Best remembered to some as a former footballer and broadcaster, to others, as Ryan put it, a "professional conspiracy theorist", David Icke describes himself as a "full-time investigative journalist". Author of over 20 books and renowned for giving lectures up to 10 hours in length, David is in Ireland ahead of a sold-out public talk in Dublin's Helix Theatre. The lecture is based on his latest book, Everything You Need to Know but Have Never Been Told. David sat down with Ryan Tubridy to talk about what he thinks we need to know.
David acknowledges that some people perceive him in a certain way.
"People will remember me as the apparent nutter subjected to historic levels of ridicule and I think the mainstream media and people in general thought that a corpse had been left in the gutter and that was it. But the corpse got up, started walking, started running and now it's sprinting. And suddenly there's been this enormous explosion of interest in my work, particularly in the last three or four years."
Leaving school at 15 ("you could in those days") to become a professional footballer with Coventry City, David enjoyed a life of sport until a career-ending diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 21.
"They told me I'd be in a wheelchair, possibly, by the time I was in my 30s. I told them I wouldn't."
Following his early retirement, David decided to make the move into journalism, eventually landing on Grandstand and Breakfast Timewith Selina Scott as a sportscaster. He told Ryan that he set a goal of fronting Grandstand. When he achieved that, "television started to lose its pull". He found that he was making fast progress in politics.
"I would set a goal and suddenly the doors would open. So, I went from joining the Green Party not long after it changed its name from the Ecology Party and within 8/9/10 weeks, I was a national spokesman for the Green Party."
In the years 1989 and 1990, David began to believe that some kind of presence was following him around, like "an electro-magnetic field that you can feel but can't see". On one occasion, he was browsing in a bookshop when he had an odd experience.
"It was like my feet were stuck to the ground and I felt this energy around me, which I now know was an electro-magnetic field. It wasn't a voice but all I heard, a very strong thought formed, go and look at the books at the far side."
The books in this section were all of the Mills & Boon genre, except for one. Mind to Mind by Betty Shine, a self-described clairvoyant. This book made an impact on David. He contacted Betty Shine under the pretence of healing his arthritis, which he claims she did. His real reason for seeking her out though, he told Ryan, was the hope that she could explain what had been happening to him over the last two years. During one visit, he felt a "spider web" sensation on his face. A sign, according to Betty, that another dimension is "trying to lock into you".
"I'm thinking, Ikie, what have you got yourself into? What the hell is going on here?… She then starts telling me in March 1990, that I'm going to go out on a world stage and reveal great secrets…from that moment, it all happened. One man cannot change the world but one man can communicate the message that can change the world."
After a life-altering trip to Peru during which "amazing things" happened to him, new "concepts, insights, understandings" filled David's thoughts. During this time, he took part in a highly-publicised interview on the BBC's Wogan programme, in which David told viewers that he believed he was the son of God.
"The whole son of God thing was based on the fact that these insights, among them, were saying that we're all one consciousness and we're all sons and daughters of what people call God."
Post-Wogan was a difficult time, David remembers.
"I couldn't walk down a street anywhere in Britain and often abroad, without being laughed at by many people. I lived my life to the sound of distant laughter…someone only had to say my name to get a laugh."
When Ryan asked how this ridicule had affected him, he explained that he believes people choose to be offended.
"We're now in this era where you have to be offended by everything and free speech is being destroyed because people are offended by this and offended by that. Being offended is a personal choice. I chose not to be, therefore I wasn't affected by that in the way that many people would."
This assuredness allows David to communicate his thoughts about things without worrying about what other people think.
"The vast majority of people on planet Earth are in fear or in concern of what other people think of them. Therefore, they're not living their life, they're not speaking their truth. They are keeping what they say and what they do within the bounds of what they think is acceptable to other people."
Ryan wanted to address a few questions with David. Does he believe that there is "an inter-dimensional race of reptilian beings who have hi-jacked the earth?"
"Well, that's a very simple way of putting it but in the basis of it, the foundation of it, yes."
Does he believe that "a genetically-modified hybrid-race of shape-shifting reptilians known as the Babylonian Brotherhood, the Illuminati or The Elite manipulate global events to keep humans in a constant state of fear"?
"A constant state of fear and a constant state of programmed perception, yes."
Ryan asked about David's opinion on the accepted history of the holocaust. Is he a holocaust denier?
"I don't know if every last word of any historical event is true."
Calling the fate of Jewish people in Nazi Germany "unspeakable", David wondered aloud why Ryan and others seem "obsessed" with putting a number of 6 million as the death toll, to which Ryan called David "disingenuous".
David does not believe the generally accepted explanation for the cause of the 9/11 attacks. He elaborated by naming The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a think-tank populated by the "major players of the Bush [George W] administration", as a group that may have been involved in the attacks. David thinks that this group made plans for "a series of countries to be regime-changed." Among them Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria.
"Every country on that list has since been targeted or picked off for regime change. And if you think that's a coincidence, fair enough. I don't."
What it boils down to, David told Ryan, is perception. Realities accepted by "mainstream science", like Quantum Physics are no less difficult to accept that what he is proposing.
"The idea that there's not life that exists outside of the human world is absolutely insane… I've not sat in a darkened room pulling stuff out of the ether."
As for the reptilians, David believes there is historical evidence for his theory.
"In ancient culture after ancient culture, although they use different names, they are describing exactly the same phenomenon that I am describing now."
David believes that the British royal family are "part of that" and that people need to get their news and information from alternative sources.
"You can sit in a bubble getting your information from the mainstream media and the mainstream everything or you can step out of the bubble and start exploring areas of information and knowledge that the mainstream never deals with."
His lecture tours may be a way to encourage people to break away from this "bubble".
"How people receive that is entirely up to them…Why is there this massive, global, gathering interest in my work now? Because they're all crazy? No. Because they've had the self-respect to look at the evidence and not just listen to the one-liners, which is what you get in the mainstream media."
Listen back to the full interview with David Icke on The Ryan Tubridy Show here.