Icke, David (1952-)

British television presenter who was a familiar figure on television snooker (a form of pool) contests. Icke became a sensation when he suddenly turned visionary, promoting often bizarre channeled revelations that were featured in his books.

Born in Leicester, England, Icke's interest in sports began at an early age. He became a professional goalkeeper for the Coventry City soccer team and later for Hereford United. After his career was thwarted by arthritis, he eventually became a sports journalist and television presenter.

When his media career ended he was married, with two children. He worked for a time for a travel agency, becoming familiar with railway timetables. He was fascinated by steam trains and planned to write a history of the steam line on the Isle of Wight. He moved there in 1984 and championed the cause of the Isle of Wight Steam Railway. He was also active in other causes, notably the welfare of the handicapped. He organized a Special Olympics for children in 1987, which he persuaded BBC Television to film. Icke became the first president of the Isle of Wight Special Olympics Committee, and his associates recall his tremendous enthusiasm for that cause, which did not last. In his later visionary period he put forward the astonishing view that the mentally handicapped have brought their condition upon themselves by acts in former lives.

After his enthusiasm for steam train history and the mentally handicapped waned, Icke next entered Isle of Wight politics through the Liberal Party (since renamed Liberal Democrats), but suddenly dropped out, now converted to the cause of Green party politics. This conversion, which he claims changed his life, occurred after reading the Green party's manifesto. This new cause is documented in his book It Doesn't Have To Be Like This (1990). He also championed the Green cause on television programs.

In 1990, while Icke was seeking relief for his arthritis from a medium and spiritual healer, the medium channeled a message from an entity claiming to be Chinese and to have died 800 years earlier, which stated that Icke "is a healer who is here to heal the earth, and he will be world-famous." Through another channeler, Deborah Shaw (since known as Mari Schawaun), he received messages from "master souls and extraterrestrials" named Attarre and Rakorczy claiming that the Isle of Wight was a center point for life forces and ley lines (ancient straight tracks on the ground) from all over the world, that Earth was in danger of imminent destruction through geological upheavals, and that the Christian church had perverted Christ's teachings by hiding the realities of karmic reincarnation.

In his book The Truth Vibrations (1991), Icke proclaimed himself the Son of God, destined to help remedy the imbalance of Earth's energies and ensure the survival of the planet. The book was disastrous to his television career, which rapidly came to an end, and Icke was widely ridiculed for his bizarre and outlandish beliefs. In a later book, The Robots Rebellion (1994), Icke claimed that the controversy and criticism had served a valuable purpose in giving him a platform from which to put forward his views to a wider public.