Forgive me, Mr Icke, for I have sinned.

I have a confession to make, I am ashamed. 

Not the way I usually start an article, I know, but please read on. 

On Wednesday night, I went up to Manchester to see James Delingpole talk to David Icke. I have to say, whenever anybody has mentioned Icke to me, my initial thoughts have always been: Shell suit, Wogan, football, lizards, and tin foil nutter.

I released an hour long podcast on Thursday evening, and it was a no-holds-barred, blow-by-blow account of the event; an unedited stream of consciousness. In case people don’t know, my podcast style is mostly improvised routines and vignettes involving political commentary, rants, German art critics, Italian tourists, Princess Diana, a lot of swearing, random accents, and Christ. I’m actually most proud of the fact that it has grown into a proper little community of both believers and non-believers. As somebody said recently, it defies categorisation.

Whatever the content, I feel at ease about what I’ve put out, but since the release on Thursday, I’ve had a couple of sleepless nights. It dawned on me that I’d released a pod that breaks my golden rule: Don’t play to the gallery and be as true to yourself as you can. 

In the pod, I take jovial aim at both participants. I know Delingpole best and I have the dubious honour of having been on his excellent, long-running Delingpod three times – the second one wasn’t aired because apparently the audio didn’t load. Either that, or I was so close to the bone about something, it had to be scrapped. Nevertheless, in my rendition of Thursday’s events, I was far harsher about Icke. Even though my observations about his Harry Enfield/Paul Whitehouse Smashie and Nicey ‘poptastic’ transatlantic diction were in my frustrated, cynical style, when I listened back, it felt like I was playing to the gallery, or ‘my crowd’. It felt like undeserved, cheap shots, not the tongue-in-cheek acerbic piss-takery and word play that has become my trademark. 

I usually reserve my unbridled ire for traitorous politicians, charlatan medics, and cowardly journalists. What the fuck had I been thinking?

Delingpole is a peerless journalist who has been instrumental in exposing two major global sleights of hand, the Climate Scam and the Covid Scam – which are, of course, linked in their aims to control as many people as possible under a grotesque, anti-human, fearful ideology. As I’ve mentioned on a few occasions, my late husband Terry was a big fan, and had a treasured, well-thumbed copy of Watermelons. Old copies of The Spectator, curled at the edges, were piled up by our loo; regularly featuring the cutting, Waughesque, Delingpole irreverence.

Delingpole is an interesting creature. He is all at once cantankerous, sweet, vitriolic, witty, mean, snobbish, naughty, naive, fun, cocky, and petulant. All this contradictory complexity is housed in a puckish, jockeylike frame, topped with a big, toothy smile, and dolorous, equine eyes. We get on very well, when he’s not testing me on my knowledge of Russian literature and classical music like an irascible, pompous school master.

I want to both cuddle him, and punch him repeatedly. 

But what you see is pretty much what you get, and trust me when I tell you that is a fine and rare trait in a man. My maternal grandfather, for instance, sat my grandmother down on a stair one day and told her he had a mistress and two other children in South Africa. Turns out he was a narcissistic serial shagger, who had been leading a double life for years. 

My grandmother lived until she was ninety-five, and she never really got over it.

But I digress. I’d never met Icke before Wednesday night. I have to be honest I was mainly there to see friends, get nicely sloshed, and meet new people; the stage event was a bonus. My good friend, Charlotte – Baroness of Burnley on twitter – who organised the event, took me up to the green room to meet Icke. As I said on my pod, he was perfectly pleasant, but I didn’t warm to him especially. I wanted to be honest. Charlotte mentioned that I’d been arrested outside the Covid Inquiry, but he didn’t seem particularly interested. Why should he be? He’s a seventy-one year old man who doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall, and he was about to go on stage.

Earlier on in the evening, I saw Icke’s son Jaymie, who came over immediately to hug me and say hello. We spent a very moving few minutes talking about the tragic death of his beloved four-year- old dog, who was hit by a car. Both he, and his brother Gareth, are delightful, good men who have supported me greatly in the last four years.

Another reason my feeling of queasy unease grew, after I recorded the pod on Thursday.

The black box stage was dressed like a gentlemen’s club – two leather armchairs, a lampshade, a bookshelf and potted plants down stage, one on either side. It brought to mind Paul Whitehouse’s Fast Show character, Rowley Birkin QC, whose catchphrase is: 'I'm afraid that I was very, very drunk.’

Dick Delingpole, James's wonderful brother with the best moustache in show business, introduced the show dressed in a rather cool glam rock, leopard print knee-length jacket. The Delingpod theme music started, and Delingpole skipped on from the back of the 700 seater, wearing a midnight blue velvet jacket that reminds me of Peter Rabbit. After he’d said hello, and done his ‘I know I always say I’m very excited…’ bit, Icke appeared from the wings in a rather less skippity-bunny fashion, wearing a cobalt blue suit he jokingly told us he’d just bought in Tesco. 

As I understand it, Icke has rheumatoid arthritis, so he couldn’t twist his body to look at Delingpole. This made a face-to-face conversation virtually impossible. It meant that Icke was facing the audience and directing everything outwards in a monologue-like fashion, which evidently he’s very experienced at, having done it to millions of people for over 30 years. Was this awkward dynamic taken into consideration before the show, I wonder?

The first half was largely focused on the Israel-Palestine situation, and the nature of tribes and warfare. Who is really controlling the manufactured ‘crisis’ from above, and of course, cui bono. It’s all stuff many of us know, or rather have come to fully realise over the last few years. What I definitely didn’t put across in my very one-sided podcast is that Icke has been right about the wider global picture for most of his adult life. In that sense, he is a modern prophet. He’s been ridiculed for pointing out that there are invisible dark forces at work, and that governments do not have our best interests at heart. As my late husband always said: ‘All governments are benign, until they’re not’.

