Derek Jameson - Do they mean me?

Now then, Kevin Keegan, you need all the help you can get if England is to win Euro 2000 next month, so I've enlisted the remarkable powers of my friend Uri Geller. Question is - are you brave enough to pick him for your team?

"I've absolutely no doubt at all that if I were allowed two or three minutes in the players' dressing room or their hotel I could psyche them up to win," the famous psychic told me confidently.

Former England coach Glenn Hoddle was a firm believer in psychic phenomena of course, but his successor steers well clear of anything to do with the paranormal. "I'm not into all that," says Kevin. "Glenn Hoddle lost his job talking about mystic stuff." Mind you, the coach does wear a "lucky" tracksuit and apparently he once saw a bent crossbar and exclaimed: "Uri Geller must have been here!"

Uri reckons managers in this country are afraid of controversy. They're more open-minded abroad and many major teams have sought his help as the world's most famous psychic. Most recently he's been advising the Turkish giantkillers Galatasaray.

Hoddle says his greatest mistake in the 1998 World Cup was not taking faith healer Eileen Drewery to France with the team, but then he made a bigger mistake by claiming disabled people were paying for sins in a previous life. That gave the FA the opportunity to fire him.

Uri appreciates the Drewery experience has made life difficult for others with psychic powers. Hoddle, a born again Christian, had total faith in her ability to heal bruised and battered limbs. At one time, three-quarters of the England team were under her care. The FA paid her £75 for each session a player.

"My approach is different," says Uri. "It's based on the power of positive thinking. It's all to do with the mind, whereas Eileen Drewery used her hands to trigger the body's healing mechanism."

The 53-year-old Israeli has lived in Britain for nearly 30 years and is an ardent England supporter. He watched Saturday's 1-1 draw with Brazil and felt our team could have done better. I'm ready to believe it was Uri who made Gary McAllister miss a vital penalty when England beat Scotland in Euro 1996. He flew over Wembley in a helicopter during the game clutching George Cohen's 1966 World Cup cap and 11 magic crystals - one for each member of Terry Venables' team.

Anyone who questions my faith in Uri should have been alongside David Frost and myself on air when he bent our solid steel doorkeys with the slightest touch. Could he steer England to victory? It's worth a try. We can leave the experts to argue about how he did it afterwards.

TV programmes come and go, but I hope nobody ever forgets the extraordinary courage of BBC South presenter Sally Taylor as viewers tonight share the ordeal she faced when hit by cancer.

Sally's Story: Facing Cancer (7.30pm, BBC2) was filmed from the time the cancer was diagnosed until she had both breasts removed to stop the disease spreading. Five months later the cameras recorded her return to the Southampton studio.

Any woman suffers dreadfully in such a crisis, but imagine how much more anguish it must have been for a television presenter watched by millions. Sally, 43, a former teacher born in Reading, lost her mother, Dorothy, to cancer when she was six.

To break the cancer taboo, Sally took the brave decision to allow the cameras to follow her treatment. She says it helped her to bring it into the open - and she knew it would help others facing breast cancer. "It isn't as horrific as you might think," she says.

Oh dear, I've upset my local MP, Ivor Caplin, by suggesting in this column that Hove is becoming Brighton's poor neighbour since the two merged three years ago. "Derek couldn't be more wrong," Ivor said while opening Packwood Property Services' new offices in Hove Parade. "Our local economy is healthy and vibrant."

Ivor says Labour's New Deal has enabled almost 700 people locally to find jobs while the number unemployed and claiming benefit in Hove and Portslade is the lowest for more than ten years. The Government has put almost £2.5 million into regeneration projects in Hove, matched by £2 million of council funding.

"We must keep working towards creating new jobs and new opportunities so that the people of Hove, of which I am a lifelong member, can continue to be confident in ourselves, our town and our future," he added. Well, that's all good news, Ivor. I must have missed it while watching the paint peeling on the prom.

I must say, Noel Gallagher goes up in everyone's estimation at the same rate of knots that his surly, foul-mouthed brother, Liam, goes down, down, down.

Talented songwriter Noel walked out of Oasis's current European tour last week, exhausted by his brother's crazy antics and claims to have been born a star. "Stars don't walk dogs and stars don't feed babies," he said. "Stars don't do the washing up. Stars are not human beings."

How right he is - and how sad to see so many people in showbiz fall for the hype and consider themselves a cut above the rest. Eventually their conceit becomes a pain in the you-know-where. Mind you, it's difficult to separate fact from fantasy in the fame game.

While turning up our noses at Liam's goings-on, we should remember that years ago the Rolling Stones managed to offend just about every parent. Could Oasis be playing the same game?

Last year my wife's nephew, Jamie, was delivering Liam's newspapers in St John's Wood, north-west London. He says the singer couldn't have been more approachable and friendly. The exact opposite, in fact, of his public image.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.