When our political leaders get involved in way-out ‘spirituality’, we really sit up and take note.
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| Cherie Blair sans pantalons |
These days that paragon of political virtue, ex-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, has long forgotten his search for mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction. The on-going disaster of Iraq has been consigned to history’s dustbin, along with the tenets of the Labour Party upon whose shoulders he rose to power. He’s allegedly making a decent jet-set living promoting peace, faith, Louis Vuitton handbags and J.P. Morgan. But at the height of the Blairs’ prominence as international political celebs and Bush babies, they were happy to be guided by spiritual ‘style guru’ Carole Caplin. Carole’s
good at putting important folk in touch with the right psychic practitioners. One she recommened to Cherie was Lilias Curtin. Mrs. Curtin maintains that negative feelings are contained in a 'thought field' surrounding the body and those problems are caused by negative patterns known as 'perturbations', in the 'thought field'. You can cure these, says Mrs Curtin, by tapping on certain points on the body in a specific sequence:
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| Bouncy Guru, Carole Caplin |
‘By tapping on the correct meridian points in the right order the perturbations are subsumed and the negative emotion disappears,’ she says. Mrs Curtin also offers electronic gem therapy. This is a routine where a light is shone through a gemstone onto ailing parts of the body.Also on the menu is magnet therapy, which 'helps dislodge toxins' by applying magnets to the body. If none of this works, Mrs. Curtin’s clinic provides aqua detox therapy, a type of foot spa which claims to flush out toxins. One might not imagine that a talented entertainer, an impressionist known for his acute satire of everything surrounding the UK government, Rory Bremner, would get sucked into all this, yet he reportedly bought one of the foot spas for £1,800.
Mrs Curtin, who lives in Fulham with her lawyer husband Richard and two sons, also offers 'voice technology thought field therapy'. So, as Britain’s National Health Service is doomed to plummet headlong into the private American model, it’s good to know we have alternatives available.
In an article entitled The Weird World of Cherie in theDaily Mail in 2002, Lynda Lee-Potter described Cherie Blair as ‘gullible, bordering on the cranky when it comes to alternative medicine, homeopathy, gurus and the power of crystals and rocks’. We learned that she also had an alleged dependence on ‘Sylvia’, a Dorking-based medium. As Shakespeare asked, ‘Who is Sylvia – what is she?’, in this case, she’s Carole Caplin’s mother. Sylvia was a very ‘spiritual’ woman. She referred to some of the sessions she and Carol gave as a ‘Pamper’. An ‘Ayurvedic doctor’ had once presented Sylvia with a special questionnaire. When a new client arrived, this was used to investigate all aspects of their lives – diet, work, sexual proclivities. Or, as she told the Daily Telegraph, ‘everything, from bowels to bereavement.’
According to another revealing piece by Jamie Doward and Ben Whitford, published in The Observer on September 21, 2003, the glamorous ex-model Carole learned her highly persuasive trade in the 1980s working for London-based Programmes Ltd, a secretive telemarketing company which ‘sought to dominate every aspect of its employees' lives as it transformed them into powerfully persuasive communicators who would be capable of selling anything to anyone.’ The company appears to have had all the hallmarks of a brainwashing cult. It even established its own school for employees’ children, buying up any available property in the vicinity of its offices. Programmes Ltd. soon promoted Caplin to Supervisor, and she bought a company flat. If you had the guts to stick it out for more than a year with Programmes Ltd., you were given the privilege of being sent onto the 'Exegesis course', described by The Observer as ‘a quasi-psychotherapy programme designed to 're-birth' participants by encouraging them to face up to their inner fears. Its fundamental message was that devotees had to tell the truth at all times, no matter how painful this could be.’
Exegesis was run by a former actor and son of a meat salesman, Robert Fuller, who changed his name to the more sophisticated ‘D'Aubigny’. Also on board were record producer Tony Visconti’s girlfriend Kim Coe. The Exegesis course had a peculiar element of instruction known as 'raising the confront' where attendees were taught argumentative voice techniques and ordered to say what they hated about each other. Staff at Programmes Ltd. were instructed never to talk about Exegesis or mention its leader, D’Aubigny/Fuller.
As the boss of Exegesis, Fuller deeply impressed many course pupils with his forceful personality. Some likened his leadership charisma to that of someone like Richard Branson. The multi-million selling musician of Tubular Bells fame, Mike Oldfield was on the course. The induction period was four days of screaming aloud your worst memories. You were expected to unearth and reveal your ‘demons’ and bring them out into the open. Mike Oldfield said;
'I was hyper-ventilating and I confronted my panic and found out where it came from. I turned into a new-born infant. The memory of that second birth was still there, deep inside my subconscious. I could feel the newness of the air on my skin, on my fingers and on my hair.' However, he later added; 'It made you very insecure and it made you focus on whatever it was that was bothering you deeply in your subconscious. It sort of pushed you, like doing psychotherapy in three days.'
