Some years ago I was interviewed for the UK Guardian newspaper by Jon Ronson, the man behind a series on the Channel Four network called The Secret Rulers of the World.

I have had so much appalling nonsense written about me that I normally just let it go without remark, but Ronson's article in the Guardian was such a staggering misrepresentation that I complained - wasting my time of course - to the editor.

Years later, Ronson approached me again, sheepishly, apologising for what had happened and asking if I would take part in his series. After my previous experience I was extremely wary, but it was an opportunity to get information into the public arena, even though I knew it would be superficial and obsessed with the far right/Jewish issue. I thought that at least it would alert those who have the intelligence to read between the lines to see that something was going on in the world that we are not being told about. In short, it would be better than nothing.

This is how it has unfolded. I don't regret being involved because I know from the reaction that it has made many intelligent people think and realise that there are forces at large behind the scenes that require much greater investigation. But the series turned out to be just as superficial and obsessed with the far right-Jewish issue as I expected. Talk about barely one-dimensional.

In the programme about me, for instance, the "12 foot lizards rule the world" line was introduced and constantly repeated. Yet this was done without any additional information whatsoever to explain the ancient and modern accounts that give substance to the apparently bizarre. It was like Jon Ronson doing a programme some centuries ago about Galileo saying the earth was a sphere without including the information that Galileo had to support what, of course, turned out to be true. People who were conditioned to believe the earth was flat would have dismissed Galileo on watching the programme because apart from being told that he said the earth was round, no other information would have been presented to support this. Yet this was precisely the way Ronson presented the reptilian issue.

The programme focused for the hour on one simple question in Ronson's mind - when I said reptilians did I mean Jews? That was it, really. Like I say, an unbelievably superficial theme in what is a detailed and often complex subject. It also included the usual focus on the far right - anti Semitism issue, which Ronson always emphasised at some point in each edition of the series.

We saw the same in his programme about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma bomb. The programme managed to turn a fascinating topic into a tedious hour that focused again on one theory involving the far right connection. Where were the interviews with the family of victims of the bomb who established that the ATF, the apparent targets of the attack according to the official tale, were in combat gear near the building an hour before the explosion? Where was the story of the man thrown off the Grand Jury "investigating" the bombing because he ask questions and wanted to call witnesses the state did not wish to be presented in public? Where was the information about the bomb itself and the explosive experts who say the fuel fertilizer device in the Ryder truck could not have caused that scale of damage? Nowhere, yet all of these people have appeared on videos or gone public with their stories.

Then we had the programme about Bohemian Grove, which focused entirely on the efforts of Alex Jones, a US talk show host, to get into the Grove and film the opening ritual. First of all Mr. Jones did the subject no good at all with his loud, aggressive, rants at the camera and talk of putting guns in the mouths of the Illuminati. Thanks, Mr. Jones, that really appeals to peaceful people who only wish to know what is going on and do not wish to be treated to childish rants of ego busting proportions. If you only knew what harm that does to this whole subject you might consider stress-relief therapy, mate.

Jones, however, did well to get footage of the Grove, which showed the so-called Cremation of Care ceremony under the 40-foot stone owl. I have seen the Jones video of his footage and while again we are treated to yet more rants, his presentation of the actual ceremony was light years ahead of that on Channel Four.

But the most important error in Ronson's presentation, an error that again seems to betray a fundamental lack of substantial research, was that he focused on the opening ceremony as the moment when sacrifice did or did not take place during the Bohemian "summer camp". This is not the case. It happens at different times through the camp in places confined to only the most elite of the "campers". They do have 2,700 acres of redwood forest for goodness sake. Ronson presented the programme as if the whole question of Satanic ritual and human sacrifice at the Grove rested upon the question of did it happen at this opening ceremony or not. Ronson believes it did not and so dismisses the claims. This is ludicrously superficial and inaccurate and a fundamental misrepresentation of the situation.

The greatest problem with the series is that Jon Ronson does not know the subject even nearly well enough to present a serious investigation, and in the final programme, about the Bilderberg Group, he called himself a "humourist who was out of his depth". That sums it up really and so his interviews with long-time Bilderberger, Denis Healey, and a Bilderberg executive, lacked any penetration or the detailed questioning that would have exposed the facade that it is "just a private meeting where leaders can meet and network.".

A friend called me after seeing Jon Ronson appear at a Manchester bookstore and she was taken aback by his lack of knowledge about the subject on which he had produced a television series. I am sure he will make good money from the series and its accompanying superficial book, but here is a guy out of his depth with the subject he claims to be investigating and, it seemed to me, a guy with very little interest in getting more than his feet wet.

In the Bilderberg programme, Ronson and Spotlight journalist, Jim Tucker, were followed for some time by a black car when they tried to check out the venue of the Bilderberg meeting in Portugal last year. Ronson rang the British Embassy for help and was told that (a) the Bilderberg Group were out of their league, and later that they were imagining it. The car tale was a feature of the programme, as it followed them and stopped in front and behind them.

But here's the question that any serious documentary maker would ask: Why on earth did they not go up to the car, as they could have done, with the camera running and ask the people inside who they were and why they were following them? Did they simply not have the guts to do that? It was an obvious thing to do. Instead it was just left in the air. And why was the Bilderberg executive not questioned about that when the chance was presented?

This year's History Channel documentary on secret societies produced more substance in an hour than this series did in five and so did an Independent Television programme on mind control, which I saw on video recently. This Channel Four series is not in the same league as either of them.

Ronson likes simple questions like "When David Icke says reptiles does he mean Jews?" and "Does the Alex Jones footage of the opening Grove ceremony prove that humans are sacrificed…if not it can't be happening." On these simple questions, from which the narrative theme rarely deviated, whole hour programmes, often extremely slow-moving, were put together at the expense of the substance that could be presented. In doing so, some immensely interesting subjects are made to look almost tedious as padded-out irrelevance replaces substance.

It's a shame, a massive opportunity lost, and now Ronson is apparently telling people that the conspiracies are not valid. He will claim his own validity for this on the basis of producing a television series "investigating" them. If only he had.

But, on a brighter note, there have been intelligent people who have watched the series and seen and felt what Jon Ronson appears blind to seeing. For that reason I am pleased that it happened, but an opportunity lost is an understatement of enormous proportions.

But fortunately, the day is coming when even Jon Ronson will have to accept that.

Link URL for websites
http://www.davidicke.com/icke/articles3/channel4.html