self help: Why Sir Bob should try cosmic ordering

Tim Dowling Tuesday July 25, 2006 The Guardian Most people, I imagine, would not necessarily choose to regard Noel Edmonds' comeback as a sign that the cosmos responds directly to our wants and needs. We may not understand the exact mechanism by which the cosmos, DJ-style, takes requests, but we may safely assume that Please Put Noel Edmonds Back On Telly did not scrape in ahead of End All Human Suffering or even Help Me Lose Weight Before Summer in the overall vote. Noel, however, insists it was his devotion to "cosmic ordering" - as laid out by self-helpster Barbel Mohr in her book, The Cosmic Ordering Service, and now in Edmonds' new book, Positively Happy: Cosmic Ways to Change Your Life - that got him Deal Or No Deal. So he says, you just write what you want on a piece of paper, and the cosmos delivers. I'm not saying I believe in all this, but if I'd known what Noel had written, I'd have made a counter-request. Of course, you also have to believe in yourself, stay positive, work hard and "make a positive commitment to actively changing your life", as Edmonds puts it in this week's Daily Mail serialisation. You must stop saying such things as "I never win anything", "I can't do that" and "I've always been that way" (which are, coincidentally, the first three subject headings on my CV). Frankly, if you possess Edmonds' bullet-proof self-belief, I think you can probably leave the stamp off that letter to the cosmos. You can't deny that the system works for Edmonds, although looking at him - a freakishly youthful 57-year-old fronting a dire game show which is nevertheless absurdly popular - you have to wonder whether it's actually the cosmos he's struck his bargain with. But if he can help somebody else, what's the harm? And there is somebody who needs his help badly: Sir Bob Geldof. You will have heard that Sir Bob was forced to cancel two Italian gigs at the weekend because fewer than 400 tickets were sold. In Milan, only 45 people turned up to the 12,000-seat venue, and Geldof refused to go on. He did not, it has to be said, take the whole thing very positively. He was quoted in Italian newspapers as saying, "Your country doesn't like me when I sing." This self-deprecation is not new. In the past, he has referred to himself as a "mediocre rock star". Does that sound like something Noel would say? Though I have always thought of Sir Bob as a man of great determination, it's impossible to ignore the obvious conclusion that, in this case at least, he simply didn't want it badly enough. I can't help noticing that he hasn't wiped out world hunger either. One can only guess what Noel would have achieved if his wishlist had read "End poverty in Africa and make me a modestly successful musician, please", instead of "new game show and helicopter". Apparently, there are two as-yet unfulfilled orders on Edmonds' cosmic account. One is doubtless "congratulatory autobiography thinly disguised as self-help new-age bollocks (w/ v big serialisation deal)". But the other? Who knows?