The self-styled psychic spent five years turning a Tel Aviv soap factory into a fitting home for his collection of celebrity photos, diamond-studded walking sticks and, of course, wonky cutlery. He gives our writer a tour
‘I will bombard you with interesting material,” Uri Geller warns me on WhatsApp, before giving me a tour of his new museum. I expected a healthy amount of exaggeration from the self-described psychic, who has for decades claimed he can bend spoons with his mind. If anything, he is underselling the experience. A 16m (53ft) curved steel spoon – certified the world’s biggest by Guinness World Records in 2019 – sits in front of the Uri Geller Museum in the port city of Jaffa, at Tel Aviv’s southern edge. The giant spoon is a taste of what is to come.
Geller left behind the marble floors and silk-lined walls of his mansion in Berkshire in 2015 and moved back to his native Israel with his wife, Hannah. Soon after resettling, he spent $6m (£5.5m) on an Ottoman-era soap factory, and more than five years renovating it and turning it into a museum.
