David Icke

As a footballer, David Icke joined Coventry City in 1967 at the age of 15. He played in the final of the FA Youth Cup (losing to Burnley), but never made it into the first team. He made 37 appearances for Hereford United, between 1971 and 1973, but he was forced to give up the game at the age of 21 by rheumatoid arthritis (which started in his left knee, before manifesting itself in other parts of his body).

He then became involved in sports journalism – first in the weekly Leicester Advertiser, and later on local BBC Radio. This led to appearances on local BBC Television broadcasts in the Midlands, and in 1981 he became a sports presenter on the national programme Newsnight, launched the previous year. Appearances on Breakfast Time and Grandstand followed, but in 1983 the appointment of a new Editor brought his work on Grandstand to a halt. He continued to work for BBC Sport, covering bowls and snooker, and the 1988 Olympics. But in 1990, he expressed strong opposition to the Community Charge which was introduced by the Thatcher government, and this led to his departure from the BBC.

Icke was still battling with arthritis, and his experiences with alternative medicines and philosophies brought him into contact with Green politics. He joined the Green Party, and within six months he was given a position as one of its four 'Principal Speakers' – positions created in lieu of a single party leader. His media career blossomed, but Icke has said that he experienced considerable personal despair and began to sense supernatural influences. He consulted a psychic healer in Brighton named Betty Shine, who told him that he had been sent to heal the earth, and would soon begin to receive messages from the spirit world.

Around this time, Icke met Deborah Shaw, another English psychic who was based in Canada. They began a relationship, with the apparent blessing of Icke's wife Linda, and Shaw began living with the couple. Shaw changed her name to Mari Shawsun, while Icke's wife became Michaela, which she said was an aspect of the Archangel Michael. The relationship with Shaw led to the birth of a daughter in December 1991, although she and Icke had stopped seeing each other by then. Icke's wife gave birth to the couple's second son in November 1992.

In 1991 Icke visited a prehistoric site in Peru, where he experienced phenomena that seem to have led him to believe that he was starting to receive the messages that Betty Shine had referred to. Believing that he had entered a higher level of consciousness, he began dressing exclusively in turquoise – a colour that he saw as a conduit for positive energy. He resigned from his position in the Green Party, and held a press conference (along with his wife, their daughter, and Deborah Shaw) to announce that he was a son of the Godhead. He told reporters that the world as we know it would end in 1997, our habitat destroyed by hurricanes and earthquakes.

This led to the famous appearance on Wogan, in which he repeated his claims. The audience could not suppress their mirth; Icke remarked that Jesus would have been laughed at too.

Icke wrote later that the Wogan interview changed his life for the better; it gave him the courage to develop his ideas without caring what anyone else thought. He wrote several books, all published by mainstream publishers, in which he developed his worldview of New Age conspiracism; but his endorsement of the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion led his publisher to refuse to publish his books, which were self–published thereafter.

Icke believes that the universe is made up of "vibrational" energy, and consists of an infinite number of dimensions that share the same space. He claims that an inter–dimensional race of reptilian beings called the Archons (or Anunnaki) have hijacked the earth, and that a genetically modified human–Archon hybrid race of shape–shifting reptilians known as the Babylonian Brotherhood, the Illuminati, or the "elite", manipulate global events to help keep humans in constant fear. The Archons feed off the "negative energy" that this creates. He claims that many prominent public figures belong to the Babylonian Brotherhood and are propelling humanity towards an Orwellian global fascist state, or New World Order, a post–truth era where freedom of speech is ended. Icke believes that the only way this "Archontic" influence can be defeated is if people wake up to the truth and fill their hearts with love.

Critics have accused Icke of being antisemitic, and denying the Holocaust, with his theories about reptilians serving as a deliberate "code". Others have responded that not all the individuals that Icke names as reptilian are Jewish, and it is just easier for some people to accept that when Icke says reptilians he really means Jews, rather than that he literally means that world politics is controlled by extraterrestrial reptilians.

At the time of writing, Icke continues to speak to huge crowds around the world, earning large sums of money. Wikipedia (from which this popup article is entirely derived) summarises his influence thus: "Interest in Icke's conspiracy theories is widespread and has cut across political, economic, and religious divides. His audiences hold a wide range of beliefs, uniting individuals, and left and right wing groups; from New Agers, and Ufologists, as well as far–right Christian Patriots, and the UK neo–Nazi group Combat 18, which supports his writings. Icke's work is representative of a major global countercultural trend. American novelist Alice Walker is an admirer of Icke's writings, along with comedian Russell Brand and musician Mick Fleetwood. Icke has emerged as a professional conspiracy theorist within a global counter–cultural movement that combines New World Order conspiracism, the truther movement and anti–globalisation, with an extraterrestrial conspiracist subculture."