Uri Geller wasn't much of a friend to Michael Jackson

In yet another documentary about the troubled pop star, since he conveniently died and allowed all sorts of fellow-oddballs to claim close friendships with him, flinty-eyed mentalist Geller was hell-bent on proving that Jacko had been his best mate.

Here’s the man who glared out of the telly at me when I was a child and promised that if I concentrated enough, the broken watch sitting on top of the set would start working again. It didn’t.

And it wasn’t just the watch he let me down on, he also made things not happen to our cutlery.

With eyes squeezed shut, wearing an expression that was a cross between a smile and a grimace (a smace?) and using one finger he made a spoon look like it was part of a Salvador Dali installation.

It twisted into a floppy lump of melted metal, while the one I was frantically rubbing at home – at the same time tuning into Uri’s mind, obviously – remained stubbornly, well, spoon-shaped.

“Is it bending, now?” he asked looking right at me.

No Uri, it isn’t.

In 1998 it was worse. The cutlery-bothering mind-bender decided he would harness all this extraordinary “power” and use it to make England win the World Cup.

At the time he wrote that it was “England’s strongest chance of seizing it for 32 years. Every night I stare into the sky and say a prayer.

“My prayers are always very visual, and I imagine Alan Shearer, our triumphant captain and goal-scorer, grinning as he clutches the writhing figure of the cup in both hands (which I actually touched myself at my home). He presses it to his face, kissing it like a holy relic, and then he thrusts it into the air.

“The roar can be heard all over England. Good luck Glenn. Good luck England. All my energy is with you.”

Cheers for that, Uri.

Yet, despite the rubbish results, the non-existent track record, the guy shifts masses of books and is interviewed and quoted endlessly on the subject of mind over matter, because people want to believe in magic.

And no one more so than poor Michael Jackson, to whom Geller was a bit of a hero.

In fairness, the singer did come and visit him in the UK (though that might have been because he thought he could get an honorary gong off the Queen just like his real bezzie mate, Stevie Spielberg, and get some free stuff from Harrods off his other bezzie mate, Mohamed Al Fayed) and he did go to his wedding vow renewal ceremony.

But why did Geller have to film the whole thing?

If your friend happens to be someone who lives his life avoiding cameras, the last thing you’d do was point another one in his face.

He also saved a voicemail message from Jackson, where he spoke of wanting to go to the moon (bless).

All of which, call me cynical, smacks of opportunism.

Which takes us to the moment the “deep” friendship went sourer than a bag of lemons.

Two words – Martin Bashir.

Yes, we all know that it was the now infamous, access-all-areas interview Jackson did with Bashir, where he talked to him while holding a boy’s hand and admitted tucking youngsters into bed with warm milk, that brought about his downfall, but what many people didn’t know was that it was his “friend” Geller who set it all up.

Cheers, again, Uri.

Surely the man is nothing more than a clever self-publicist and his telepathic genius is all in his mind.

Saying that, he did get the beyond odd David Blane to wear an Exeter football scarf on a train – now that must have taken a lot of persuasion...

Unlike getting Tina Malone and Vanessa Feltz to appear on Britain’s Most Embarrassing Parents (Monday, BBC3, 9pm); open a fridge door, that pair would start hoofing.

Mouthy Malone, a woman Mother Theresa would have found hard to like, was proud that her daughter was often crushed with embarrassment at just about everything she did and cackled like a loon when the girl recounted various cringe-inducing incidents.

Feltz also seemed chuffed at the shame she brought upon her daughter, though said daughter came across as a mini-Vanessa, merely playing at being appalled so she could be on the telly, just like her ludicrous mum.

Other non-famous sorts who made their children blush included a batty woman obsessed with Donny Osmond, but patently not going to the dentist, and “Trannie Dad”, who was not only an embarrassing father, but an even more embarrassing mother when he became his alter-ego Susan.

Though as far as I could see, what was so embarrassing about him was not that he was a transvestite, but that he was such a rubbish one with all the feminine allure of Reg Holdsworth in a Judy Finnegan wig.