David Icke seems to be a troubled man. Once dismissed as a mere New Age eccentric, the former Coventry City goalkeeper, BBC sports presenter, and Green Party spokesman is now in the grip of a raging paranoia that borrows from the ideology of right-wing extremists.

Much has changed since Icke, dressed in turquoise, pronounced himself to be "a son of the Godhead". He was ridiculed on television by Terry Wogan: "They're not laughing with you, David, they're laughing at you". Now David Icke is reincarnated as a spokesman for the nuttier wing of conspiracy theorists.

In 1996, David Icke published his sixth book, entitled ...and the truth shall set you free. It is modestly subtitled "the most explosive book of the twentieth century". The book was dropped by its original publisher, Gateway, forcing Icke to produce it under his own company, Bridge of Love. This has by no means dampened Icke's zeal for spreading his philosophy.

On 3rd April 1996 David Icke gave a lecture to around sixty people at Leighton Park School in Reading. Judging from their questions, most of the audience seemed unaware of the origin of his wild and irrational philosophy.

Icke's conspiracy theories weave a fantastic web of delusions, connecting everything from crop circles to the Holocaust. But his views don't even make good science fiction, let alone good honest facts, and they've all cropped up elsewhere. In a nutshell, this is his thesis:

Ordinary people are being massively duped into believing that the ordinary course of world events are the consequence of known political forces and random, uncontrollable events. However, the course of humanity is being manipulated at every level by a secret world government. This is financed by Jewish bankers and businessmen, such as the Rothschilds and David Rockefeller. A number of groups around the world are dedicated to controlling our behaviour, such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group.

Now you may be wondering just what nefarious activities these people could possibly get up to. Icke, of course, has the answer. These individuals arrange for incidents to occur around the world, which then elicit a response from the public ("something must be done"), and in turn allows those in power to do whatever they had planned to do in the first place.

David Icke's examples include the Oklahoma City bombing (the U.S. Government paid militias to carry it out), the Lockerbie bombing (the CIA did it), the Bosnian War (U.N. sponsored), and the Holocaust (initiated by Jews).

Of course, it doesn't end there. He tells us that the elite Jewish bankers are in full control of the world's economy, creaming off the interest from banks, which apparently hold only a tenth of the money they claim to have. In Icke's view, none of us need to pay either taxes or interest, although he doesn't tell us whether he refuses to pay his own tax bill. This is what the right-wing militias in the USA have been telling us all along.

From here on, we're all apparently doomed to a life of servitude to our Zionist masters. Icke fears that microchip implants are next, followed by the cashless society to control our spending. In his view, there's only one solution to all this misery - mass rebellion.

This is where his New Age philosophy comes in. We all live in "multi-dimensional consciousness," he tells us, and therefore no-one can really control our minds. All we have to do is abandon the false existence that our puppet-masters have provided for us, and the hierarchy will collapse. Simple - if only we all follow Icke's message, and presumably buy his books.

David Icke's real message, though, is far from a benign call to set ourselves free. His lectures might soften the subtext of his message, but his book reveals the full extent of his views. The bibliography in ...and the truth will set you free lists a number of right-wing journals, such as Spotlight ("excellent") and On Target, which both feature Holocaust revisionism. During the question-and-answer session at the end of his lecture, I asked Icke why he had referred to these publications in his book.

"I believe that people have a right to believe, to read, and have access to all information, so that they can then make up their own minds what to think," he said. "If something is a nonsense, and if something doesn't stand up, it will be shown to be a nonsense in the spotlight of the public arena."

"My personal opinion about that magazine [On Target]... is that they do some excellent research, but I do not agree with this attitude to life. For instance, the Spotlight newspaper in America is a Christian Patriot magazine. I'm neither a Christian nor a patriot, but I'm certainly not going to dismiss some of their excellent research because I don't believe in Christian Patriotism. I'm interested in truth, not [in] defending a belief system."

So does this mean that David Icke thinks Holocaust revisionism is not a belief system? During the question-and-answer session at the end of his talk, I asked Icke twice whether he denied the Holocaust. He chose to ignore the question.

It's tempting to dismiss David Icke as a confused and ignorant man, manipulated by extremists in order to present their philosophy in a socially acceptable format. But Icke clearly understands the implications of his words.

Matthew Kalman and John Murray, editors of Open Eye magazine, investigated Icke and uncovered some disturbing facts. They claim to have observed him meeting with U.S. militia group representatives. They also identified his association with the magazine Rainbow Ark, which features articles attacking Jewish bankers and Zionism, and is alleged to be funded by members of the far-right movement.

David Icke is facing an uphill battle to spread his message. For many, the emergence of Icke's paranoid agenda is no laughing matter.