Uri Geller
Many moons ago, Uri Geller was doing an experiment (sorry….. publicity stunt) in conjunction with The Sun newspaper. The experiment involved him flying around in a hot air balloon, and at precisely 3 o’clock he was going to beam ‘psychic energy’ over the whole county (!). There was a special hotline number printed in The Sun, and if anything ‘weird’ happened to you at that particular time, you were to phone this number.

At the time, I was working on the cable car ride at Woburn Safari Park, my first job after leaving school. On the day of Uri’s great experiment, at precisely 3 o’clock, I hit the ‘stop’ button for the cable cars, and me & my fellow cab-monkeys went for a brew.

Five minutes later, we restarted the ride and whenever any of the punters asked why we had stopped, we would just shrug, say “Uri Geller” and walk off.

One of my colleagues spent the next hour ringing The Sun’s hotline number and eventually got through. He explained that at 3 o’clock the cable car ride had mysteriously stopped, the exact time that Uri was pumping his psychic jizz around! He said that it was very unusual for the ride to stop (it wasn’t), he said we had been unable to find the fault (there wasn’t one, I’d deliberately stopped it) and that after a while it had mysteriously ‘just started up again’ (after I had pushed a button with the word ‘start’ on it!).

The following day The Sun ran a big spread, detailing all the miraculous things that people had reported happening at 3 o’clock the previous day, and we were the THIRD story!!! The first was a story of a young boy of about 6 or 7 who had thus far been unable to speak. At precisely 3 o’clock he turned to his mum and said “mummy” for the very first time! The second story was something about an old pocket watch which suddenly started working again after years of dormancy, and then there we were…..

“Staff at Woburn Safari Park were astounded when the cable car ride suddenly stopped at exactly 3pm, leaving 90 people stranded in mid air for over an hour” (it was probably more like 20 or 30 people, and was no where near an hour, but it was The Suns hacks who added those little embellishments).

I can’t remember the exact wording but it was along those lines. I’ve probably still got the clipping from the paper somewhere. Gullible twats.
(Lionel Tiger, Thu 10 Jul 2008, 21:29, 2 replies)

In Richard Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow
he explains that it's not unusual for a stopped watch to start momentarily when held in the hand, because the hand's warmth heats up and re-liquifies oil that has congealed in the mechanism.
( Bob Todd whee, Thu 10 Jul 2008, 23:27, closed)

Dammit
Now I have Tom Jones stuck in my head.


Not actually Tom Jones obviously. That would be weird.
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Mon 14 Jul 2008, 12:34, closed)