What happened after the ‘second level’ of the course is not something ex-members talk about, although there were the usual media allegations involving mind games and even group sex.
By the mid-80s the hard core who had benefitted from Exegesis training formed the core of a highly focused telemarketing team who could sell just about anything, and they had some big clients, Vodafone among them. The success of Programmes Ltd. was greatly enhanced by its industrious subsidiary agency, the Exhibitionists. There was a particular employment condition if you wanted to be an Exhibitionist. You needed to be a very attractive female. And the majority were ex-models, specifically trained to cajole company directors into placing their telemarketing with Programmes Ltd.. Pearl Read, a close friend of Carole Caplin, ran the Exhibitionists. At one time she’d been married to one of London’s leading prostitution bosses, a rival to the notorious Kray twins, Joe Wilkins. Like the Krays, he was one of those ‘good old boy’ East End gangsters who was lucky enough in 1976 to be given a conditional discharge after he was collared for helping to run a vice racket. Pearl Read, however, staunchly denied that the Exhibitionists had anything to do with prostitution. However, the Exegesis-trained lovely lady Exhibitionists, by 1985, had managed to swell Programmes Ltd., establishing the capability to make 10,000 sales calls a day, into the UK’s biggest telemarketing business. Not bad when you realise that their 1981 turnover was a mere £21,000, and by 1990 it was a whopping £6.5 million.
The shareholders loved it, especially the biggest, Tory MP for Hastings Kenneth Warren, whose day job was parliamentary private secretary to Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher's mentor.
But cults attract critics and questions were asked in Parliament. David Mellor, then a Home Office minister, condemned the organisation as ‘puerile, dangerous and profoundly wrong’ and it was investigated by the police (although no charges were ever brought). Soon Programmes Ltd. was no more, but it’s still around as the hugely successful telemarketing business, Merchants Group.
Exegesis exploded into a range of various other outfits, whilst Monsieur D'Aubigny joined forces with Visconti to form their own record company.
We’re used to the idea of cults being religious-based bodies, and those who escape them usually have very little positive to say about their experience. However, Exegesis was the ideal cult for 80s Yuppies. Those who were in it, seem by all accounts to have nothing but happy memories; it was all about sell, sell, sell, and ultimately making money, a movement which seems like the foundation of everything which gets up our noses today, with ‘greed is good’ at the top of the list.
Carole Caplin, brimming with all the positive vibes of the curvaceous Exhibitionists, formed her own New Age companies. Among them was Holistix, devising psychic-styled health and well-being exercises for very wealthy clients, who would later include the UK’s First Lady, Cherie Blair.
Caplin penned number of health and well-being books, appeared on TV, with her own Channel 4 show, The Carole CaplinTreatment. According to the press, she was responsible for introducing the Blairs to a range of ‘spiritual’ beliefs. To get close to a Prime Minister one needs to be particularly skilled in the art of persuasion, but before long, she found herself on holiday in Mexico with the Blairs in 2001. Wearing their swimming costumes, they all gathered in a steam bath and took part in a‘re-birthing’ procedure involving smearing mud and fruit over each other’s bodies. Of course, everyone in Britain realises that papers like the Daily Mail have little good to say about politicians who don’t fit their political remit, but in addition to all the crystals and aroma therapy, with Sylvia’s contact with the spirit world, the all-in-the-tub-together detox bath scrubs, it would be a shame to leave the Blairs without mentioning this snippet from Paul Scott at the Mail on Linedated May 16th 2008, when Cherie was on tour promoting her autobiography:
The Strange Case of The Inflatable Trousers:
‘While in Downing Street, Mrs Blair became a regular visitor to the Mayfair-based therapist Bharti Vyas. Mrs Vyas, who has no recognised medical qualifications, recommended to Cherie the wearing of ‘flowtron leggings’ to improve her wellbeing. Once a month, and helped by Mrs Vyas, Cherie would climb into the vibrating pants, which resemble a huge pair of inflatable wetsuit bottoms, which were then filled with compressed air then deflated at 30-second intervals.’
‘Another unorthodox procedure which Mrs Blair was persuaded to undergo by Vyas was a £35-a-session process called Magnetic Resonance Therapy. Mrs Vyas, a self-styled ‘world-renowned holistic therapist’, fitted Cherie with special goggles which showed a series of kaleidoscopic colours. She was also given headphones from which came a procession of strange, rhythmic noises. Barrister and Judge Cherie was then asked to lie down on a mattress containing a network of magnetic coils. These, according to Vyas, were supposed to ‘rebalance the magnetic field’ in her body, while the ‘alpha waves’ from the goggles were meant to relax her brain. Surprise, surprise, neither strange therapy merits inclusion in Cherie's memoirs.’
Such are the people who judge us, control and seek to shape our lives. I rest my case, m’Lud.
