Newspaper blasts soaring costs of magic

Holy Smeg, did anyone read "The Sun" celebrity speculator today? Now I wouldn't normally give such credibility to this dodgy tabloid "news" paper, which is only marginally more believable than the likes of "Weekly World News", "National Enquirer", and "The Mirror", and I feel even worse about advertising the bloody thing, but this story just seemed so true, and if it is... Bloody Hell!

It was about this woman (a health and safety supervisor - thankfully not mine) who was conned out of €32K (well STG £22K actually - she lived in England - but The Sun were nice enough to translate it for us Irish readers) by a... wait for it... A witch doctor. Her dad had contracted a rare blood disorder, which apparently doctors were mystified by, so Anastacia Adams (for it was she) decided to contact a witch doctor, whose number she found amongst about 20 others in the back of "a magazine". (Unfortunately they don't say which one - probably owned by the same company as The Sun, maybe?).

It's hard to believe that in this day in age, an adult could fall for this rubbish. "I went to see the professor alone, as I didn't want my friends to know in case they thought I was crazy", said Anastacia. I wish she wouldn't insult unfortunate people with serious mental conditions by equating them with the sheer stupidity of what was to follow.

On the first day, she spent 2 hours talking to ethically-challenged entrepreneur Professor Sidya about her father's condition, and he made her feel relaxed, asking for nothing but photographs of her father, herself and "other important people" in her life, for use in his spell. Money would only be required once the request had been accomplished.

On the second ay, it appeared, he would need £350. Although she could pay him installments... (such a trusting, nice fellow)

As she continued to speak to Sidya, he reported the glad tidings that the spirits, in their infinite medical expertise, had given a positive prognosis on her father. He was on the mend!

On the eighth visit, Sidya explained that they required £22,000 for the spell to work! Get this: They needed £1,000 for every year that Anastacia was alive! It gets worse. She had to raise the cash (which she borrowed from a friend's inheritance, feigning the need to consolidate debts), put it under her bed and pray to it! Pray to the money!

Strangely, the tried and tested medical practice of praying to money while rubbing lotion on her naked body had no noticable effect on her dad. However the resourceful Professor Sidya (he didn't get his title for nothing!) had another idea. Of course! He would take the cash and pray to it himself! The spirits couldn't ignore *him*.

She gave him the money anyway. Time went on, the dad did not improve, and soon she became worried about her money. She confronted him, and he explained that the money was buried in the woods! He then told her that the cash-strapped spirits would need another £22,000 to speed up the spell. Although she found herself applying for a bank loan, I can thankfully report that she came to her senses, and went back demanding her money back.

After much attempts to rekindle her faith in the money hungry spirits of blood-diseases, and assurances that he hated to see her upset, he gave her £1,000 back. She went back sometime later to try and get the rest of her money, but Sidya had upped and left.

I'd like to think that... well in a kingdom like the united one, with about 60,000,000 people, the laws of probability state that no matter how unlikely it is, there will probably be one idiot who will fall for this. Just like the lottery, there are so many millions of entrants that despite the odds being nanoscopic, someone will win.

Not so. On her return to the professor's office, she not only found him gone, but she found another man there, just as angry as her. This man had given Sidya £44,000 to save his marriage! The article never mentioned whether Sidya was caught, but we can only assume he's still at large, out there... selling magic beans at £1,000* per year old of the customer.

All I can say is that I would be ashamed to go to the police with this story, never mind an international newspaper. And how can someone like this be allowed in charge of health and safety?


* - may vary depending on the exchange rate between sterling and the spirit world, terms and conditions apply.