I see children starving, banks lending money that doesn’t exist, people paying with austerity. If that’s sanity I’m glad I’m perceived as insane - David Icke

This weekend he will be watching from the fringes as billionaires, royalty, politicians and leaders of the world’s most powerful corporations meet behind closed doors at a plush hotel outside Watford.

The annual secret policy discussions of the Bilderberg Group are fertile territory for conspiracy theorists to imagine all sorts of sinister plots by the rich and powerful.

You can be sure that the most elaborate of the machinations from the Grove Hotel will be discussed in Icke’s next book, The Perception Deception, due out in the autumn.

Then, in November, he plans to launch his own TV and radio station. The People’s Voice will broadcast views such as how the banking crash was engineered to subdue the masses and how genetically modified food is poisoning us.

Oh, and how we are all holograms controlled from Saturn by “The Crazies” — a bunch of extra terrestrial lizards in human form.

Before any of that, however, he had, this week, to tackle the tricky issue of a pub lunch. With a man from The Sun.

The world’s foremost conspiracy theorist approached it with his usual thoroughness.

He ordered a Caesar Salad. Without the chicken. Or the anchovies. Or the croutons. And “not too much Caesar dressing”.

Was he avoiding foods that have been doctored with mind-control drugs by The Crazies?

No. He is watching his weight.

He would have loved the croutons, he said, but his waistline would suffer. He would also have loved a glass of chardonnay, but as he was driving he stuck to water as he bought me a pint.

For a man so often derided as a “nutter”, 61-year-old Icke was the perfect host.

There was no sign of the turquoise clothes in which the professional-goalie-turned-TV-host first announced himself as a “son of the Godhead” some 20 years ago.

His eyes did not swivel in his head, though he does stare into the middle distance as he theorises.

He was also very relaxed and friendly, considering he had invited over to his Isle of Wight hometown a member of “the mainstream bloody Press” and a direct representative of The Crazies. Me.

He had agreed to the interview, he said, because my report of his one-man show at Wembley Arena last October had been fair and not “gratuitously abusive” like so many other reports over the years.

Over lunch, he explained his conversion from sports presenter to high priest of conspiracy theories.

“What happened to me in 1990/91 is that the top of my head blew off,” he said. “And for three months I didn’t know what my name was or what planet I was on.

“I had some experiences, particularly in Peru. It was like living in a bubble your whole life and then the bubble bursts and everything outside the bubble pours in and you are trying to make sense of it.

“I was going through a massive transformation of my perceptions of everything. What it was like was when you press too many keys on your keyboard and it freezes.

“That was me for three months.

“Then I morphed back and people were saying, ‘Dave, I thought you had gone mad, but you’re still the same bloke I used to know.’

“I was the same outwardly, but not in the way I saw the world.

“What I saw was that this world is a complete inversion. What is considered normal… is absolutely fricking mad. I see children starving in a world of plenty. I see governments justifying pepper bombing cities of civilians… to protect those civilians from violence.

“I see banks lending people money that does not exist — called credit — and charging them interest on it then, if they don’t pay it back, taking their homes, their businesses and their livelihoods.

“I see a situation where the banks crashed the economy then the banks’ problem became the Government’s problem by the Government bailing out the banks. And then the Government passes the problem on to the people with an austerity programme.

“If that is sanity then I am glad I am perceived as the insane one.

“It’s not me that’s mad. It’s the world that’s mad.”

You’ve got to admit, he has a point. But just as you find yourself nodding in agreement, he goes off on one and you are straight back in the weird world of David Icke where The Queen is a reptile. And so is Barack Obama.

Tracing imaginary pictures on the table with his finger, he said the 9/11 atrocity was an inside job to control the masses, and that the European Union and the Euro are sinister first steps towards The Crazies’ plan for global domination.

He cites as proof that “they” want to electronically control the human race, this week’s news of plans for electronic tattoos to replace the need for passwords for our smartphones and computers.

“They want a global Orwellian dictatorship,” he said. “They want to microchip the whole population.

“And when I said that 20 years ago they said I was crazy.”

There’s more. He also said that pharmaceutical firms kill more people every week than died in 9/11. He insisted the NHS is designed to collapse, leaving people dependent on private corporations. And he said GM foods are causing an explosion of allergies in humans.

Then came something you really wouldn’t expect to hear from David Icke — a defence of mainstream media. Maybe he’s not so off-the-wall after all.

He said: “You now have these extraordinary levels of state imposition and snooping and everything, and something else ‘they’ want is to neuter the ability of the media to expose any of it.

“Leveson was a total set-up and you got Cameron playing good cop/bad cop, all along knowing what the outcome was going to be — more suppression of the Press.

“I, of all people, should have been in that Hacked Off group on the basis of how the media has treated people, but I think Hacked Off is an absolute fricking disgrace. They are clueless.

“We need the Press free to say what needs saying, and if that means people like me get abused unfairly then that is a price worth paying rather than losing the ability of the Press to report the world as it needs reporting.

“I don’t care what people say about me. I care what is happening to the world.”

Icke’s upcoming book — his 23rd — is his longest yet, with 850 pages and 900 images and illustrations.

“It’s 430,000 words,” he said.

I think I heard most of them at least once during our lunch. It’s no wonder he managed to talk for 11 hours at his Wembley show.

He promises, however, that The People’s Voice TV and radio station, for which he is trying to raise £100,000, will give a voice to other people who can’t get their message out on mainstream media.

His press release quotes Russell Brand saying, “I am excited by David’s new venture. We all complain about media bias and now we will have an outlet beholden only to the people.

“I think it will be crazy and fun and I hope to be on it.”

Icke’s own theories are sure to get an airing, though.

He describes what he does as “joining up the dots” to give the true picture of the world.

He is a man who could join up all the dots on a single domino and come up with a three-dimensional picture of Satan.

But he said: “You don’t have to agree with everything I say.

“The last thing I want to do is tell people what to think. That’s how we got into the mess we’re in.

“I just want people to question everything — even what I say.”

Change of goals

1952: Born April 29, in Leicester.

1967: Leaves school at 15 to be a footballer. Later a goalie for Coventry then Hereford United.

1973: Arthritis ends footie career with “The Bulls”. Becomes a journalist at Leicester Advertiser.

1981: Lands sports presenter job on BBC’s Newsnight and a year later co-hosts Grandstand.

1990: “Turquoise period”, above, he wears only that colour and lives with first wife Linda AND his lover, psychic Deborah Shaw.

1991: Says he is “son of Godhead”, that we are ruled by alien lizards and that world will end in 1997.

2006: By now a prolific writer and lecturer on conspiracy theories. 2008: Comes 12th in Haltemprice and Howden by-election.

2013: Announces plans for a TV and radio station.