The Wizard has no plans to stop casting spells over Christchurch, despite celebrating his 90th birthday this Sunday.
The Christchurch icon has been attracting crowds, causing mischief and creating a scene since he moved to the city in 1974.
He still pulls a crowd when he regularly tours the Christchurch Arts Centre in his trademark black robes, wooden staff and pointy hat.
“I can’t possibly give it up,’’ he said.
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CHRIS SKELTON/Stuff
The Wizard, seen here enjoying a cigarette on his front porch, will celebrate his 90th birthday on Sunday.
“People go crazy on the trams when they see me. They leap out with cameras. I love people and that is why I do what I do,” he said.
“I am a lively person and I have always been like that since I was a child. I was born to disrupt things.”
The Wizard, also known as Ian Brackenbury Channell, started disrupting things as soon as he arrived in Christchurch.
His maiden speech in Cathedral Square on September 17, 1974 – the first of many from the top of a stepladder over several decades – was greeted with chaos.
Staff Photographer/Stuff
The Wizard speaking from his stepladder in Cathedral Square on November 1, 1979.
“Two women were arrested, fighting broke out, and the police asked him to stop the address soon after it began,” The Press reported.
“About 20 eggs were thrown at The Wizard but only one – thrown from behind – hit him.”
Nevertheless, he persevered, appearing the next day to speak again and battling the Christchurch City Council for the right to give speeches in the square.
He won that battle and became a fixture of the city centre and, in time, a global celebrity.
“The council realised I was bringing tourism to the city.”
Dominion files taken October 1981/Stuff
The Wizard meets Queen Elizabeth during her royal tour of New Zealand in 1981.
One highlight from a career of pranks, media stunts and playful battles was when he broke a series of droughts with his own special rain dance.
In a bizarre turn of events, in the late 1980s he broke droughts in Waimate, Nelson, Auckland and even Tamworth in New South Wales. In each instance, it rained within three days of The Wizard performing his rain dance, ending long and damaging droughts.
“That was bizarre. It was scary,” he said.
“I was getting worried at that stage. I didn’t want people to think I had magical powers. It got too dangerous, so I backed out.”
The Wizard wearing his rain dance robes in central Christchurch in the 1980s.
The rain dances left even Denis Dutton of the NZ Skeptics dumbfounded.
“The Wizard is astonishing,” he said after the fourth successful rain dance.
“The Wizard is the one paranormal person on the planet that skeptics actually have to believe in. He actually is able to do it.”
Even as his celebrity faded after the turn of the millennium, The Wizard still proved to be a cultural force.
He joined the successful campaign to save the historic Christ Church Cathedral from demolition after it was badly damaged in the 2011 Canterbury earthquakes.
Dean Kozanic/Stuff
The Wizard spoke to hundreds gathered in Cathedral Square to protest the demolition of the Christ Church Cathedral.
He spoke at rallies, confronted Anglican bishop Victoria Matthews, and even paid for ads in The Press calling for the cathedral’s restoration in his usual combative and playful style.
“It wasn’t just about the building as a work of art, the building was the heart of the city.”
But, in recent years, The Wizard has found himself strangely out of step with modern sensibilities. He is a self-confessed sexist, believes the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns were a “catastrophe”, and even has his doubts about climate change.
Last year, council stopped paying The Wizard $16,000 a year after more than two decades on the public payroll to “provide acts of wizardry” for the city.
CHRIS SKELTON/Stuff
The Wizard started his Fun Revolution in the late 1960s, but is not sure if it has worked.
“They decided I was a bad influence on Christchurch, whatever that means,” he said.
But, despite recent setbacks, he is happy to keep on being The Wizard.
“I sometimes feel like [the poet] John Keats, that my life was writ in water.
“I have left nothing behind me and I have been a waste of life, but I have enjoyed every moment of it and that is what really counts.”