At one point in the show, a young woman staggered up to the front wearing a fluffy, feathered headdress adorned with flashing lights. She was clearly the worse for wear, and after a few minutes of audience bum-clenching, she was taken out by the bouncers. Taken out as in ‘outside’ not assassinated. Perhaps she had been expecting a rave and was confused when she saw two old fuckers, seated in armchairs, not facing each other. It certainly added to the surreal, slightly charged atmosphere.

Delingpole had a black waste paper basket next to his chair, full of strips of paper that the audience had written their questions on. One of the questions that Delingpole read out, was from a Russian, or somebody connected with Russia. The crux of the question was, would you go and live in Russia because of its adherence to Christian Orthodoxy, non-woke, traditional values, and so on. Icke replied: No, he would not. He explained that it was because the ramping up of psychopathic control we’re seeing is a global phenomenon, so wherever you go, you’ll find it. He also believes that we should face what comes, and stand up to it. This is the answer I respected Icke for the most, and I led the applause from the front row. If we don’t stand up to it, what about the generations who come after us?

In the second half, Icke covered the more esoteric spiritual ideas like frequencies, demonic entities, source and simulation. The atmosphere changed dramatically as the real divide became apparent. Over the past couple of years Delingpole has started his journey to becoming a Christian. He takes it very seriously. He learns psalms by heart and carries a little black bible. As an aside, I highly recommend his podcast conversations with people about the psalms, they are fascinating listening. My favourite one is Psalm 22 with Jonny Woodrow, when halfway through a very complex, ecclesiastical explanation, Delingpole, much to the bemusement of his guest, suddenly says, ‘Get down off that bed, you know you’re not meant to be on there.’ I laughed like a fucking drain. Psalms and naughty dogs; it’s a heady mix. Of course, when I was last on the Delingpod, he asked me if I’d learnt any psalms by heart. No, I replied. Please see me after class, Miss Roberts.

Interestingly, Icke did point out that Delingpole has a tendency to intellectualise everything, including the spiritual. This is an observation I have made myself. For my part, faith is not an intellectual exercise; you will not find Christ in over-thinking or clever riddles.

His teaching is very simple: Look into your heart. You will find him there, asking you to consider those in need, the righteous, and the grieving; even your enemy. He is a divine mirror reflecting our best selves. He is the still small voice of calm that whispers: Listen with all your might to the message. If you stumble and fall, especially then, have the courage to look within. What do you see? The real test is taking a good look, and being honest with what is reflected back.

We are born from the earth, and to earth we will return. It’s the part in between that will flash through our brains like an old cinema reel as we kiss this earthly existence goodbye, and take our first steps towards our creator; our conscience.

As far as I understand it, Icke believes that we are all beings linked to one source, and when we die we continue on some kind of astral plane. So, in essence, he also believes in eternal life. Icke has also suggested we are living in a simulation. Although it’s an interesting concept, I struggle with the idea that we are merely meat suits floating about in a computer game populated by shape-shifting demons. If this is the case, who created this simulation, and why did they give us the ability to choose goodness, love, redemption, hope, truth, forgiveness, and salvation.

I noticed that the word ‘soul’ wasn’t mentioned once during the night. Even if our bodies are meaningless floating meat blobs, what about that spark of inspiration that burns within us? For me, it’s the transcendent mystery that gives our existence meaning. As I said on my pod, what great music, art, poetry or buildings have been inspired by Icke’s spiritual view? These things may be taken for granted, but they are actually what sustain us. On numerous occasions, I have been rescued from dark nights of the soul by Bach’s St Matthew Passion. The perfect frequency for calming anxious hearts.

In the last 20 minutes, Delingpole persistently pushed Icke on the question of why we have been given the choice between right and wrong; a moral compass if you like. In response, Icke repeated the idea that we have free will, and he quoted Socrates several times: The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. Delingpole became visibly more irritated during this part of the show. Of course, Icke has every right to his view, but I would argue that it’s bleak as a witch’s arse in comparison to the belief that we have an unspoken moral code that we are bound by. Not because we are controlled by religious institutions, but by the eternal truth that we are capable of goodness without any man-made control. We choose to do good deeds for others, not because we’re under a ‘religious’ spell, but because to not do so would be to ignore the still small voice of calm that whispers in our ear: You are more than you know.

As I said on Thursday’s Abi Daily, the best part of the trip to Manchester was meeting so many fantastic souls. In that sense, it was like a congregation. This is very much thanks to the high profile of both Delingpole and Icke, and the valuable contribution they have made to the Freedom Movement. However, we should never forget that they are both mortals with feet of clay. At its heart, the article I have just splurged out is a warning about the practice of hero worship, and how easy it is to lose ourselves, our perspective, and our faith, in that pursuit.

I have a sneaking suspicion that my snide comments about some of Icke’s ideas, and in particular my snobby remarks about his speech mannerisms, were remnants of the bauble-chasing persona I detest; playing to the crowd, of which I am part. It was certainly not considered, or Christian, for that matter.

So, please forgive me for my lazy, people-pleasing vanity, and lack of discernment.

Be seeing you.

As a postscript, Helen, James’s wise sister, who has been a fan of Icke since she read his book The Truth Shall Set You Free, put it so well in a very balanced comment on my substack: I think that James and David Icke are both wonderful souls on a truth seeking journey. It's a hard path to take. Of course we can't all agree on everything, especially on the more esoteric, spiritual stuff. I truly hope and pray that this division can heal. Xxx