Maggie's Magic Guru
Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher, who was to the world of the spirit what Orson
She conversed with Sri Chandraswamy, a self-declared faith healer and preacher who claimed to be able to ‘cast spells’, in 1975 in her Commons office, where the mystic arrived wearing beads around his neck, an orange shawl and carrying a Gandalf-style staff. This was all revealed by former Indian Foreign Minister Shri Natwar Singh, who was present when these liaisons took place. Apparently the powerful bearded guru so impressed the Meryl Streep lookalike that she approved a second meeting, wherein she agreed to a couple of his odder requests. One was to wear a shabby amulet he had given her around her wrist and don a special red dress.
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| Sri Chandraswamy |
Surprisingly, clad in crimson and wearing her talisman, Maggie turned up for her second meeting. The guru presented Mrs Thatcher with five strips of paper, asking her to write a question on each, with Mr Singh’s help as translator. According to Singh, she displayed 'scarcely camouflaged irritation’ when Chandrsaswamy closed his eyes and went into a trance. When he came round, prior to unfolding the rolled up strips, he accurately revealed each question she had written.
‘Irritation gave way to subdued curiosity,’ says Mr Singh. ‘By the fourth question, I thought, she began to consider Chandraswamy a holy man indeed. Chandraswamy was like a triumphant guru and took off his slippers and sat on the sofa in the lotus position. I was appalled but Mrs Thatcher seemed to approve. She asked more questions and, in each case, Chandraswamy’s response overwhelmed her.’ But by then the sun had set, some kind of mystical omen, and the guru made his exit. The rest, as they say, is history.
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| Mrs. T with another one of her Gurus, a famous hospital visitor. She tried five times to get him a Knighthood, but succeeded in the end. |
There are many ways of raising your spiritual game, but the great gurus plug into what they see as ‘the order of the cosmos’ with ease. So it’s hardly surprising that another movement should blossom under the banner ‘Cosmic Ordering’. In The Scotsmanon 8 April 2006, British TV viewers got the full story of how the man they thought they’d got rid of, Noel Edmonds, the father of that execrable inflated pink rubber curse of prime time Saturday TV, Mr. Blobby, had managed to shoe-horn his way back onto our screens after his wilderness years. Noel's House Party on BBC1 hit the skids in 1999, but after a variety of other lacklustre shows on various channels, Edmonds, a believer in spiritualism, was introduced by his reflexologist to the book The Cosmic Ordering Service - A Guide to Realising Your Dreams by a German woman, Barbel Mohr.
In case you’re wondering, reflexology is an alternative ‘health’ routine involving the physical act of applying pressure to the feet, hands, or ears with specific thumb, finger, and hand techniques without the use of oil or lotion. So inspired by Fraulein Mohr’s helpful hand in guiding him back onto our screens six nights per week with a £3 million contract, plus a £10 million dream house in Devon, Edmonds later went on to write his own book Positively Happy: Cosmic Ways to Change Your Life.
According to reports Noel enjoys occasional visits by two melon-sized ‘spiritual energy balls’. They materialise over his shoulders and he believes them to be the spirits of his dead parents. However, the orbs appear only on digital photographs. Cosmic Ordering involves writing messages ‘to the universe’ so perhaps we should all get our pens out and give it a try. It’s certainly worked for Mr. Tidybeard. Whether or not you think Cosmic Ordering is a heap of bull plop, it is no more sinister or ridiculous than many beliefs. Tom Cruise and John Travolta believe there’s an evil alien called Xenu. It hasn’t done their income any harm. Former UK MP Ruth Kelly claimed that her support of the Roman Catholic’s weird self-flagellation sect Opus Dei was in no way incompatible with her day job as Education Secretary.
Then there’s that mythical ‘special relationship’ Britain claims to have with US Presidents such as that retired master of semantics, George W. Bush. One of Dubya’s inspirations was a certain evangelical Christian aptly named Arthur Blessit. Born in 1941, Arthur’s life mission is to fulfil a Biblical prophecy by carrying the cross to every land on Earth, an on-going tour, dragging a 10ft-long cross behind him, which has kept him occupied since 1969. You wouldn’t expect a place like Hollywood’s Sunset Strip to have an all-night ‘Christian Night Club’, but there was one, with a clientele of hookers, bikers and hippies, eager recipients of Blessit’s advice to ditch downers and acid and ‘drop a little Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’ instead. Over the past decade and a half, Arthur has impressed Mr. Bush by hauling his cross through 301 nations. Walking 36,500 miles from the Orkney Islands to the Vatican, they’ve all welcomed the indefatigable Arthur as he distributes more of his 20 million Smile, God Loves You stickers. His ultimate intention is to launch his publicity into outer space. Whether or not the cross will be included may be down to NASA, but as he only wants to launch a two-inch segment of his burden, the payload might allow it.
We may scoff. But remember, financially and materially, all these people are far, far ahead of the rest of us. That’s the way the current system is rigged. So if you want an easier life with less worry, start getting weird. Start getting ‘spiritual’. The Cosmos awaits.