“Son of God”, BBC anchorman, ideological writer… David Icke has been, or professed to have been, all of these things during his life, but it is a less well-known fact that he took his first steps on the career ladder at the Leicester Mercury.

David spent four years between 1973 and 1977 at the East Midlands paper covering the Lutterworth area.

Former colleagues in the newsroom remember him as a likeable Leicester-born lad who suffered from arthritis which cut short a promising future in football.

He left the Mercury to join BRMB radio, before making his name at the BBC. There he fronted BBC snooker and Grandstand, before a fateful appearance on the Terry Wogan Show brought a stop to all this when he told the bemused Irishman he was the son of God.

In a recent interview to promote his new book, ‘Children of the Matrix’, he let Mercury reporter Lee Marlow into a few of his ideologies, and the reason he left his journalism career behind.

He said: “There is a ‘baa-baa’ mentality which means people readily accept what they are told and rarely question it.

“Politicians, the ruling elite, the media -they all help to maintain this smokescreen. That’s why I got out when I did.”

David went on to say this habit to continually question what is commonly unquestioned was instilled by his father Beric, who told him never to take anything for face value.

Marlow was then hit with a tirade of conspiracy theories about everyone from former Tory leader Ted Heath to the Clintons, which could not be printed and brought the interview to an abrupt end.

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