In today’s busy newsrooms it’s not often a weekly newspaper has its host of good exclusive stories written up and ready for the presses a fortnight before publication.
The Camden New Journal did just that with a little help from Ivor Cole, libel lawyer of 30 years for the Daily Mail and member of the Magic Circle. On 8 May, Cole deposited a capsule in the Journal’s vault. Two weeks later he amazed his audience at the New End Theatre, including Journal reporter Tom Foot, after he revealed its contents.
Cole had predicted some of the stories in that day’s Journal, some with an eerie accuracy, including Chelsea’s last minute 1-0 FA Cup final victory. Other spot-on premonitions included an elderly man achieving his lifetime ambition of gaining a top academic degree, a young student haunted by an incident which occurred many years ago and a breakthrough in cancer treatment.
Foot said: ‘It was too accurate to be simply intuition. We are speaking of a libel lawyer here, so I tread carefully, but I have a hunch he simply switched the capsule when I wasn’t looking. I don’t know. What is certain, is that Mr Cole is a master of his art.”
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