupt Britain's self-styled conspiracy guru.

Icke is fighting to retain copyright of the 16 books he has written over the same number of years. He is involved in a legal battle with a business associate over the written work, artwork and printing disks of his self- published tomes on the theme that we are all victims of a sinister global campaign.

The case, which is being fought in the US, is costing Icke huge amounts. Since losing his job as a BBC sports commentator 15 years ago, after he appeared on the Wogan show in a turquoise shellsuit claiming to be the son of God, Icke has eked out a living from his bizarre theories. He explains: "It's emotionally frustrating when you put 16 years of work in and take enormous amounts of ridicule and now you turn the corner and someone is trying to take it all from you." But, he adds guardedly, things are "well on the way to being sorted".

Icke claims to have built up a worldwide following that hangs on his every word. He still spouts his pet rants: that we are ruled by a sinister elite called the Illuminati whose bodies are inhabited by shape-shifting reptiles. The difference is that, apparently, more people now agree with him.

Icke says the tide has turned because his accurate predictions of world devastation and gloom have given him credibility.

Channel 5 is to screen a documentary on Boxing Day called David Icke: Was He Right? In January 1999, he wrote that "between 2000 and 2002, the United States will suffer a major attack on a large city". In his 1990 paperback, Truth Vibrations, he declared: "The years after the millennium will see gathering conflict all over the world to the point where the United Nations will be overwhelmed." And in the same book he predicted severe hurricanes around the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans after 2000. "People think I'm some kind of prophet but I'm not someone who gets my information from the ether," says Icke. "I've been given the coordinates about how things work."